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ï~~"BISTO Y                        F ROME
BY
THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D.,
AiTE REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD=
HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL,
AND MEMBER OF THE ARC~HEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF HOME.
THREE VOLUMES IN ONE.
REPRINTED ENTIRE, FROM THlE LAST LONDON EDITION.
NEW-YORK:
D. APPLETON & COMPANY,
443 & 445 BROADWAY.
1868.




ï~~


ï~~PREFACE.
Ix attempting to write the History of Rome, I am not afraid of incur.
ring the censure pronounced by Johnson upon Blackwell,* that he had
chosen a subject long since exhausted; of which all men knew already
as much as any one could tell them. Much more do I dread the reproach of having ventured, with most insufficient means, upon a work
of the greatest difficulty; and thus by possibility deterring others from
accomplishing a task which has never yet been fulfilled, and which they
might fulfil more worthily. The great advances made within the last
thirty years in historical knowledge have this most hopeful symptom,
that they have taught us to appreciate the amount of our actual ignorance. As we have better understood what history ought to be, we are
become ashamed of that scanty information which might once have
passed for learning; and our discovery of the questions which need to
be solved has so outrun our powers of solving them, that we stand humiliated rather than encouraged, and almost inclined to envy the condition of our fathers, whose maps, so to speak, appeared to them complete and satisfactory, because they never suspected the existence of a
world beyond their range.
Still, although the time will, I trust, arrive, when points now altogether obscure will receive their full illustration, and when this work
must be superseded by a more perfect history, yet it may be possible in
the mean while to render some service, if I shall be able to do any justice to my subject up to the extent of our present knowledge. And
we, who are now in the vigor of life, possess at least one advantage
which our children may not share equally. We have lived in a period
rich in historical lessons beyond all former example; we have witnessed
one of the great seasons of movement in the life of mankind, in which
the arts of peace and war, political parties and principles, philosophy
and religion, in all their manifold forms and influences, have been developed with extraordinary force and freedom. Our own experience
has thus thrown a bright light upon the remoter past: much which our
fathers could not fully understand, from being accustomed only to
* In Ms review of Blackwell's Memoirs of the Court of Augustus.--.Works, Vol. II.
Svo. 1806.




ï~~vi

PREFACE.

quieter times, and which again, from the same cause, may become obscure to our children, is to us perfectly familiar. This is an advantage
common to all the present generation in every part of Europe; but it
is not claiming too much to say, that the growth of the Roman commonwealth, the true character of its parties, the causes and tendency of
its revolutions, and the spirit of its people and its laws, ought to be understood by none so well as by those who have grown up under the
laws, who have been engaged in the parties, who are themselves citizens of our kingly commonwealth of England.
Long before Niebuhr's death I had formed the design of writing the
History of Rome; not, it may well be believed, with the foolish notion
of rivalling so great a man, but because it appeared to me that his work
was not likely to become generally popular in England, and that its
discoveries and remarkable wisdom might best be made known to English readers by putting them into a form more adapted to our common
taste. It should be remembered, that only the two first volumes of
Niebuhr's History were published in his lifetime; and although careful
readers might have anticipated his powers of narration even from these,
yet they were actually, by the necessity of the case, more full of dissertations than of narrative; and for that reason it seemed desirable to
remould them for the English public, by assuming as proved many of
those results which Niebuhr himself had been obliged to demonstrate
step by step. But when Niebuhr died, and there was now no hope of
seeing his great work completed in a manner worthy of its beginning,
I was more desirous than ever of executing my original plan, of presenting in a more popular form what he had lived to finish, and of continuing it afterwards with such advantages as I had derived from a
long study and an intense admiration of his example and model.
It is my hope, then, if God spares my life * and health, to carry on
this history to the revival of the western empire, in the year 800 of the
Christian era, by the coronation of Charlemagne at Rome. This point
appears to me its natural termination. We shall then have passed
through the chaos which followed the destruction of the old western
empire, and shall have seen its several elements, combined with others
which in that great convulsion had been mixed with them, organized
again into their new form. That new form exhibited a marked and
recognized division between the so-called secular and spiritual powers,
and thereby has maintained in Christian Europe the unhappy distinction which necessarily prevailed in the heathen empire between the
church and the state; a distinction now so deeply seated in our laws,
our language, and our very notions, that nothing less than a miraculous
interposition of God's providence seems capable, within any definite
* Dr. Arnold died June 12th, 1842. He had completed the present volume, with the exception of adding a running commentary to the last part of it.




ï~~PREFACE.

vii

time, of eradicating it. The Greek empire, in its latter years, retained
so little of the Roman character, and had so little influence upon what
was truly the Roman world, that it seems needless, for the sake of a
mere name, to protract the story for six hundred and fifty years fur
ther, merely to bring it down to the conquest of Constantinople by the
Turks.
For the whole of the period, from the origin down to the capture of
Rome by the Gauls, in the middle of the fourth century before the
Christian era, I have enjoyed Niebuhr's guidance; I have everywhere
availed myself of his materials as well as of his conclusions. No acknowledgment can be too ample for the benefits which I have derived
from him: yet I have not followed him blindly, nor compiled my work
from his. It seemed to be a worthier tribute to his greatness, to endeavor to follow his example; to imitate, so far as I could, his manner
of inquiry; to observe and pursue his hints; to try to practise his master-art of doubting rightly and believing rightly; and, as no man is
infallible, to venture sometimes even to differ from his conclusions, if a
compliance with his own principles of judgment seemed to require it.
But I can truly say, that I never differ from him without a full consciousness of the probability that further inquiry might prove him to
be right.
The form and style in which I have given the legends and stories of
the first three centuries of Rome may require some explanation. I
wished to give these legends at once with the best effect, and at the
same time with a perpetual mark, not to be mistaken by the most careless reader, that they were legends and not history. There seemed a
reason, therefore, for adopting a more antiquated style, which, otherwise, of course would be justly liable to the charge of affectation.
It might seem ludicrous to speak of impartiality in writing the history of remote times, did not those times really bear a nearer resemblance to our own than many imagine; or did not 1Mitford's example
sufficiently prove that the spirit of modern party may affect our view
of ancient history. But many persons do not clearly see what should
be the true impartiality of an historian. If there be no truths in moral
and political science, little good can be derived from the study of either:
if there be truths, it must be desirable that they should be discovered
and embraced. Skepticism must ever be a misfortune or a defect: a
misfortune, if there be no means of arriving at truth; a defect, if while
there exist such means we are unable or unwilling to use them. Believing that political science has its truths no less than moral, I cannot
regard them with indifference, I cannot but wish them to be seen and
embraced by others.
On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that these truths have
been much disputed; that they have not, like moral truths, received




ï~~vii

PREFACE.

that universal assent of good men which makes us shrink from submitting them to question. And, again, in human affairs, the contest has
never been between pure truth and pure error. Neither, then, may we
assume political conclusions as absolutely certain; nor are political
truths ever wholly identical with the professions or practice of any
party or individual. If, for the sake of recommending any principle,
we disguise the errors or the crimes with which it has been in practice
accompanied, and which, in the weakness of human nature, may perhaps be naturally connected with our reception of it, then we are guilty
of most blamable partiality. And so it is no less, if, for the sake of
decrying an erroneous principle, we depreciate the wisdom, and the
good and noble feelings with which error also is frequently, and in
some instances naturally, joined. This were to make our sense of
political truth to overpower our sense of moral truth; a double error,
inasmuch as it is at once the less certain, and, to those who enjoy a
Christian's hope, by far the less worthy.
While, then, I cannot think that political science contains no truths,
or that it is a matter of indifference whether they are believed or no, I
have endeavored also to remember, that be they ever so certain, there
are other truths no less sure; and that one truth must never be sacrificed to another. I have tried to be strictly impartial in my judgments
of men and parties, without being indifferent to those principles which
were involved more or less purely in their defeat or triumph. I have
desired neither to be so possessed with the mixed character of all things
human, as to doubt the existence of abstract truth; nor so to dote on
any abstract truth, as to think that its presence in the human mind is
incompatible with any evil, its absence incompatible with any good.
In the first part of my History, I have followed the common chronology without scruple; not as true, but as the most convenient.
Where the facts themselves are so uncertain, it must be a vain labor
to try to fix their dates minutely. But when we arrive at a period of
greater certainty as to the facts, then it will be proper to examine, as
far as possible, into the chronology.
Those readers who are acquainted with Niebuhr, or with the history
written by Mr. Maldon, for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge, may be surprised to find so little said upon the antiquities
of the different nations of Italy. The omission, however, was made
deliberately: partly, because the subject does not appear to me to belong essentially to the early history of Rome, and still more, because
the researches now carried on with so much spirit in Italy, hold out
the hope that we may obtain, ere long, some more satisfactory knowledge than is at present attainable. Pelasgian inscriptions, written in a
character clearly distinguishable from the Etruscan, have been discovered very recently, as I am  informed, at Agylla or Caere. And the




ï~~PREFACE.

1z

study and comparison of the several Indo-Germanic languages is making
such progress, that if any fortunate discovery comes in to aid it, we
may hope to see the mystery of the Etruscan inscriptions at length unravelled. I was not sorry, therefore, to defer any detailed inquiry into
the antiquities of the Italian nations, in the expectation that I might be
able hereafter to enter upon the subject to greater advantage.
Amongst the manifold accomplishments of Niebuhr's mind, not the
least extraordinary was his philological knowledge. His acquaintance
with the manuscripts of the Greek and Roman writers was extensive
and profound; his acuteness in detecting a corrupt reading, and his
sagacity in correcting it, were worthy of the critical ability of Bentley.
On no point have I been more humbled with a sense of my own inferiority, as feeling that my own professional pursuits ought, in this
respect, to have placed me more nearly on a level with him. But it is
far otherwise. I have had but little acquaintance with manuscripts,
nor have I the means of consulting them extensively; and the common
editions of the Latin writers in particular, do not intimate how much of
their present text is grounded upon conjecture. I have seen references
made to Festus, which, on examination, have been found to rest on no
other authority than Scaliger's conjectural piecing of the fragments of
the original text. But, besides this, we often need a knowledge of the
general character of a manuscript or manuscripts, in order to judge
whether any remarkable variations in names or dates are really to be
ascribed to the author's having followed a different version of the story,
or whether they are mere blunders of the copyist. For instance, the
names of the consuls, as given at the beginning of each year in the
present text of Diodorus, are in many instances so corrupt;,that one is
tempted to doubt how far some apparent differences in his Fasti from
those followed by Livy, are really his own or his copyist's.
There are some works which I have not been able to consult; and
there are points connected with the topography of Rome and its neighborhood, on which no existing work gives a satisfactory explanation.
On these points I have been accustomed to consult my valued friend
Bunsen, Niebuhr's successor in his official situation as Prussian minister at Rome, and his worthy successor no less in the profoundness of
his antiquarian, and philological, and historical knowledge.
There has lately appeared in the second volume of Niebuhr's life
and letters, a letter written by him to a young student, containing
various directions and suggestions with respect to his philological
studies. Amongst other things, he says, "I utterly disapprove of the
common practice of adopting references, after verifying them, without
naming the source whence they are taken; and, tedious as the double
reference is, I never allow myself to dispense with it. When I cite a
passage simply, I have found it out myself. He who does otherwise,




ï~~PREFACE.

assumes the appearance of more extensive reading than belongs tc
him."
The perfect uprightness of Niebuhr's practice in this point is well
worthy of him, and is deserving of all imitation. But I should find it
difficult in all cases to say whether I had first noticed a passage myself, or had been led to it by a quotation in another writer. I have
availed myself continually of Niebuhr's references, and of those made
by Freinsheim in his supplement of Livy; but it has happened, also,
that passages referred to by them had been taken by myself directly
from the original source, without recollecting, or, indeed, without knowing, that they had been quoted previously by others. Niebuhr's reading was so vast, and his memory so retentive, that he may be presumed
never to have overlooked any thing which could illustrate his subject:
it is probable, therefore, that every quotation made in this volume may
be found previously made by iNiebuhr, unless it happen to relate to a
matter which he has not written on. But yet, some quotations were
made by me with so little consciousness of their existing in Niebuhr,
that in one instance I searched his volume to see whether he had noticed
a passage, because I did not remember to have observed any quotation
of it by him, and yet I felt sure, as proved to be the case, that he had
not overlooked it.
I have only, therefore, to state that many passages have been quoted
by me from Pliny, Valerius Maximus, Frontinus, and other writers, for
the knowledge, or at least for the recollection of which, I was indebted
either to Niebuhr or to Freinsheim, or to some other modern writer.
And yet I can truly say, that not a single paragraph has been written
on a mereverifying of the references made by preceding writers, but
that my own reading and comparison of the ancient authorities has
been always the foundation of it. This is not said as laying claim to
any remarkable degree of diligence or of learning, but simply to establish my right to call this history an original work, and not a mere compilation from Niebuhr or from others who have gone over the ground
previously.
But I shall be believed by all who are acquainted with Niebuhr's
third volume, when I say that the composition of this period in mine
has been throughout a most irksome labor; inasmuch as I was but
doing, with manifest inferiority in every point, what Niebuhr had done
in all points admirably. In the first part, although all the substance
of it and much more, was to be found in Niebuhr, yet in its form I
might hope to have some advantage, as putting his matter into a more
popular shape. But his third volume is no less eloquent than wise;
and is as superior in the power of its narrative as in the profoundness
of its researches. And yet, this portion of the history was to be written
as a necessary part of my own work. I was obliged, therefore, to go




ï~~PREFACE.

xi

through with it as well as I could, feeling most keenly all the while the
infinite difference between Niebuhr's history and mine.
It may be thought by some that this volume is written at too great
length. But I am convinced, by a tolerably large experience, that most
readers find it almost impossible to impress on their memory a mere
abridgment of history: the number of names and events crowded into
a small space is overwhelming to them, and the absence of details in the
narrative makes it impossible to communicate to it much of interest;
neither characters nor events can be developed with that particularity
which is the best help to the memory, because it attracts and engages
us, and impresses images on the mind as well as facts. At the same
time I am well aware of the great difficulty of giving liveliness to a
narrative which necessarily gets all its facts at second-hand. Ai d a
writer who has never been engaged in any public transactions, either
of peace or war, must feel this especially. One who is himself a statesman and orator, may relate the political contests even of remote ages
with something of the spirit of a contemporary; for his own experience
realizes to him, in great measure, the scenes and the characters which
he is describing. And, in like manner, a soldier or a seaman can enter
fully into the great deeds of ancient warfare; for, although in outward form ancient battles and sieges may differ from those of modern
times, yet the genius of the general and the courage of the soldier, the
call for so many of the highest qualities of our nature which constitutes
the enduring moral interest of war, are common alike to all times, and
he who has fought under Wellington has been in spirit an eye-witness
of the campaigns of Hannibal. But a writer whose whole experience
has been confined to private life and to peace, has no link to connect
him with the actors and great deeds of ancient history, except the feelings of our common humanity. He cannot realize civil contests or
battles with the vividness of a statesman and a soldier; he can but
enter into them as a man; and his general knowledge of human nature,
his love of great and good actions, his sympathy with virtue, his abhorrence of vice, can alone assist him in making himself, as it were, a witness of what he attempts to describe. But these even by themselves
will do much; and if an historian feels as a man and as a citizen, there
is hope that, however humble his experience, he may inspire his
readers with something of his own interest in the events of his history:
he may hope, at least, that a full detail of these events, however feebly
represented, will be worth far more than a mere brief summary of them,
made the text for a long comment of his own.
RTJGBY, May 28th, 1840.




ï~~


ï~~CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
FAGS
Early Legends of Rome..............................................................   1
CHAPTER II.
The early History of Rome............................................................  8
CHAPTER III.
Of the city of Rome, its territory, and its scenery...................................... 12
CHAPTER IV.
Stories of the later Kings............................................................. 15
CHAPTER V.
The History of the later Kings of Rome, and of the greatness of the Monarchy........... 19
CHAPTER VI.
Miscellaneous notices of the state of the Romans under their Kings...................... 82
CHAPTER VII.
The Story of the Banishing of King Tarquinius and his House, and of their attempts to get
themselves brought back again................................................... 89
CHAPTER VIII.
Rome after the end of the Monarchy-the Dictatorship-the Tribunes of the Commons... 47
CHAPTER IX.
Spurius Cassius-the League with the Latins and Hernicans-the Agrarian Law-A.U.c.
261-269......................................................................... 57
CHAPTER X.
Ascendency of the Aristocracy-the Fabii and their Seven Consulships-the Publilian
Law-A.o. 269-283.............................................................. 62
CHAPTER XI.
Wars with the Equians and Volscians-Legends connected with these Wars-Stories of
Coriolanus, and of Cincinnatus................................................... 68
CHAPTER XII.
Wars with the Etruscans-Veii--Legend of the slaughter of the Fabii at the river
Cremera........................................................................  79
CHAPTER XIII.
Internal History-the Terentilian Law-Appointment of the ten High Commissioners to
frame a Code of written Laws.--A.u.c. 284-303..................................83




ï~~xiv

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XIV.
WAGS
The first Decemvirs, and the Laws of the Twelve Tables...............................  96
CHAPTER XV.
The second Decemvirate-Story of Virginia-Revolution of 805........................ 114
CHAPTER XVI.
Internal History-Constitution of the Year 306-Valerian Laws, and Trials of the Decemvirs-Reaction in favor of the Patricians-Canuleian Law-Constitution of 812 -Counter-Revolution......................................................... 121
CHAPTER XVII.
Internal History from 812 to 850-the Censorship, and the limitation of it by Mamercus
 Emilius-Sp. Malius and C. Ahala--the Questorship laid open to tbe Commons-Six
Tribunes of the Soldiers appointed, and pay issued to the Soldiers................ 182
CHAPTER XVIII.
Wars of the Romans from 800 to 363-the Equians and Volscians-the Etruscans-Siege
and Capture of Veii........................................................143
CHAPTER XIX.
Internal History from 850 to 864--Plebeian Military Tribunes-Banishment of Camillus... 156
CHAPTER XX.
State of foreign Nations at the period of the Gaulish invasion-Italy, Sardinia, Corsica... 161
CHAPTER XXI.
Dionysius the Elder, Tyrant of Syracuse.............................................. 168
CHAPTER XXII.
Carthage-Barbarians of Western Europe-East of Europe-Greece-Macedonia-Illyria.. 182
CHAPTER XXIII.
Miscellaneous-Physical History......................................................190
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Gauls invade Central Italy-Battle of the Alia-Burning of Rome-Ransom of the
Capitol and of the City--Retreat of the Gauls...................................... 197
CHAPTER XXV.
History, foreign and domestic, from the year 865 to 878-Rome after the retreat of the
Gauls-its weakness, and the great misery of the Commons-Popularity and death of
M. Manlius-Wars with the neighboring Nations................................. 210
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Licinian Laws.-878-384........................................................ 222
CHAPTER XXVII.
General History, domestic and foreign, from the admission of the Commons to the Consulship to the beginning of the first Samnite War-Evasion of the Licinian Laws-Wars
with the Gauls, Tarquiniensians, and Volscians.---A.U.o. 889-412, Livy: 884-407,
Niebuhr......................................................................... 284
CHAPTER XXVIII.
T'he first Samnite War-Sedition of the year 408-Genucian Laws.-A.u.o. 407-409, Niebuhr: 410-412, Fasti Capit.: 412-414, Livy........................  247




ï~~CONTENTS.

xv

CHAPTER XXIX.
PAGB
The great Latin War-Battle under Mount Vesuvius-The Publilian Laws-Final settlement of Latium.-A.ux.c. 415-417: 410-412, Niebuhr............................. 260
CHAPTER XXX.
General History to the beginning of the second Samnite War-Privernum-Palhepolis.A.U.c. 418-428: 413-423, Niebuhr................................................ 275
CHAPTER XXXI.
Second Samnite War-L. Papirius Cursor-Affair of the Forks or Pass of Caudium-Battle
of Lautuhe-Q. Fabius, and the war with Etruria.-A.u.c. 428-450: 423-444, Niebuhr............................................................................  284
CHAPTER XXXII.
Internal History from 428 to 454-Abolition of Personal Slavery for Debt-Dictatorship of
C. Maenius-Censorship of Appius Claudius--Censorship of Q. Fabius and P. Decius
-the  Ogulnian  Law.............................................................  812
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Foreign History from 460 to 464 (443 to 456, Niebuhr)-Conquest of the. quians-Third
Samnite War-Coalition of the Etruscans, Samnites, and Gauls-Great battle of Sentinum, and death of P. Decius-Final victory of Q. Fabius over the Samnites-C.
Pontius is led in triumph, and put to death in cold blood.......................... 828
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Internal History from the passing of the Ogulnian Law to the landing of Pyrrhus in Italy
-Secession to the Janiculum--Dietatorship of Q. Hortensius-Hortensian and Menian Laws-From A.v.c. 454 to 474................................................ 350
CHAPTER XXXV.
State of the East-Kingdoms of Alexander's Successors-Sicily-Greece-Kingdom        of
Epirus, and early fortunes of Pyrrhus.............................................3 862
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Rome and the Roman People at the beginning of the War with the Tarentines and with
Pyrrhus........................................................................  880
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Foreign History from 464 to 479--Wars with the Etruscans, Gauls, and TarentinesFourth Samnite war-Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, in Italy--Battles of Heraclea, Asculum,
and  Beneventum.................................................................  887
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
General History from the departure of Pyrrhus from Italy to the beginning of the first
Punic War-Final submission of Samnium-Conquest of Tarentum-Picentian and
Volsinian Wars-Rome acquires the sovereignty of all Italy-Detached events and
anecdotes relating to this Period-479 to 489, A.v.O. 275 to 265, A.c................... 408
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Constitution and power of Carthage.................................................. 418
CHAPTER XL.
First Punic War-the Romans invade Sicily-Submission of Hiero-the Romans create a
Navy-Naval victories of Myl e and Ecnomus-Expedition of M. Regulus to Africa;
his successes, his arrogance in victpry, his defeat and captivity-War in Sicily-Siege
of Lilybsum and naval actions connected with it-Hamilear Barea at Eircte and Eryx
-Naval battle of the.Egates--Peace concluded.-A.u.c. 490 to 513--A.c. 264 to 241.... 424




ï~~"CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XLI.
PAGI
State of Italy after the Roman conquest-Political relations of the inhabitants, and different tenures of land-Latin Colonies............................................. 448
CHAPTER XLII.
General History from the first to the second Punic War-Illyrian War-Great Gaulish invasion-Muster of the forces of all Italy-Defeat of the Gauls-Roman invasions of
Cisalpine Gaul-M. Marcellus and C. Flaminius.-A.u.c. 518 to 535-A.c. 241 to 219.... 456
CHAPTER XLIII.
Second Punic War-Hannibal-March of Hannibal from Spain to Italy-Passage of the
Alps-Battles of the Trebia, and of Thrasymenus-Q. Fabius Maximus Dictator-Battle of Canne-A.u.c. 535 to 538.................................................... 470
CHAPTER XLIV,
Progress of the war in Italy after the battle of Cannae-Revolt of Capua, and of the people
of Southern Italy, to Hannibal-Great exertions of the Romans-Surprise of Tarentum
-Siege of Capua-Hannibal marches on Rome-Reduction and punishment of Capua
-A.v.c. 538 to 543................................................... 500
CHAPTER XLV.
Progress of the war in Spain, Sicily, and Greece-Operations of the Scipios in SpainTheir defeat and death-Macedon and Greece-Revolutions of Syracuse-Marcellus in
Sicily-Siege of Syracuse-Archimedes-Sack of Syracuse, and reduction of SicilyMutmnes, the Numidian, in Sicily-A.u.c. 538 to 548............................... 512
CHAPTER XLVI.
State of Italy-Distress of the people-Twelve colonies refuse to support the warEighteen colonies offer all their resources to the Romans-Events of the war-Death
of Marcellus-Fabius recovers Tarentum-March of Hasdrubal into Italy-He reaches
the coast of the Adriatic-Great March of C. Nero from Apulia to oppose him-Battle
of the Metaurus, and death of Hasdrubal-A.u.c. 543 to A.u.c. 547................... 564
CHAPTER XLVII.
P. Cornelius Scipio-His operations in Spain-Siege and capture of New Carthage-Battle
of Bmcula-the Carthaginians evacuate the Spanish peninsula-Scipio returns to Rome,
and is elected Consul-A.u.c. 543 to A.U.c. 548...................................... 586
SUPPLEMENT........................................................................... 608
TABLE of CONSULS and MILITARY TRIBUNES from the beginning of the Commonwealth to
the taking of Rome by the Gauls................................................. 618
ADDENDA......................................................................... 649
APPENDI............................................................................665




ï~~HISTORY OF ROME.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY LEGENDS OF ROME.
"The old songs of every people, which bear the impress of their character and of which the
beauties, whether few or many, must be genuine, because they arise only from feeling, have
always been valued by men of masculine and comprehensive taste."-Sm J. MAcKINTOSH, Hilst.
of England, vol. I. p. 86.
THE LEGEND OF JENEAS.
WHEN the fatal horse was going to be brought within the walls of Troy,' and
when Laocoon had been devoured by the two serpents sent by the How.Anes wont over
sea from Troy te the
gods to punish him    because he had tried to save his country land of the Latin.
against the will of Fate, then  Eneas and his father Anchises, with their wives,2
and many who followed their fortune, fled from the coming of the evil day. But
they remembered to carry their gods with them,3 who were to receive their
worship in a happier land. They were guided in their flight from the city4 by
the god Hermes, and he built for them a ship to carry them over the sea. When
they put to sea, the star of Venus,' the mother of Eneas, stood over their heads,
and it shone by day as well as by night, till they came to the shores of the land
of the west.   But when they landed, the star vanished and was seen no more;
and by this sign,.Eneas knew that he was come to that country, wherein fate
had appointed him to dwell.
The Trojans, when they had brought their gods on shore, began to sacrifice.'
But the victim, a milk-white sow just ready to farrow, broke from of tho Sig which he
the priest and his ministers, and fled away..AEneas followed her; wheore hehood bu
for an oracle had told him, that a four-footed beast should guide.ioity.
him to the spot where he was to build his city. So the sow went forwards till
she came to a certain hill, about two miles and a half from the shore where they
had purposed to sacrifice, and there she laid down and farrowed, and her litter
was of thirty young ones.   But when.Eneas saw that the place was sandy and
barren,' he doubted what he should do.      Just at this time he heard a voice
Arctinus, 'Iito 7rprcc, quoted by Proclus,  4 Tabula Iliensis and Nievius, quoted by SerChrestomathia, p. 483. See Fynes Clinton, vius,.En. I. 170. Edit. Lion. 1826.
Fasti Hellen. Vol. I. p. 356.              5 Varro de Rebus divinis, II. quoted by SerSNa'vius, Fragm. Bell. Pun. I. 15-20.   vius, 'En. I. 381.
$ See the Tabula Iliensis, taken from Stesi-  6 Dionysius, I. 56.
chorus. [Annali dell' Instituto di Corrispond.  7 Q. Fabius, apud Servium, Virg. En. I
Archeolog. 1829, p. 232.]                v. 3.
1




ï~~2

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CUAP.

which said,-" The thirty young of the sow are thirty years; when thirty years
are passed, thy children shall remove to a better land; meantime do thou obey
the gods, and build thy city in the place where they bid thee to build." So the
Trojans built their city on the spot where the sow had farrowed.
Now the land belonged to a people who were the children of the soil, and their
Of his wars with ho king was called Latinus. He received the strangers kindly, and
people of the country. granted to them seven hundred jugera of land,9 seven jugera to
each man, for that was a man's portion. But soon the children of the soil and
the strangers quarrelled; and the strangers plundered the lands round about
them;10 and king Latinus called upon Turnus, the king of the Rutulians of Ardea,
to help him against them. The quarrel became a war; and the strangers took
the city of king Latinus, and Latinus was killed; and.Eneas took his daughter
Lavinia and married her, and became king over the children of the soil; and
they and the strangers became one people, and they were called by one name,
Latins.
But Turnus called to his aid Mezentius, king of the Etruscans of Caere.11 There
How he disappeared in was then another battle on the banks of the river Numicius, and
woe r.s ie.and Turnus was killed, and.Eneas plunged into the river and was
was worshipped as aplne
god.          seen no more. However, his son Ascanius declared that he was
not dead, but that the gods had taken him to be one of themselves;19 and his
people built an altar to him on the banks of the Numicius, and worshipped him
by the name of Jupiter Indiges, which means, "the God who was of that very
land.""
THE LEGEND OF ASCANIUS.
The war went on between Mezentius and Ascanius, the son of Aneas; and
How Acasnius sloew Mezentius pressed hard upon the Latins, till at last Ascanius met
iezet  usoa  built him man to man, and slew him14 in single fight. At that time
the city of Alba Lonct            Ascanius was very young, and there were only the first soft hairs
of youth upon his cheeks; so he was called Iulus, or "the soft-haired," because,
when he was only a youth, he had vanquished and slain his enemy, who was a
grown man. At length the thirty years came to an end, which were foreshown
by the litter of thirty young ones of the white sow. Ascanius then removed
with his people to a high mountain, which looks over all the land on every side,
and one side of it runs steep down into a lake: there he hewed out a place for
his city on the side of the mountain, above the lake; and as the city was long
and narrow, owing to the steepness of the hill, he called it Alba Longa, which
is, the "White Long City;" and he called it white, because of the sign of the
white sow.1
THE LEGEND OF ROMULUS.
Numitor'6 was the eldest son of Procas, king of Alba Longa, and he had a
HoSw Romulus and younger brother called Amulius. When Procas died, Amulius
Remus were born, and
suckled by awshewf seized by force on the kingdom, and left to Numitor only his share
and fed by a woodpeeker.       of his father's private inheritance. After this he caused Numitor's only son to be slain, and made his daughter Silvia become one of the virgins who watched the ever-burning fire of the goddess Vesta. But the god
Mamers, who is called also Mars, beheld the virgin and loved her, and it was
found that she was going to become the mother of children. Then Amulius
ordered that the children, when born, should be thrown into the river. It hap8 Aborigines."-Cato, Origines, apud Ser-  11 Cato, apud Servium, An. I. 267.
vium, En. I. v. 6.                      12 Servius, 4n. IV. 620. n. XII. 794.
Cato, apud Servium, AEn. XI. v. 316.-But  ' Livy, I. 2.
it should be observed that the MSS. of Servius  1 Cato, apud Servium, en. I. 267.
give the number of jugera variously.     15 Servius, En. I. v. 270.
t Cato, apud Servium, AEn. I. 267, et An. IV.  1B Livy, I. 8. Dionysius, I. 76, et seqq. Plu620                                    tarch, in Romulo




ï~~CHAP. I,]

EARLY LEGENDS.

pened that the river at that time had flooded the country; when, therefore, the
two children in their basket were thrown into the river, the waters carried them
as far as the foot of the Palatine Hill, and there the basket was upset, near the
roots of a wild fig-tree, and the children thrown out upon the land. At this
moment there came a she-wolf down to the water to drink, and when she saw
the children, she carried them to her cave hard by, and gave them to suck; and
whilst they were there, a woodpecker came backwards and forwards to the cave,
and brought them food.'7 At last one Faustulus, the king's herdsman, saw the
wolf suckling the children; and when he went up, the wolf left them and fled;18
so he took them home to his wife Larentia, and they were bred up along with
her own sons on the Palatine Hill; and they were called Romulus and Remus.'9
When Romulus and Remus grew up, the herdsmen of the Palatine Hill chanced
to have a quarrel with the herdsmen of Numitor, who stalled their ow i t wasf ound out
cattle on the hill Aventinus. Numitor's herdsmen laid an ambush, who theoy were.
and Remus fell into it, and was taken and carried off to Alba. But when the
young man was brought before Numitor, he was struck with his noble air and
bearing, and asked him who he was. And when Remus told him of his birth,
and how he had been saved from death, together with his brother, Numitor
marvelled, and thought whether this might not be his own daughter's child. In
the mean while, Faustulus and Romulus hastened to Alba to deliver Remus;
and by the help of the young men of the Palatine Hill, who had been used to
follow him and his brother, Romulus took the city, and Amulius was killed; and
Numitor was made king, and owned Romulus and Remus to be born of his own
blood.
The two brothers did not wish to live at Alba, but loved rather the hill on the
banks of the Tiber, where they had been brought up. So they said, Ho they disoputed
that they would build a city there; and they inquired of the gods namo to the city, 00(
of the sign of the vulby augury, to know which of them should give his name to the tures.
city. They watched the heavens from morning till evening, and from evening
till morning;20 and as the sun was rising, Remus saw six vultures.21 This was
told to Romulus; but as they were telling him, behold there appeared to him
twelve vultures. Then it was disputed again, which had seen the truest sign of
the god's favor: but the most part gave their voices for Romulus. So he began
to build his city on the Palatine Hill. This made Remus very angry; and when
he saw the ditch and the rampart which were drawn round the space where the
city was to be, he scornfully leapt over them,' saying, "Shall such defences as
these keep your city?" As he did this, Celer, who had the charge of the building, struck Remus with the-spade which he held in his hand, and slew him; and
they buried him on the hill Remuria, by the banks of the Tiber, on the spot
where he had wished to build his city.
But Romulus found that his people were too few in numbers; so he set apart
a place of refuge,23 to which any man might flee, and be safe from How Romulus opened
a place of refuge, and
his pursuers. So many fled thither from the countries round how his people carried
off the women of the
about; those who had shed blood, and fled from the vengeance neighboring people.
of the avenger of blood; those who were driven out from their own homes
by their enemies, and even men of low degree who had run away from their
lords. Thus the city became full of people; but yet they wanted wives, and
the nations round about would not give them their daughters in marriage. So
Romulus gave out that he was going to keep a great festival, and there were
to be sports and games to draw a multitude together.4 The neighbors came to
see the show, with their wives and their daughters: there came the people of
- Ovid, Fasti, III. 54. Servius, WEn. I. v. 273.  21 Livy, I. 7.
SEnnius, Annal. I. 78.                " Ovid, Fasti, IV. 842.
SGellius, Noct. Attic. VI. e. 7, quoted from  23 The famous Asylum. See Livy, I. 8.?tessurius Sabinus.                    24 Livy, I. 9.
SEnnius, Annal. I. v. 106, 107.




ï~~HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHA..

C emnina, and of Crustumerium, and of Antemna, and a great multitude of the
Sabines.  But while they were looking at the games, the people of Romulus
rushed out upon them, and carried off the women to be their wives.
Upon this the people of Cmnina first made war upon the people of Romw.
How for this cause theo lus:5 but they were beaten, and Romulus with his own hand
Sabine andmote rason slew their king Acron.  Next the people of Crustumerium, and
of thoe fair Tarpoisa.  of Antemna, tried their fortune, but Romulus conquered both of
them. Last of all came the Sabines with a great army, under Titus Tatius,
their king. There is a hill near to the Tiber, which was divided from the Palatine
Hill by a low and swampy valley; and on this hill Romulus made a fortress, to
keep off the enemy from his city. But when the fair Tarpeia, the daughter of
the chief who had charge of the fortress, saw the Sabines draw near, and marked
their bracelets and their collars of gold, she longed after these ornaments, and
promised to betray the hill into their hands if they would give her those bright
things which they wore upon their arms."    So she opened a gate, and let in the
Sabines; and they, as they came in, threw upon her their bright shields which
they bore on their arms, and crushed her to death. Thus the Sabines got the
How the god   a  us fortress which was on the hill Saturnius; and they and the Rosaced use city from the
sabi.  f    temanrs joined battle in the valley between the hill and the city of
Romulus." The Sabines began to get the better, and came up close to one of
the gates of the city. The people of Romulus shut the gate, but it opened of
its own accord; once and again they shut it, and once and again it opened. But
as the Sabines were rushing in, behold, there burst forth from the Temple of
Janus, which was near the gate, a mighty stream of water, and it swept away the
Sabines, and saved the city. For this it was ordered that the Temple of Janus
should stand ever open in time of war, that the god might be ever ready, as on
this day, to go out and give his aid to the people of Romulus.
After this they fought again in the valley; and the people of Romulus were
How the womn who beginning to flee, when Romulus prayed to Jove, the stayer of
had been carried off
ade peace ethen flight, that he might stay the people;2 and so their flight was
their  fathers  and  theirA                                     n  n o  th f g t
husbands; and how the stayed, and they turned again to the battle. And now the fight
Rtomans and the Saiaoes livo a togoth er.  was fiercer than ever: when, on a sudden, the Sabine women who
had been carried off ran down from the hill Palatinus, and ran in between their
husbands and their fathers, and prayed them to lay aside their quarrel.t9    So
they made peace with one another, and the two people became as one: the Sabines with their king dwelt on the hill Saturnius, which is also called Capitolium,
and on the hill Quirinalis; and the people of Romulus with their king dwelt on
the hill Palatinus. But the kings with their counsellors met in the valley between
Saturnius and Palatinus, to consult about their common matters; and the place
where they met was called Comitium, which means "the place of meeting."
Soon after this, Tatius was slain by the people of Laurentum, because some of
his kinsmen had wronged them, and he would not do them justice.3t     So Romulus reigned by himself over both nations; and his own people were called the
Romans, for Roma was the name of the city on the hill Palatinus; and the
Sabines were called Quirites, for the name of their city on the hills Saturnius and
Quirinalis was Quirium.3
2 Livy, I. 10.                         Annal. XII. 24. Yet Macrobius relates ths
2 Livy, I. 11.                         wonder as having happened at one of the gates
" Macrobius, Saturnalia, 1. 9. Macrobius of the Roman city, when the Romans were at
places the scene of this wonder at a gate war with Tatius; and it seemed needless to
"' which stood at the foot of the hill Vimmina- destroy the consistency of the whole story by
lis." It would be difficult to reconcile this the unseasonable introduction of a topographi.
story with the other accounts of the limits of cal difficulty.
the two cities of Romulus and Tatius: and cer-  25 Livy, I. 12.
tainly a gate at the foot of the Viminal could  20 Livy, I. 13.
not have existed in the walls of the city of  3o Livy, I. 14.
Romulus, according to the historical account of  31 Perhaps I hardly ought to have embodied
their direction and extent, as given by Tacitus, Niebuhr's conjecture in the legend, for certain



ï~~CHAP. I.]

EARLY LEGENDS.

The people were divided into three tribes;32 the Ramnenses, and the Titienses,
and the Luceres: the Ramnenses were called from        Romulus, How Romulus ordered
and the Titienses from Tatius; and the Luceres were called from his people.
Lucumo, an Etruscan chief, who had come to help Romulus in his war with the
Sabines, and dwelt on the hill called Caelius. In each tribe there were ten curiae,
each of one hundred men;33 so all the men of the three tribes were three thousand, and these fought on foot, and were called a legion. There were also three
hundred horsemen, and these were called Celerians, because their chief was that
Celer who had slain Remus. There was besides a council of two hundred men,
which was called a senate, that is, a council of elders.
Romulus was a just king, and gentle to his people: if any were guilty of
crimes, he did not put them to death, but made them pay a fine How h vanished sadof sheep or of oxen?4    In his wars he was very successful, and arn, in~e eld of
enriched his people with the spoils of their enemies. At last, af- shipped as a god.
ter he had reigned nearly forty years, it chanced that one day he called his people
together in the field of Mars, near the Goats' Pool'35 when, all on a sudden, there
arose a dreadful storm, and all was as dark as night; and the rain, and thunder
and lightning, were so terrible, that all the people fled from the field, and ran to
their several homes. At last the storm was over, and they came back to the field of
Mars, but Romulus was nowhere to be found; for Mars, his father, had carried
him up to heaven in his chariot.76 The people knew not at first what was become
of him; but when it was night, as one Proculus Julius was coming from Alba to
the city, Romulus appeared to him in more than mortal beauty, and grown to
more than mortal stature, and said to him, " Go, and tell my people that they
weep not for me any more; but bid them to be brave and warlike, and so shall
they make my city the greatest in the earth." Then the people knew that Romulus was become a god; so they built a temple to him, and offered sacrifice to
him, and worshipped him evermore by the name of the god Quirinus.
THE LEGEND OF NUMA POMPILIUS.
When Romulus was taken from the earth, there was no one found to reign in
his place."  The Senators would choose no king, but they divided Hew for owhole
year the Romans had
themselves into tens; and every ten was to have the power of no ing.
king for five days, one after the other. So a year passed away, and the people
murmured, and said, that there must be a king chosen.
Now the Romans and the Sabines each wished that the king should be one of
them; but at last it was agreed that the king should be a Sabine, How Numa Pompiliu
but that the Romans should choose him.Y    So they chose Numa was e ose king.
Pompilius; for all men said that he was a just man, and wise, and holy.
Some said that he had learnt his wisdom       from  Pythagoras, the faous
philosopher of the Greeks;9 but others would not believe that Of his wise and pious
he owed it to any foreign teacher.     Before he would consent or.nans;adof the
y  g                               favor shown him by the
to be king, he consulted the gods by augury, to know whether it nymph Egeria.
was their pleasure that he should reign.40 And as he feared the gods at first, so
did he even to the last. He appointed many to minister in sacred things,4d such
as the Pontifices, who were to see that all things relating to the gods were duly
observed by all; and the Augurs, who taught men the pleasure of the gods
concerning things to come; and the Flamens, who ministered in the temples;
ly no encient writer now extant speaks of the  5 Livy, I. 16.
town "Quirium." Yet it seems so probable a  86. Quirinus
conjecture, and gives so much consistency to  Martis equis Acheronta fugit."
the story, that I have ventured to adopt it.               borat. III. Carm. 3.? Livy, I. 13. Varro de Lin. Lat. Â~ 55. Ed.  1 Livy, I. 17.
siller. Servius, tEn. V. 560..3 Dionysius, II. 58.
1 Paternus, quoted by Lydus, de Magistra-  " Livy, I. 18. Dionysius, [. 59.
tibus, c. 9.                              4 Livy, I. 18.
1 Cicero de Republica, II. 9.           4 Livy, I. 19.




ï~~HISTORY OF ROME.

[Ch A. I

and the virgins of VE;sta, who tended the ever-burning fire; and the Salii, who
honored the god of arms with solemn songs and dances through the city on
certain days, and who kept the sacred shield which fell down from heaven. And
in all that he did, he knew that he should please the gods; for he did every thing
by the direction of the nymph Egeria, who honored him so much that she took
him to be her husband, and taught him in her sacred grove, by the spring that
welled out from the rock, all that he was to do towards the gods and towards
men.42 By her counsel he snared the gods Picus and Faunus in the grove on the
hill Aventinus, and made them tell him how he might learn from Jupiter the
knowledge of his will, and might get him to declare it either by lightning or by
the flight of birds.43 And when men doubted whether Egeria had really given
him her counsel,. she gave him a sign by which he might prove it to them. He
called many of the Romans to supper, and set before them a homely meal in
earthen dishes;44 and then on a sudden he said, that now Egeria was come to
visit him; and straightway the dishes and the cups became of gold or precious
stones, and the couches were covered with rare and costly coverings, and the
meats and drinks were abundant and most delicious. But though Numa took so
much care for the service of the gods, yet he forbade all costly sacrifices;45 neither
did he suffer blood to be shed on the altars, nor any images of the gods to be
made.46 But he taught the people to offer in sacrifice nothing but the fruits of
the earth, meal and cakes of flour, and roasted corn.
For he loved husbandry, and he wished his people to live every man on his
Of his goodness towards own inheritance in peace and in happiness. So the lands which
Streno..waro, Romulus had won in war, he divided out amongst the people, and
his reign.    gave a certain portion to every man.41  He then ordered landmarks to be set on every portion;48 and Terminus, the god of landmarks, had them
in his keeping, and he who moved a landmark was accursed. The craftsmen of
the city,49 who had no land, were divided according to their callings; and there
were made of them nine companies. So all was peaceful and prosperous throughout the reign of king Numa; the gates of the temple of Janus were never opened,
for the Romans had no wars and no enemies; and Numa built a temple to Faith,
and appointed a solemn worship for her;50 that men might learn not to lie or to
deceive, but to speak and act in honesty. And when he had lived to the age of
fourscore years, he died at last by a gentle decay, and he was buried under the
hill Janiculum, on the other side of the Tiber; and the books of his sacred laws
and ordinances were buried near him in a separate tomb.5'
THE LEGEND OF TULLUS HOSTILIUS.
When Numa was dead, the Senators again for a while shared the kingly power
How Tu isHostliu amongst themselves. But they soon chose for their king Tullus
was chosenking.  Hostilius, whose father's father had come from Medullia, a city of
the Latins, to Rome, and had fought with Romulus against the Sabines.5' Tullus
loved the poor, and he divided the lands which came to him, as king, amongst
those who had no land. He also bade those who had no houses to settle themselves on the hill Caelius, and there he dwelt himself in the midst of them.
Tullus was a warlike king, and he soon was called to prove his valor; for the
Of his war wi th theo countrymen of the Alban border and of the Roman border plunAbas between tiho Horai drd  n              wsby(1nn-i5
lbat e nd oi  dered one another.53   Now Alba was governed by Caius Cuilius,
and te Curiaii.  who was the dictator; and Cluilius sent to Rome to complain of
4 Livy, I. 19, 20. Ovid, Fasti, III. 276.  4 Cicero de Rep. II. 14.
4 Ovid, Fasti, III. 289, et seqq. Plutarch,  4 Dionysius, II. 74. Plutarch, Numa, 16.
Numa, 15.                              4 Plutarch, Numa, 17.
" Plutarch, Numa, 15. Dionysius, II. 60.  5 Livy, I. 21.'
* Cicero de Repub. II. 14.            5 Plutarch, Numa, 22.
0 Plutarch, Numa, 8. Varro, apud Augus-  2 Dionysius, III. 1.
tin. Civit. Del, IV. 81.,               " Livy, I. 22, et seqq.




ï~~CHAP. I.]

EARLY LEGENDS.

the wrongs done to his people, and Tullus sent to Alba for the same purpose.
So there was a war between the two nations, and Cluilius led his people against
Rome, and lay encamped within five miles of the city, and there he died. Mettius Fufetius was then chosen dictator in his room; and as the Albans still lay
in their camp, Tullus passed them by, and marched into the land of Alba. But
when Mettius came after him, then, instead of giving battle, the two leaders
agreed that a few in either army should fight in behalf of the rest, and that the
event of this combat should decide the quarrel. So three twin brothers were
chosen out of the Roman army, called the Horatii, and three twin brothers out
of the Alban army, called the Curiatii. The combat took place in the sight of
both armies; and after a time all the Curiatii were wounded, and two of the
Horatii were slain. Then the last Horatius pretended to fly, and the Curiatii
each, as they were able, followed after him. But when Horatius saw that they
were a great way off from one another, he turned suddenly and slew the first of
them; and the second in like manner, and then he easily overcame and slew the
third. So the victory remained to the Romans.
Then the Romans went home to Rome in triumph,4 and Horatius went at the
head of the army, bearing his triple spoils. But as they were How Horatis sleow his
drawing near to the Capenian gate, his sister came out to meet       u " t.fssed uponhim
him. Now she had been betrothed in marriage to one of the for theoo deed.
Curiatii, and his cloak, which she had wrought with her own hands, was borne
on the shoulders of her brother; and she knew it, and cried out, and wept for
him whom she had loved. At the sight of her tears Horatius was so wroth that
he drew his sword, and stabbed his sister to the heart; and he said, "So perish
the Roman maiden who shall weep for her country's enemy."    But men said
that it was a dreadful deed, and they dragged him before the two judges who
judged when blood had been shed. For thus said the law,
"The two men shall give judgment on the shedder of blood.
If he shall appeal from their judgment, let the appeal be tried.
If their judgment be confirmed, cover his head.
Hang him with a halter on the accursed tree;
Scourge him either within the sacred limit of the city or without."
So they gave judgment on Horatius, and were going to give him over to be put
to death. But he appealed, and the appeal was tried before all the Romans, and
they would not condemn him because he had conquered for them their enemies,
and because his father spoke for him, and said, that he judged the maiden to
have been lawfully slain. Yet as blood had been shed, which required to be
atoned for, the Romans gave a certain sum of money to offer sacrifices to atone
for the pollution of blood. These sacrifices were duly performed ever afterwards
by the members of the house of the Horatii.
The Albans were now become bound to obey the Romans;5i and Tullus called
upon them to aid in a war against the people of Veii and Fidene. of the feafu rpunish
But in the battle the Alban leader, Mettius Fufetius stood aloof, met of MeottiusFfe.
> tius, and of the destrue.
and gave no true aid to the Romans. So, when the Romans had ti on of Alba.
won the battle, Tullus called the Albans together as if he were going to make a
speech to them; and they came to hear him, as was the custom, without their
arms; and the Roman soldiers gathered round them, and they could neither
fight nor escape. Then Tullus took Mettius and bound him between two chariots, and drove the chariots different ways, and tore him asunder. After this he
sent his people to Alba, and they destroyed the city, and made all the Albans
come and live at Rome; there they had the hill Celius for their dwelling-place,
and became one people with the Romans.
After this, Tullus made war upon the Sabines, and gained a victory over

* Livy, I. 26.

1 Livy, 1. 27, et seqq.




ï~~8

HISTORY OF ROME.

Lcur 1l.

How king Tuius, hayv- them.'"  But now, whether it were that Tullus had neglected the
Sfi   eed~ebyghtng worship of the gods whilst he had been so busy in his wars, the
signs of the wrath of heaven became manifest.   A plague broke out among the
people, and Tullus himself was at last stricken with a lingering disease. Then
he bethought him of good and holy Numa, and how, in his time, the gods had
been so gracious to Rome, and had made known their will by signs whenever
Numa inquired of them. So Tullus also tried to inquire of Jupiter, but the god
was angry, and would not be inquired of, for Tullus did not consult him rightly;
so he sent his lightnings, and Tullus and all his house were burnt to ashes. This
made the Romans know that they wanted a king who would follow the example
of Numa; so they chose his daughter's son, Ancus Marcius, to reign over them
in the room of Tullus.
THE STORY OF ANCUS MARCIUS.
Ancient story does not tell much of Ancus Marcius.    He published the reliOf tohe good reign of gious ceremonies which Numa had commanded, and had them
AncusMarciu.  written out upon whited boards, and hung up round the forum,
that all might know and observe them.7    He had a war with the Latins and
conquered them, and brought the people to Rome, and gave them the hill Aventinus to dwell on.56 He divided the lands of the conquered Latins amongst all
the Romans;59 and he gave up the forests near the sea which he had taken from
the Latins, to be the public property of the Romans. He founded the colony
at Ostia, by the mouth of the Tiber.Â~ He built a fortress on the hill Janiculum,
and joined the hill to the city by a wooden bridge over the river.' He secured
the city in the low grounds between the hills by a great dyke, which was called
the dyke of the Quirites.6' And he built a prison under the hill Saturnius,
towards the forum, because, as the people grew in numbers, offenders against
the laws became more numerous also.6" At last king Ancus died, after a reign
of three-and-twenty years.64
CHAPTER IIL
THE EARLY HISTORY OF ROME.
'Ec r6v clplpiveOv re str pcov rotatra v rt s vop  wv dttrra  ~~~&6Aov, o  sA paprdvot KaL a oJre ws
rotrra b6v4Ka t rep? abrwv, 7Fri r p 6iov KoQpvrcpa,,AAov,rtcrl ov, ore g  )oyoypdbot vviOcrav Fri
Tr rporaywy6repov rid &cpodcct 1 4XiOwrepov, tvra ve f  'vicra scai rd roAAd fbr xpdvov abrwv dtr&rrg
rir r? pvOwicer xvevciuK6ra, efvpijv&at  i ysld~evoc.icr Tv exaveardrov acnsdwv, (t f is raXWrativat1 aroXpWvrws.-THUCYDIDES, I. 21.
I HAVE given the stories of the early kings and founders of Rome, in their
swn proper form; not wishing any one to mistake them for real history, but
thinking them far too famous and too striking to be omitted. But what is the
real history, in the place of which we have so long admired the tales of Romulus
and Numa?    This is a question which cannot be satisfactorily answered: I shall
5 Livy, I. 81.                         o8 Livy, I. 83.
7 Livy, I. 32. Dionysius, III. 86.      62 Livy, I. 33.
SCicero de Repub. II. 18. Livy, I. 33.  63 Livy, I. 833.
' Cicero de Repub. II. 18.             64 Cicero de Repub. II. 18. Livy says, "twen.
' Cicero, ib. Livy, I. 833. Dionys. III. 44. ty-four years." I. 85.




ï~~CHA. II.]

EARLY HISTORY.

content myself here with giving the few points that seem sufficiently established;
referring those who desire to go deeply into the whole question, to that immortal
work of Niebuhr, which has left other writers nothing else to do, except either
to copy or to abridge it.
The first question in the history of every people is, What was their race and
language? the next, What was the earliest form of their society, their social and
political organization? Let us see how far we can answer these questions with
respect to Rome,. The language of the Romans was not called Roman, but Latin. Politically,
Rome and Latium were clearly distinguished, but their language Languoage of the no.
appears to have been the same. This language is different from   an..
the Etruscan, and from the Oscan; the Romans, therefore, are so far marked
out as distinct from the great nations of central Italy, whether Etruscans, Umbrians, Sabines, or Samnites.
On the other hand, the connection of the Latin language with the Greek is
manifest. Many common words, which no nation ever derives Partly connectoed with
from the literature of another, are the same in Greek and Latin; that of reece.
the declensions of the nouns and verbs are, to a great degree, similar. Tt is
probable that the Latins belonged to that great race which, in very early times,
overspread both Greece and Italy, under the various names of Pelasgians, Tyrsenians, and Siculians. It may be believed, that the Hellenians were anciently a
people of this same race, but that some peculiar circumstances gave to them a
distinct and superior character, and raised them so far above their brethren, that
in after ages they disclaimed all connection with them.'
But in the Latin language there is another element besides that which it has in
common with the Greek. This element belongs to the languages Partly with that of the
of central Italy, and may be called Oscan. Further, Niebuhr has Ocans.
remarked, that whilst the terms relating to agriculture and domestic life are
mostly derived from the Greek part of the language, those relating to arms and
war are mostly Oscan.'   It seems, then, not only that the Latins were a mixed
people, partly Pelasgian and partly Oscan; but also that they arose out of a
conquest of the Pelasgians by the Oscans: so that the latter were the ruling
class of the united nation; the former were its subjects.
The Latin language, then, may afford us a clue to the origin of the Latin people, and so far to that of the Romans. But it does not explain Differencesbetween the
Romans and the other
the difference between the Romans and Latins, to which the pecu- Latina.
liar fates of the Roman people owe their origin. We must inquire, then, what
the Romans were, which the other Latins were not; and as language cannot aid
us here, we must have recourse to other assistance, to geography and national

a The Pelasgians, in the opinion of Herodotus, were a barbarian race, and spoke a barbarian language.-I. 57, 58. This merely means
that they did not speak Greek. No one doubts
the connection between Greek and Latin; yet
Plautus, speaking of one of his own comedies,
the story of which was borrowed from Philemon, says,
"Philemo scripsit, Plautus vertit barbar."Trinummus, Prolog. v. 19.
That is, " translated into Latin."  The discovery of.ffinities in languages, when they are not
so close a. to constitute merely a difference of
dialect, belongs only to philologers. Who, till
very lately, suspected that Sanskrit and English
nad any connection with each other?
a He instances, on the one hand, Domus,
Ager, Aratrum, Vinum, Oleum Lac, Bos, Sus,
Ovis; while on the other hand, Duellum, Ensis, Hasta, Sagitta, &e., are quite different from
the corresponding Greek terms. See Niebuhr,
Reom. Gesch. Vol. I. p. 82. Ed. 1827.

The word " scutunm" was, in the first edition
of this work, introduced inadvertently into the
list of Latin military terms, unconnected with
Greek; as it is evidently of the same family
with ucroc: but yet there are so many words
of the same family in the other languages of the
Indo-Germanic stock, that the connection belongs rather to the general resemblance subsisting between all those languages, than to the
closer likeness which may subsist between any
two of them towards one another. And this
more distant relationship exists, I doubt noty
between the Oscan and even the Etruscan languages, and the other branches of the IndoGermanic family; and so far Greek, as well as
Sanskrit, Persian, or German, may be rightly
used as an instrument to enable us to decipher the Etruscan inscriptions. Lanzi's fault
consisted in assuming too close a resemblance
between Greek and Etruscan; in supposing
that they were sisters, rather than distant
cousins.




ï~~10

HISTORY OF ROME.

[OHr. 1

traditions. And thus, at the same time, we shall arrive at an answer to the
second question in Roman history, What was the earliest form of civil society at
Rome?
If we look at the map, we shall see that Rome lies at the farthest extremity
Distinct geographical of Latium, divided from Etruria only by the Tiber, and having the
position of Rome.  Sabines close on the north, between the Tiber and the Anio.  No
other Latin town, so far as we know, was built on the Tiber; some were clustered on and round the Alban hills, others lined the coast of the Mediterranean.
but from all these Rome, by its position, stood aloof.
Tradition reports that as Rome was thus apart from the rest of the Latin
Intermixture of Sabineo cities, and so near a neighbor to the Etruscans and Sabines, so its
and Etruscan institution.and people,  population was in part formed out of one of these nations, and
many of its rites and institutions borrowed from the other. Tradition describes
the very first founders of the city as the shepherds and herdsmen of the banks of
the Tiber, and tells how their numbers were presently swelled by strangers and
outcasts from all the countries round about. It speaks of a threefold division of
the Roman people, in the very earliest age of its history; the tribes of the Ramnenses, Titienses, and Luceres. It distinctly acknowledges the Titienses to have
been Sabines; and in some of its guesses at the origin of the Luceres, it connects
their name with that of the Etruscan Lucumones,4 and thus supposes them to
have been composed of Etruscans.
We know that for all points of detail, and for keeping a correct account of
time, tradition is worthless. It is very possible that all Etruscan rites and usages
came in with the Tarquinii, and were falsely carried back to an earlier period.
But the mixture of the Sabines with the original people of the Palatine Hill cannot be doubted; and the stories of the asylum, and of the violence done to the
Sabine women, seem to show that the first settlers of the Palatine were a mixed
race, in which other blood was largely mingled with that of the Latins. We
may conceive of this earlier people of Mamers, as of the Mamertini of a more
historical period: that they were a band of resolute adventurers from various
parts, practised in arms, and little scrupulous how they used them. Thus the
origin of the highest Roman nobility may have greatly resembled that larger
band of adventurers who followed the standard of William the Norman, and were
the founders of the nobility of England.
The people or citizens of Rome were divided into the three tribes of the RamDivision of the Roman nenses, Titienses, and Luceres,5 to whatever races we may suppose
people into three triNs. them to belong, or at whatever time and under whatever circumstances they may have become united. Each of these tribes was divided into
ten smaller bodies called curie; so that the whole people consisted of thirty
curim: these same divisions were in war represented by the thirty centuries
which made up the legion, just as the three tribes were represented by the
three centuries of horsemen; but that the soldiers of each century were exactly
a hundred, is apparently as unfounded a conclusion, as it would be if we
were to argue in the same way as to the military force of one of our English
hundreds.
I have said that each tribe was divided into ten curie; it would be more corI had forgotten what may be the single  b These in Livy's first book are called merely
exception of Ficana, which, according to Fes- " Centurite equitum," ch. 13. But in the tentltus, stood on the road to Ostia, at the eleventh book, ch. 6, they appear as " Antique tribus."
milestone from Rome: that is, according to Sir Both expressions come to the same thing, for
W. Gell and others at the spot now called the three centuries of horsemen, as appears
Tenuta di Dragoncella. But Westphal places by the story of Tarquinius Priscus and the
Ficana at Traphusa, which is at some distance augur, Attus Navius, were supposed to repfrom the Tiber; so that, according to him, the resent the three tribes, and their number was
statement in the textwould be absolutelycorrect. fixed upon that principle: just as the thirty
4 So Junius Gracchanus, as quoted by Varro, centuries of foot soldiers represented the thirty
de L. L., V. sec. 55; and so also Cicero, de Re. curie.
publics, II. 8.




ï~~OHA. II.]

EARLY HISTORY.

1I

rect to say, that the union of ten curim formed the tribe. For the Tribes made op of cu
state grew out of the junction of certain original elements; and rise; curi e of houses.
these were neither the tribes, nor even the curim, but the gentes or houses which
made up the curiae. The first element of the whole system was the gens or
house, a union of several families who were bound together by the joint performance of certain religious rites. Actually, where a system of houses has existed
within historical memory, the several families who composed a house were not
necessarily related to one another; they were not really cousins more or less
distant, nall descended from a common ancestor. But there is no reason to doubt
that in the original idea of a house, the bond of union between its several families
was truly sameness of blood: such was likely to be the earliest acknowledged
tie; although afterwards, as names are apt to outlive their meanings, an artificial
bond may have succeeded to the natural one; and a house, instead of consisting
of families of real relations, was made up sometimes of families of strangers,
whom it was proposed to bind together by a fictitious tie, in the hope that law,
and custom, and religion, might together rival the force of nature.
Thus the state being made up of families, and every family consisting from the
earliest times of members and dependents, the original inhabitants The houses and their
of Rome belonged all to one of two classes: they were either clioents.
members of a family; and if so, members of a house, of a curia, of a tribe, and
so, lastly, of the state: or they were dependents on a family; and, if so, their
relation went no further than the immediate aggregate of families, that is, the
house: with the curia, with the tribe, and with the state, they had no connection.
These members of families were the original citizens of Rome; these dependents on families were the original clients.
The idea of clientship is that of a wholly private relation; the clients were
something to their respective patrons, but to the state they were  hcommonsors.
nothing. But wherever states composed in this manner, of aTh....ob.
body of houses with their clients, had been long established, there grew up
amidst or close beside them, created in most instances by conquest, a population
of a very distinct kind. Strangers might come to live in the land, or more commonly the inhabitants of a neighboring district might be conquered, and united
with their conquerors as a subject people. Now this population had no connection with the houses separately, but only with a state composed of those houses:
this was wholly a political, not a domestic relation; it united personal and private liberty with political subjection. This inferior population possessed property,
regulated their own municipal as well as domestic affairs, and as free men fought
in the armies of what was now their common country. But, strictly, they were
not its citizens; they could not intermarry with the houses, they could not belong
to the state, for they belonged to no house, and therefore to no curia, and no
tribe; consequently they had no share in the state's government, nor in the state's
property. What the state conquered in war became the property of the state,
and therefore they had no claim to it; with the state demesne, with whatever, in
short, belonged to the state in its aggregate capacity, these, as being its neighbors
merely, and not its members, had no concern.
Such an inferior population, free personally, but subject politically, not slaves,
yet not citizens, were the original Plebs, the commons of Rome.
The mass of the Roman commons were conquered Latins.6 These, besides
receiving grants of a portion of their former lands, to be held by Theirsettlement on the
them as Roman citizens, had also the hill Aventinus assigned as Aventine Hill.
a residence to those of them who removed to Rome. The Aventine was without
the walls, although so near to them: thus the commons were, even in the nature
of their abode, like the Pfalburger of the middle ages,-men not admitted to
live within the city, but enjoying its protection against foreign enemies.

See Niebuhr's chapter "Die Gemeinde und die plebeischen Tribus."




ï~~12

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. 111

It will be understood at once, that whatever is said of the people in these
mb.ers of the houses early times, refers only to the full citizens, that is, to the memwere the only citizens. bers of the houses. The assembly of the people was the assembly
of the curiae; that is, the great council of the members of the houses; while the
senate, consisting of two hundred senators, chosen in equal numbers from the
two higher tribes of the Ramnenses and Titienses, was their smaller or ordinary
council.
The' power of the king was as varied and ill-defined as in the feudal monarchTi eo king's power over ies of the middle ages. Over the commons he was absolute;
the citizens, and over
the comnens.  but over the real people, that is, over the houses, his power was
absolute only in war, ana without the city. Within the walls every citizen was
allowed to appeal from the king, or his judges, to the sentence of his peers; that
is, to the great council of the curiae. The king had his demesne lands,' and in
war would receive his portion of the conquered land, as well as of the spoil of
movables.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE CITY OF ROME, ITS TERRITORY, AND ITS SCENERY.
"       Muros, arcemque procul, ac rara domorum
Tecta vident.
Hoc nemus, hunc, inquit, frondoso vertice collem,
Quis Deus incertum est, habitat Deus."
VIRGIL, En. VIII.
Ir it is hard to carry back our ideas of Rome from its actual state to the
Early state of the city period of its highest splendor, it is yet harder to go back in
o Rome.        fancy to a time still more distant, a time earlier than the beginning of its authentic history, before man's art had completely rescued the very
soil of the future city from the dominion of nature. Here also it is vain to
attempt accuracy in the details, or to be certain that the several features in* our
description all existed at the same period. It is enough if we can image to ourselves some likeness of the original state of Rome, before the undertaking of
those great works which are ascribed to the later kings.
The Pomcerium of the original city on the Palatine, as described by Tacitus,'
Te original Pome.- included not only the hill itself, but some portion of the ground
rium.          immediately below it; it did not, however, reach as far as any of
the other hills. The valley between the Palatine and the Aventine, afterwards
the site of the Circus Maximus, was in the earliest times covered with water;
' Cicero de RepublicA, V. 3.             timius Severus, at the Janus Quadrifons" (this
1 Tacitus, Annal. XII. 24.-It is evident, by must not be confounded with the Arch of Sevthe minuteness of his description, that the con- erus on the Via Sacra, just under the capitol),
secrated limits of the original city had been  " and passed through the valley of the circus,
carefully preserved by tradition; and this is so as to include the Ara Maxima, as far as the
exactly one of the points on which, as we know  Ara Consi, at the foot of the hill. It then proby our own experience with regard to parish ceeded from the Septizonium (just opposite
boundaries, a tradition kept up by yearly cere- the church of S. Gregorio, at the foot of the
monies may safely be trusted. The exact line Palatine), till it came under the baths of Traof this original Pomcerium is thus marked by jan (or Titus), which were the Curim Veteres.
Bunsen in his description of Rome, Vol. I. From thence it passed on to the top of the
p. 187: " It set out from the Forum Boarium, Velia, on which the Arch of Titus now stands
the site of which is fixed by the Arch of Seop- and where Tacitus places the Sacellum Larium.'




ï~~CHAP. III.]

CITY OF ROME, ETC.

13

so also was the greater part of the valley between the Palatine and the Capitoline, the ground afterwards occupied by the Roman forum.
But the city of the Palatine Hill grew in process of time, so as to become a
city of seven hills.  Not the seven famous hills of imperial or The original seven
republican Rome, but seven spots more or less elevated, and all his.
belonging to three only of the later seven hills, that is, to the Palatine, the Caelian,
and the Esquiline. These first seven hills of Rome were known by the names of
Palatium, Yelia, Cermalus, Celius, Fagutal, Oppius, and Cispius.2  Of this town
the Aventine formed a suburb; and the dyke of the Quirites, ascribed in the story
to Ancus Marcius, ran across the valley from the edge of the Aventine to that
of the Caelian Hill near the Porta Capena.3
At this time Rome, though already a city on seven hills, was distinct from the
Sabine city on the Capitoline, Quirinal, and Viminal Hills. The They did not include
all the seven hills of the
two cities, although united under one government, had still a sep- later city.
arate existence; they were not completely blended into one till that second
period in Roman history which we shall soon have to consider, the reigns of the
later kings.
The territory of the original Rome during its first period, the true Ager
Romanus, could be gone round in a single day.4  It did not ex-  e Ager Roman
tend beyond the Tiber at all, nor probably beyond the Anio; and, The Aom.
on the east and south, where it had most room to spread, its limit was between
five and six miles from the city. This Ager Romanus was the exclusive property
of the Roman people, that is, of the houses; it did not include the lands conquered from the Latins, and given back to them again when the Latins became the
plebs or commons of Rome.     According to the augurs,5 the Ager Romanus
was a peculiar district in a religious sense; auspices could be taken within its
bounds, which could be taken nowhere without them.
And now what was Rome, and what was the country around it, which have
both acquired an interest such as can cease only when earth Scene ry of the neighitself shall perish?  The hills of Rome are such as we rarely borhoodofRnome.
see in England, low in height, but with steep and rocky sides.' In early times
the natural wood still remained in patches amidst the buildings, as at this day

It followed nearly the line of the Via Sacra, as
far as the eastern end of the Forum Romanum.
But Tacitus does not mention it as going on to
join the Forum Boarium, because in the earliest times this valley was either a lake or a
swamp, and the Pomcerium could not descend
below the edge of the Palatine Hill. Nibby, in
his work on the walls of Rome, places the
Curim Veteres on the Palatine, and the Sacellum Larium between the Arch of Titus and the
Forum on the Via Nova.    The position of the
Curie Veteres is certainly doubtful.  Niebuhr
himself (Vol. I. p. 283.  Note 735. Eng. Tr.)
thinks that the Pomoerium can scarcely be carried so far as the foot of the Esquiline; and the
authority for identifying the Cur e Veteres
with the site of the Baths of-Titus or Trajan is
not decisive; for it only appears that Biondo,
writing in 1440, calls the. ruins of the Baths
" Curia Vecchia," and says that in old legal
instruments they were commonly so called.
(Beschreibung Romns, Vol. III. part 2, p. 222.)
Now considering the general use of the word
Curia, and that the name is in the singular number, it by no means follows that Biondo's Curia
Vetus must be the Curiae Veteres of Tacitus.
2 For the account of this old Septimontium,
see Festus, under the word "Septimontio."
Festus adds an eighth name, Suburra. Niebuhr
conjectures that the inhabitants of the Pagus
Sucusanus (which was the same district as the
Suburra, and lay under the Esquiline and Vim
inal Hills, near the church of S. Francesco di
Paola, where a miserable sort of square is still
called Piazza Suburra) may have joined in the
festival of the inhabitants of these seven hills
or heights, although they were not themselves
"Montani" (see Varro de L. L., VI. 24. Ed.
Muiller), to show that they belonged to the city
of the Palatine, and not to the Sabine city of
the Capitoline Hill. For the exact situations of
the other seven spots, see Bunsen, description
of Rome, Vol. I. p. 141. Velia was the ascent
on the northeast side of the Palatine, where the
Arch of Titus now stands. Cermalus, or Germalus, was on the northwest side of the Palatine, just above the Velabrum: Fagutal is
thought to have been the ground near the
Porta Esquilina, between the Arch of Gallienus and the Sette Sale. Oppius and Cispius
were also parts of the Esquiline; the former is
marked by the present church of S. Maria Maggiore, and the latter lay between that church
and the baths of Diocletian.
SSee Niebuhr, Vol. I. p. 403. Ed. 2d. and
Bunsen. Beschreibung Roms, Vol. 1. p. 620.
SSee Strabo, Lib. V. p. 253.  Ed. Xyland,
and compare Livy, I. 23. " Fossa Cluilia, ab
Urbe hand plus quinque millia." And II. 39.
Ad Fossas Cluilias V. ab Urbe M. P. castris
positis, populatur inde.Agrum Bomanum.
a See Varro de L. L., V. 33. Ed. Miller.
SThe substance of this description, taken
from my journals and recollections of my visit




ï~~I4

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. IIL

it grows here and there on the green sides of the Monte Testacco.   Across the
Tiber the ground rises to a greater height than that of the Roman hills, but its
summit is a level unbroken line, while the heights, which opposite to Rome
itself rise immediately from the river, under the names of Janiculus and Vaticanus, then sweep away to some distance from it, and returned in their highest
and boldest form at the Monte Mario, just above the Milvian bridge and the
Flaminian road.    Thus to the west the view is immediately bounded; but to
the north and northeast the eye ranges over the low ground of the Campagna
to the nearest line of the Apennines, which closes up, as with a gigantic wall,
all the Sabine, Latin, and Volscian lowlands, while over it are still distinctly to
be seen the high summits of the central Apennines, covered with snow, even at
this day, for more than six months in the year.  South and southwest lies the
wide plain of the Campagna; its level line succeeded by the equally level line
of the sea, which can only be distinguished from it by the brighter light reflected from its waters. Eastward, after ten miles of plain, the view is bounded
by the Alban hills, a cluster of high, bold points rising out of the Campagna,
like Arran from the sea, on the highest of which, at nearly the same height with
the summit of Helvellyn,? stood the Temple of Jupiter Latiaris, the scene of the
common worship of all the people of the Latin name. Immediately under this
highest point lies the crater-like basin of the Alban lake; and on its nearer rim
might be seen the trees of the grove of Ferentia, where the Latins held the
great civil assemblies of their nation. Further to the north, on the edge of the
Alban hills looking towards Rome, was the town and citadel of Tusculum; and
beyond this, a lower summit, crowned with the walls and towers of Labicum,
seems to connect the Alban hills with the line of the Apennines just at the spot
where the citadel of Preneste, high upon the mountain side, marks the opening
into the country of the Hernicans, and into the valleys of the streams that feed
the Liris.
Returning nearer to Rome, the lowland country of the Campagna is broken
Character of the Cam- by long green swelling ridges, the ground rising and falling, as
pagna.        in the heath country of Surrey and Berkshire.    The streams are
dull and sluggish, but the hill sides above them constantly break away into
little rocky cliffs, where on every ledge the wild fig now strikes out its branches,
and tufts of broom are clustering, but which in old times formed the natural
strength of the citadels of the numerous cities of Latium. Except in these narrow dells, the present aspect of the country is all bare and desolate, with no
trees nor any human habitation. But anciently, in the time of the early kings of
Rome, it was full of independent cities, and in its population and the careful cultivation of its little garden-like farms, must have resembled the most flourishing
parts of Lombardy or the Netherlands.
Such was Rome, and such its neighborhood; such also, as far as we can discover, was the earliest form of its society, and such the legends which fill up the
place of its lost history. Even for the second period, on which we are now
going to enter, we have no certain history; but a series of stories as beautiful as
they are unreal, and a few isolated political institutions, which we cannot confidently connect with their causes or their authors. As before, then, I must first
give the stories in their oldest and most genuine form; and then offer, in meagre
contrast, all that can be collected or conjectured of the real history.
to Rome in 1827, was inserted some time since  7 The height of Monte Cavo is variously given
in the History of Rome published by the So- at 2938 or 2965 French feet. See Bunsen,
ciety for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Vol. I. p. 40. Helvellyn is reckoned at 8055
I am obliged to mention this, lest I might be English feet, by Col. Mudge; by Mr. Otley, in
suspected of having borrowed from another his Guide to the Lakes, it is estimated at
work without acknowledgment what was in 8070.
fact furnished to that work by myself.




ï~~CHAPTER IV.
STORIES OF THE LATER KINGS.: Quis novus hie nostris successit sedibus hospes?
Quem sese ore ferens, quam forti pectore et armis?"
VIRGILn, En. IV.
STORY OF L. TARQUINIUS PRISCUS.
IN the days of Ancus Marcius there came to Rome from Tarquinii, a city of
Etruria, a wealthy Etruscan and his wife.1 The father of this stranger was a
Greek,' a citizen of Corinth, who left his native land because it Ofthehirth of Ttarqi-.. ius, and how he came
was oppressed by a tyrant, and found a home at Tarquinii. to ome.
There he married a noble Etruscan lady, and by her he had two sons. But his
son found, that for his father's sake he was still looked upon as a stranger; so
he left Tarquinii, and went with his wife Tanaquil to Rome, for there, it was said,
strangers were held in more honor. Now as he came near to the gates of Rome,
as he was sitting in his chariot with Tanaquil his wife, an eagle came and plucked
the cap from his head, and bore it aloft into the air; and then flew down again
and placed it upon his head, as it had been before. So Tanaquil was glad at
this sight, and she told her husband, for she was skilled in augury, that this was
a sign of the favor of the gods, and she bade him be of good cheer, for that he
would surely rise to greatness.
Now when the stranger came to Rome, they called him Lucius Tarquinius;3
and he was a brave man and wise in council; and his riches won of his favor with king
the good word of the multitude; and he became known to the  u.king. He served the king well in peace and war, so that Ancus held him in
great honor, and when he died he named him by his will to be the guardian of
his children.
But Tarquinius was in great favor with the people, and when he desired to be
king, they resolved to choose him rather than the son of Ancus.   sice
So he began to reign, and he did great works, both in war and Of his deeds in war
peace. He made war on the Latins, and took from them a great spoil.4  Then
he made war on the Sabines, and he conquered them in two battles, and took
from them the town of Collatia, and gave it to Egerius, his brother's son, who
had come with him from Tarquinii. Lastly, there was another war with the
Latins, and Tarquinius went round to their cities, and took them one after
another; for none dared to go out to meet him in open battle.  These were his
acts in war.
He also did great works in peace;' for he made vast drains to carry off the
water from between the Palatine and the Aventine, and from between the Palatine and the Capitoline Hills.  And in the space Of his worksin peace
between the Palatine and the Aventine, after he had drained it, he formed the
Circus, or great race-course, for chariot and for horse races.  Then in the space
between the Palatine and the Capitoline he made a forum or market-place, and
divided out the ground around it for shops or stalls, and made a covered walk
round it. Next he set about building a wall of stone to go round the city; and
o Livy, I. 34.                        3 Cicero, Livy, and Dionysius, in locis eitatis.
SLivy, ibid. Dionys. III. 46-48. Cicero de  4 Livy, I. 85-38.
Xepublied, II. 19.                      5 Livy, I. 38. 35. Dionysius, III. 67, 68.




ï~~16

HISTORY OF ROME.

[OHAP. IV

he laid the foundations of a great temple on the Capitoline Hill, which was to be
the temple of the gods of Rome. He also added a hundred new senators to the
senate, and doubled the number of the horsemen in the centuries of the Ramnenses, Titienses, and Luceres, for he wanted to strengthen his force of horsemen; and when he had done so, his horse gained him great victories over his
enemies.
Now he first had it in his mind to make three new centuries of horsemen, and
of the famous au r, to call them after his own name.  But Attus Navius, who was
Atus  avius.  greatly skilled ins augury, forbade him.  Then the king mocked
at his art, and said, "Come now, thou augur, tell me by thy auguries, whether
the thing which I now have in my mind may be done or not."      And Attus
Navius asked counsel of the gods by augury, and he answered, "It may."
Then the king said, "It was in my mind that thou shouldst cut in two this
whetstone with this razor. Take them, and do it, and fulfil thy augury if thou
canst." But Attus took the razor and the whetstone, and he cut, and cut the
whetstone asunder. So the king obeyed his counsels, and made no new centuries; and in all things afterwards he consulted the gods by augury, and obeyed
their bidding.
Tarquinius reigned long and prospered greatly; and there was a young man
How Trqao  brought up in his household, of whose birth some told wonderful
Sorviunu Tulliustobehi tales, and said that he was' the son of a god; but others said8
heir, and how he was
murdereda by the sns that his mother was a slave, and his father was one of the king's
of Ancos.     clients. But he served the king well, and was in favor with the
people, and the king promised him his daughter in marriage. The young man
was called Servius Tullius. But when the sons of king Ancus saw that Servius
was so loved by king Tarquinius, they resolved to slay the king, lest he should
make this stranger his heir, and so they should lose the crown forever. So they9
set on two shepherds to do the deed, and these went to the king's palace, and
pretended to be quarrelling with each other, and both called on the king to do
them right. The king sent for them to hear their story; and while he was hearing one of them speak, the other struck him on the head with his hatchet, and
then both of them fled. But Tanaquil, the king's wife, pretended that he was
not dead, but only stunned by the blow; and she said that he had appointed
Servius Tullius to rule in his name, till he should be well again. So Servius
went forth in royal state, and judged causes amidst the people, and acted in all
things as if he were king, till after a while it was known that the king was dead,
and Servius was suffered to reign in his place. Then the sons of Ancus saw that
there was no hope left for them; and they fled from Rome, and lived the rest of
their days in a foreign land.
THE STORY OF SERVIUS TULLIUS.
"Long live the Commons' King, King James."
LADY OF THE LAKE.
Servius Tullius was a just and good king;10 he loved the commons, and he dioew king Servius en vided among them the lands which had been conquered in war,
larged the city.  and he made many wise and good laws, to maintain the cause of
the poor, and to stop the oppression of the rich. He made war with the Etruscans," and conquered them. He added the Quirinal and the Viminal Hills2 to
the city, and he brought many new citizens to live on the Esquiline; and there
he lived himself amongst them. He also raised a great mound of earth to join
the Esquiline and the Quirinal and the Viminal Hills together, and to cover them
from the attacks of an enemy.
e Livy, I. 86. Dionysius, III. 70, 71. Ci-  Livy, I. 40.
cero de Divinat. I. 17, Â~ s32.           Dionysius, IV. 18-15. 40.
7 Dionysius, IV. 2. Ovid, Fasti, VI. 627.  21 Livy, I. 42.
e Cicero de Repub. II. 21.            22 Livy, I. 43.




ï~~OHA. IV.]

STORIES OF THE LATER KINGS.

17

He built a temple'1 of Diana on the Aventine, where the Latins, and the Sabines,
and the Romans, should offer their common sacrifices; and the Romans were the
chief in rank amongst all who worshipped at the temple.
He made a new order of things for the whole4 people; for he divided the people of the city into four tribes, and the people of the country into Of his good laws and
six-and-twenty. Then he divided all the people into classes, accord-  idpeople intoclassesa i th
ing to the value of their possessions; and the classes he divided centuries.
into centuries; and the centuries of the several classes furnished themselves with
arms, each according to their rank and order: the centuries of the rich classes
had good and full armor, the poorer centuries had but darts and slings. And
when he had done all these works, he called all the people together in their centuries, and asked if they would have him for their king; and the people answered
that he should be their king. But the nobles hated him, because he was so loved
by the commons: for he had made a law that there should be no king after him,
but two men chosen by the people to govern them year by year. Some even said
that it was in his mind to give up his own kingly power, that so he might see
with his own eyes the fruit of all the good laws that he had made, and might
behold the people wealthy, and free, and happy.
Now king Servius had no son,"5 but he had two daughters; and he gave them
in marriage to the two sons of king Tarquinius. These daughters How he married his
were of very unlike natures, and so were their husbands: for Aruns ~sofhe k~ tth
Tarquinius was of a meek and gentle spirit, but his brother Lucius q"uinis
was proud and full of evil; and the younger Tullia, who was the wife of Aruns,
was more full of evil than his brother Lucius; and the elder Tullia, who was the
wife of Lucius, was as good and gentle as his brother Aruns. So the evil could.
not bear the good, but longed to be joined to the evil that was like itself; and.
Lucius slew his wife secretly, and the younger Tullia slew her husband, and then
they were married to one another, that they might work all the wickedness of their
hearts, according to the will of fate.
Then Lucius plotted with the nobles,'| who hated the good king; and he joined
himself to the sworn brotherhoods of the young nobles, in which How Lucius Tarquin.
they bound themselves to stand by each other in their deeds of on  lotd dhiam to be
violence and oppression. When all was ready, he waited for the murdereod.
season of the harvest, when the commons,"7 who loved the king, were in the fields
getting in their corn. Then he went suddenly to the forum with a band of armed
men, and seated himself on the king's throne before the doors of the senate-house,
where he was wont to judge the people. And they ran to the king, and told him
that Lucius was sitting on his throne. Upon this the old man'8 went in haste to
the forum, and when he saw Lucius he asked him wherefore he had dared to sit on
the king's seat. And Lucius answered that it was his father's throne, and that
he had more right in it than Servius. Then he seized the old man, and threw
him down the steps of the senate-house to the ground; and he went into the senate-house, and called together the senators, as if he were already king. Servius
meanwhile arose, and began to make his way home to his house; but when he
was come near to the Esquiline Hill, some whom Lucius had sent after him overtook him and slew him, and left him in his blood in the middle of the way.
Then the wicked Tullia9 mounted her chariot, and drove into the forum, nothing ashamed to go amidst the multitude of men, and she called How the wicked TulLucius out from the senate-house, and said to him, "Hail to thee, lidrovef~reh ariot
>                     >  over her father's dead
king Tarquinius!" But Lucius bade her go home; and as she was body.
going home, the body of her father was lying in the way. The driver of the chariot stopped short, and showed to Tullia where her father lay in his blood. But
is Livy, I. 45.                       'Â~ Livy, I. 46. Dionysius, IV. 80.
14 Dionysius, IV. 16--20. Livy, I. 48. Cicero  a Dionysius, IV. 88.
de Republica, II. 22.!8 Livy, I. 48.
SLivy, I. 46.                          'o Livy, I. 48.




ï~~18

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CH" IV

she bade him drive on, for the furies of her wickedness were upon her, and the
chariot rolled over the body; and she went to her home with her father's blood
upon the wheels of her chariot. Thus Lucius Tarquinius and the wicked Tullia
reigned in the place of the good king SerVius.
THE STORY OF LUCIUS TARQUINIUS THE TYRANT.
T6pavvoas-v6yad T KVta rdrrTLa, Kat f3araTc 7vvaLcac, Krethv rÂ~ A pTrovU.--HERODOTUS, III. 80.
- Superbos
Tarquini fasces.-HORACE, Carm. 1. 12.
Lucius Tarquinius gained his power wickedly, and no less wickedly did he exOf king Tarquinius ercise it.  He kept a guard2" of armed men about him, and he
and his great power. ruled all things at his own will: many were they whom he spoiled
of their goods, many were they whom he banished, and many also whom he slew.
He despised the senate, and made no new senators in the place of those whom
he slew, or who died in the course of nature, wishing that the senators might become fewer and fewer, till there should be none of them left. And he made friends
of the chief men among the Latins, and gave his daughter in marriage to Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum; and he became very powerful amongst the Latins,
insomuch that when Turnus Herdonius of Aricia had dared to speak against him
in the great assembly of the Latins, Tarquinius accused him of plotting his death,
and procured false witnesses to confirm his charge; so that the Latins judged
him to be guilty, and ordered him to be drowned. After this they were so afraid
of Tarquinius, that they made a league with him, and followed him in his wars
wherever he chose to lead them. The Hernicans2' also joined this league, and so
did Ecetra and Antium, cities of the Volscians.
Then Tarquinius made war upon the rest of the Volscians, and he took" Suessa
Of his buildings, sand Pometia, in the lowlands of the Volscians, and the tithe of the spoil
how he prepared the.rndfor ie tern-  as forty talents of silver. So he set himself to raise mighty works
ie."          in Rome; and he finished what his father had begun; the great
drains to drain the low grounds of the city, and the temple on the Capitoline Hill.
Now the ground on which he was going to build his temple, was taken up with
many holy places of the gods of the Sabines, which had been founded in the days
of king Tatius. But Tarquinius consulted the gods by augury whether he might
not take away these holy places, to make room for his own new temple. The gods
allowed him to take away all the rest, except only the holy places of the god of
Youth,"3 and of Terminus the god of boundaries, which they would not suffer him
to move. But the augurs said that this was a happy omen, for that it showed
how the youth of the city should never pass away, nor its boundaries be moved by
the conquests of an enemy. A human head was also found, as they were digging
the foundations of the temple, and this too was a sign that the Capitoline Hill
should be the head of all the earth. So Tarquinius built a mighty temple, and
consecrated it to Jupiter,4 and to Juno, and to Minerva, the greatest of the gods
of the Etruscans.
At this time there came a strange woman5 to the king, and offered him nine
Of the strange w oman books of the prophecies of the Sibyl for a certain price. When the
who brought the books
of the Sibyl to the king. king refused them, the woman went and burnt three of the books,
and came back and offered the six at the same price which she had asked for the
nine; but they mocked at her, and would not take the books. Then she went away,
and burnt three more, and came back and asked still the same price for the remaining three. At this the king was astonished, and asked of the augurs what he should
2 Livy, I. 49-52.                      23 Dionysius, III. 69  He tells the story of the
2 Dionysius, IV. 49.                 eider Tarquinius,
 Livy, I. 53, 55, 56.                 24 Dionysius, IV 6t
25 Dionysius, t 62. A. dellius, I. 19.




ï~~CHAP. V.]

HISTORY OF THE LATER KINGS, ETC

19

do. They said that he had done wrong in refusing the gift of the gods, and bade
him by all means to buy the books that were left.  So he bought them; and the
woman who sold them was seen no more from that day forwards. Then the books
were put into a chest of stone, and were kept under ground in the Capitol, and
two men26 were appointed to keep them, and were called the two men of the sacred
books.
Now Gabii7 would not submit to Tarquinius, like the other cities of the Latins;
so he made war against it; and the war was long, and Tarquinius How Taquii.won
knew not how to end it.   So his son Sextus Tarquinius pretended ohery of hissonsextua.
that his father hated him, and fled to Gabii: and the people of Gabii believed
him and trusted him, till at last he betrayed them into his father's power. A
treaty was then made with them, and he gave them the right of becoming citizens
of Rome,28 and the Romans had the right of becoming citizens of Gabii, and there
was a firm league between the two people.
Thus Tarquinius was a great and mighty king; but he grievously oppressed the
poor, and he took away all the good laws of king Servius, and let How he oppressed hi.
people, and made them
the rich oppress the poor, as they had done before the days of workikeslav them.
Servius.  He made the people labor at his great works: he made them build his
temple, and dig and construct his drains; he laid such burdens9 on them, that
many slew themselves for very misery; for in the days of Tarquinius the tyrant
it was happier to die than to live.
CHAPTER V.
THE HISTORY OF THE LATER KINGS OF ROME, AND OF THE GREATNESS
OF THE MONARCHY.
'Etr ldya A)Sev o f3aaoelda  xdtio.-THUOYD. II. 97.
'Awroav ouc robs XAovc ore abroi 'Ao9rvatot repi r v 4evipV rvpdviwy &K tf3 sbj's XyV sOvresg
-THuOYD. VI. 54.
THE stories of the two Tarquinii and of Servius Tullius are so much more disappointing than those of the earlier kings, inasmuch as they seem at Theccounts even or
the later kings are not
first to wear a more historical character, and as they really contain historicalsl.
much that is undoubtedly true; but yet, when examined, they are found not to
be history, nor can any one attach what is real in them to any of the real persons by whom it was effected. The great drains or cloacm of Rome exist to this
hour, to vouch for their own reality; yet of the Tarquinii, by whom they are said
to have been made, nothing is certainly known. So also the constitution of the
classes and centuries is as real as Magna Charta or the Bill of Rights; yet its
pretended author is scarcely a more historical personage than King Arthur; we
do not even know his name or race, whether he were Servius Tullius, or Mastarna,' a Latin or an Etruscan; the son of a slave reared in the palace of the
Roman king, or a military adventurer who settled at Rome together with his compamnons in arms, and was received with honor for his valor. Still less can we trust
2 See Livy, III. 10, and VI. 37. Dionysius Etruseanhistories, quoted by the Emperor Claugives "Ten," which was the later number. Gel- dius in his speech upon admitting the Gauls to
[ius gives " Fifteen."                  the Roman franchise. This speech was engraved
2 Livy, I. 53, 54,                     on a brass plate, and was dug up at Lyons about
2 Dionysius, IV. 58.                   two centuries since, and is now preserved in that
2- Cassius Hemhina, quoted by Servius, JEM. city, it was printed by Brotier at the end of
XII. 603.                               his edition of Tacitus, and has been also pubThis is the name by which he was called in the lished in the collections of inscriptions.




ï~~20

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. V

the pretended chronology of the common story. The three last reigns, according
to Livy, occupied a space of 107 years; yet the king, who at the end of this
period is expelled in mature but not in declining age, is the son of the king who
ascends the throne a grown man in the vigor of life at the beginning of it:
Servius marries the daughter of Tarquinius, a short time before he is made king,
yet immediately after his accession he is the father of two grown-up daughters,
whom he marries to the brothers of his own wife: the sons of Ancus Marcius
wait patiently eight-and-thirty years, and then murder Tarquinius to obtain a
throne which they had seen him so long quietly occupy. Still then we are, in
a manner, upon enchanted ground; the unreal and the real are strangely mixed
up together; but although some real elements exist, yet the general picture before us is a mere fantasy: single trees and buildings may be copied from nature,
but their grouping is ideal, and they are placed in the midst of fairy palaces and
fairy beings, whose originals this earth has never witnessed.
The reigns of the later Roman kings contain three points which require to be
Three points connect_ treated historically.  1st, The foreign dominion and greatness of
reignsmust he  te the monarchy.  2d, The change introduced in the religion of
reinmutb trae
historically.  Rome. And 3d, The changes effected in the constitution, especially the famous system of the classes and centuries, usually ascribed to Servius
Tullius.
1st. The dominion and greatness of the monarchy are attested by two suffiI. The greatness of cient witnesses; the great works completed at this period, and still
ratok.o yewa 'j existing; and the famous treaty with Carthage, concluded under
of ervius Tuius.  the first consuls of the Commonwealth, and preserved to us by
Polybius. Under the last kings the city of Rome reached the limits which it
retained through the whole period of the Commonwealth, and the most flourishing times of the empire. What are called the walls of Servius Tullius continued
to be the walls of Rome for nearly eight hundred years, down to the Emperor
Aurelian. They enclosed all those well-known seven hills, whose fame has so
utterly eclipsed the seven hills already described of the smaller and more ancient
city. They followed'2 the outside edge of the Quirinal, Capitoline, Aventine, and
Cwlian Hills, passing directly across the low grounds between the hills, and thus
running parallel to the Tiber between the Capitoline and the Aventine, without
going3 down to the very banks. From the outer or southern side of the Calian
they passed round by the eastern side of the hill to the southern side of the Es'quiline; and here, upon some of the highest ground in Rome, was raised a great
rampart or mound of earth with towers on the top of it, stretching across from
the southern side of the Esquiline to the northern side of the Quirinal. For the
Esquiline and Quirinal Hills, as well as the Viminal, which lies between them, are
not isolated like the four others, but are like so many promontories running out
parallel to one another from one common base,4 and the rampart passing along

See the account of the walls of Servius in
Bunsen's Rome, vol. i., p. 628 et seqq., with the
accompanying map, plate I. in the volume of
plates.
3 It is on this point that the German topographers of Rome differ from Nibby, and from
all the common plans of ancient Rome, which
make the walls go quite down to the river. Their
reasons are, 1st, the description of the departure orthe 300 Fabii, who are made to leave the
city by the Porta Carmentalis; but if the walls
came close down to the river, they must have
re-entered the city again to cross by the Pons
Sublicius: and 2d, Varro's statement, that one
end of the Circus Maximus abutted upon the
city wall; and that the fish-market was just on
the outside of the wall. The first argument
seems to me valid; the second cannot be insisted
on, because the text of Varro in both places is

extremely doubtful. See Varro de L. L., V.
146. 153. Ed. Muiiller.
4 The back of a man's hand when slightly
bent, and held with the fingers open, presents
an exact image of this part of Rome. The fingers represent the Esquiline, Viminal, and
Quirinal, and a line drawn across the hand just
upon the knuckles would show the rampart of
Servius Tullius.  The ground on the outside
of the rampart falls for some way like the surface of the hand down to the wrist, and the
later wall of Aurelian passed over the wrist
instead of over the knuckles, at the bottom of
the slope instead of the top of it.
This comparison was suggested to me merely
by a view of the ground. It is a strong presumption in favor of its exactness, that the same
resemblance struck Brocchi also. Speaking of
the Pincian, Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline




ï~~CHAP. V.]

HISTORY OF THE LATER KINGS, ETC.

21

the highest part of this base formed an artificial boundary, where none was marked
out by nature. The circuit of these walls is estimated at about seven Roman miles.
The line of the mound or rampart may still be distinctly traced, and the course
and extent of the walls can be sufficiently ascertained; but very few remains are
left of the actual building. But the masonry with which the bank of the Tiber
was built up, a work ascribed to the elder Tarquinius, and resembling the works
of the Babylonian kings along the banks of the Euphrates, is still visible. So
also are the massy substructions of the Capitoline temple, which were made in
order to form a level surface for the building to stand on, upon one of the two
summits of the Capitoline Hill. Above all, enough is still to be  eleaaxima.
seen of the great Cloaca or drain, to assure us that the accounts
left us of it are not exaggerated. The foundations of this work were laid about
forty feet under ground, its branches were carried under a great part of the city,
and brought at last into one grand trunk which ran down into the Tiber exactly
to the west of the Palatine Hill. It thus drained the waters of the low grounds
on both sides of the Palatine; of the Velabrum, between the Palatine and the
Aventine; and of the site of the forum between the Palatine and the Capitoline.
The stone employed in the Cloaca is in itself a mark of the great antiquity of the
work; it is5 not the peperino of Gabii and the Alban hills, which was the
common building stone in the time of the Commonwealth; much less the travertino, or limestone of the neighborhood of Tibur, the material used in the great
works of the early emperors; but it is the stone found in Rome itself, a mass of
volcanic materials coarsely cemented together, which afterwards was supplanted
by the finer quality of the peperino. Such a work as the Cloaca proves the
greatness of the power which effected it, as well as the character of its government. It was wrought by taskwork, like the great works of Egypt; and stories
were long current cf the misery and degradation which it brought upon the
people during its progress. But this taskwork for these vast objects shows a
strong and despotic government, which had at its command the whole resources
of the people; and such a government could hardly have existed, unless it had
been based upon some considerable extent of dominion.
What the Cloaca seems to imply, we find conveyed in express terms in the
treaty with Carthage.' As this treaty was concluded in the very rea warage.
first year of the Commonwealth, the state of things to which itTaythC   g.
refers must clearly be that of the latest period of the monarchy. It appears
then that the whole coast" of Latium was at this time subject to the Roman
dominion: Ardea, Antium, Circeii, and Terracina,5 are expressly mentioned as the

Hills, he adds; " Pr darns una sensibile imagine non saprei meglio par. narle che alle dita
di una mano raffigurando la palma ii mentovato
piano a cui tutte si attaccano."
Suolo di Roma, p. 84.
SIt is the "Tufa litoide" of Brocohi; one
of the volcanic formations which is found in
many places in Rome. Brocchi is positive that
this is the stone employed in the Cloaca; and
the masses of it, he adds, taken from the older
walls of Servius, are still to be seen in the present walls not far from the Porta S. Lorenzo.
Suolo di Roma, p. 112.
s Polybius, III. 22. See Niebuhr, vol. I. p.
556, ed. 2d.
7 Niebuhr supposes that the coast eastward
of Terracina was also included at this time
under the name of Latium, because the treaty
speaks of a part of Latium which was not subject to Rome, and because the name of Campania was notyet in existence. But if Polybius
as translated his original correctly, the expression idv rcerv pe rwev vbreOoot would rather seem
to provide for the case of a Latin city's revolting from Rome and becoming independent, and

for an uncertain state of relations between Rome
and Latium, such as may well be supposed to
have followed the expulsion of.Tarquinius; a
state in which the Romans could not know what
Latin cities would remain faithful to the new
government, and what would take part with
the exiled king. On the other hand there is
no authority for extending the limits of Latium
beyond Terracina. The name Campania, it is
true, did not exist so early, but Thucydides
calls Cuma a city of Opicia, not of Latium; and
the Volscians or Auruncans must have already
occupied the country on the Liris, and between
that river and Terracina, although their conquests of Terracina itself as well as of Antium
took place some years later. For the annals
speak of Cora and Pometia revolting to the
Aurunci as early as the year 251, which shows
that they must at that time have been powerful
in the neighborhood of Latium; not to mention
the alleged Volscian conquests of the last king
Tarquinius in the lowlands even of Latium
proper.
A fourth name is added in the MSS. of
Polybius, 'Apvriviv. The editors have gener



ï~~22

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CAP. V

subject allies (~4xooes) of Rome. Of these, Circeii is said in the common story
to have been a Roman colony founded by the last Tarquinius; but we read of
it no less than of the others as independent, and making peace or war with Rome,
during the Commonwealth down to a much later period. Now it is scarcely
conceivable that the Romans could thus have been masters of the whole coast
of Latium, without some corresponding dominion in the interior; and we may
well believe that Rome was at this time the acknowledged head of the Latin
cities, and exercised a power over them more resembling the sovereignty of
Athens over her allies than the modern supremacy of Lacedaemon. On the right
bank of the Tiber the Romans seem to have possessed nothing on the coast; but
the stories of Etruscan conquests which we find in the common accounts of Servius Tullius, are so far justified by better testimony as to make it probable that
in the direction of Veii the Roman dominion9 had reached beyond the Tiber, and
that the territory thus gained from the Etruscans formed a very considerable
part of the whole territory of Rome. It is well known that the number of local
tribes established by the later kings was thirty; whereas a few years after the
beginning of the Commonwealth we find them reduced to twenty. Now, as even
the common account of the war with Porsenna describes the Romans as giving
up to the Veientians a portion of territory formerly conquered from them, it
becomes a very probable conjecture that the Etruscans, soon after the expulsion
of the kings, recovered all the country which the kings had taken from them;
and that this was so considerable in extent, that by its loss the actual territory
of the Roman people was reduced by one third from what it had been before.
It may thus be considered certain that Rome under its last kings was the seat
Probable connection of of a great monarchy, extending over the whole of Latium on the
Rome with Etruria.  one side, and possessing some considerable territory in Etruria
on the other. But how this dominion was gained it is vain to inquire. There
are accounts which represent all the three last kings of Rome, Servius Tullius no
less than the two Tarquins, as of Etruscan origin. Without attempting to make
out their history as individuals, it is probable that the later kings were either by
birth or long intercourse closely connected with Etruria, inasmuch as at some
early period of the Roman history the religion and usages of the Etruscans gave
a deep and lasting coloring to those of Rome; and yet it could not have been at
the very origin of the Roman people, as the Etruscan language has left no traces
of itself in the Latin; whereas if the Romans had been in part of Etruscan origin,
their language, no less than their institutions, would have contained some Etruscan

ally adopted Ursini's correction, Aavpvrivev:
Niebuhr proposes 'Apexcv&v, observing that
Aricia was a much more importat place than
Laurentum, and that Arician mercuant vessels
are mentioned by Dionysius, VII. 6. Yet
Laurentum appears as one of the thirty Latin
states which concluded the treaty with Sp. Cass:s; and Larentum and Laurentum are but
different forms of the same word, as appears in
the name of the wife of Faustulus, who is called
both Larentia and Laurentia.
SMiiller in his very able work on the Etruscans believes rather that the later reigns of the
Roman kings represent a period in which an
Etruscan dynasty from Tarquinii ruled in Rome,
and extended its power far over Latium; so
that it was a dominion of Etruscans over Latins
rather than the contrary.  He considers this
dominion to have been interrupted by the reign
of Ser. Tullius, or Mastarna, an Etruscan chief
from Volsinii, of a party wholly opposed to that
of the rrinces or Lucumones of Tarquinii; and
then to have been restored and exercised more
tyranically than ever, in the time described by
the Roman writers as the reign of Tarquiniu9
the tyrant. Finally, the expulsion of the Tar
quinii he regards as the decline of the power
of the city Tarquinii, and the restoration of the
independence of the Latin states, Rome being
one of this number, which had been hitherto
in subjection to it.-Etrusker, Vol. I. p. 115,
et seqq.
I need not say that this is contrary to the
opinion of Niebuhr, who believes the Tarquinii
to have been Latins, and not Etruscans. But
I should agree with Miller, in regarding the
reigns of the two Tarquinii as a period during
which an Etruscan dynasty ruled in Rome, introducing Etruscan rites, arts, and institutions.
It is wholly another question whether these
princes regarded Rome as their capital or Tarquinii; but the probability is, that they were
kings of Rome, and they may very possibly
have used the help of their Latin subjects even
to make conquests for them in Etruria; just as
the Norman kings of England soon found that
England was more than Normandy, and Hemnry
I. conquered Normandy from his brother,
chiefly by the help of English men and money.
And yet we retain the marks of the Norman
conquest impressed on every part of our institutions down to this very hour.




ï~~CHAP. V.]

HISTORY OF THE LATER KINGS, ETC.

23

elements. The Etruscan influence, however introduced, produced some effects
that were lasting, and others that were only temporary; it affected the religion
of Rome down to the very final extinction of Paganism; and the state of the
Roman magistrates," their lictors, their ivory chairs, and their triumphal robes, are
all said to have been derived from Etruria. A temporary effect of Etruscan influence may perhaps be traced in the overthrow of the free constitution ascribed to
Servius Tullius, in the degradation of the Roman commons under the last king,
and in the endeavors of the patricians to keep them so degraded during all the
first periods of the commonwealth. It is well known that the government in the
cities of Etruria was an exclusive aristocracy, and that the commons, if in so
wretched a condition they may be called by that honorable name, were like the
mass of the people amongst the Sclavonic nations, the mere serfs or slaves of the
nobility. This is a marked distinction between the Etruscans, and the Sabine
and Latin nations of Italy; and, as in the constitution of Servius Tullius a Latin
spirit is discernible, so the tyranny which, whether in the shape of a monarchy
or an aristocracy, suspended that constitution for nearly two centuries, tended
certainly to make Rome resemble the cities of Etruria, and may possibly be
traced originally to that same revolution which expelled the Sabine gods from
the capitol, and changed forever the simple religion of the infancy of Rome.
II. It is a remarkable story" that towards the end of the sixth century of Rome,
the religious books of Numa were accidentally brought to light 1. Changes inreliogio
by the discovery of his tomb under the Janiculum. They were intreoaoduced in the time of
read by A. Petillius, the Prartor Urbanus, and by him ordered tho laterkings.
to be burned in the comitium, because their contents tended to overthrow the
religious rites then observed in Rome. We cannot but connect with this story
what is told of Tarquinius the elder, how he cleared away the holy places of the
Sabine gods from the Capitoline Hill, to make room for his new temple; and the
statement which Augustine quotes from Varro," and which is found also in Plutarch, that during the first hundred and seventy years after the foundation of the
city, the Romans had no images of their gods. All these accounts represent a
change effected in the Roman religion; and the term of 170 years, given by
Varro and Plutarch, fixes this change to the reigns of the later kings.   It is
said" also, that Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the three deities to whom the Capitoline temple was dedicated, were the very powers whose worship, according to
the Etruscan religion, was essential to every city; there could be no city without
three gates duly consecrated, and three temples to these divinities. But here
again we gain a glimpse of something real, but cannot make it out distinctly.
Images of the gods belong rather to the religion of the Greeks than of the
Etruscans; and the Greek mythology, as well as Grecian art, had been familiar
in the southern Etruscan cities from a very early period, whether derived from
the Tyrrhenians, or borrowed directly from Hellas or the Hellenic colonies.
Grecian deities and Greek ceremonies may have been introduced, in part, along
with such as were purely Etruscan. But the science of the Haruspices, and
especially the attention to signs in the sky, to thunder and lightning, seems to
have been conducted according to the Etruscan ritual; perhaps also from the
same source came that belief in the punishment of the wicked after death, to
which Polybius ascribes so strong a moral influence over the minds of the
Romans, even in his own days. And Etruscan rites and ordinances must have been
widely prevalent in the Roman commonwealth, when, as some writers asserted,
the Roman nobility'4 were taught habitually the Etruscan language, and when
" Livy, I. 8. Dionysius, III. 62.     Etruse  discipline aiunt, apud conditores
11 Livy, XL. 29.                      Etruscarum urbium non putatas justas orbes,
12 Varro, Fragments, p. 46. Edit. Dordrecht. in quibus non tres porte essent dedicate et
0lutarch, Numa, e. 8.                  votive, et tot temnipla, Jovis, Junonis, Minervee,
1s Servius, on Virgil, En. I. v. 422. Mira-  14 Livy, IX. 36. Habeo auctores, vulgo turn
tur molem Eneas, &c. "Miratur" non sim- (in the middle of the fifth century of Rome),
plicitur dictum volunt, quoniam prudentes Romanos pueros sicut nunc Gramcis ita Etruscis




ï~~24

IIISTORY OF ROME.

[CHuAP. V.

the senate' provided by a special decree for the perpetual cultivation of the
Etruscan discipline by young men of the highest nobility in Etruria; lest a
science so important to the commonwealth should be corrupted by falling into
the hands of low and mercenary persons.
III. Nothing is more familiar to our ears than the name of the classes and
centuries of Servius Tullius; nothing is more difficult, even after
ill. Changes in the canotition introduced bythe the immortal labor of Niebuhr, than to answer all the questions
ater kings.     which naturally arise connected with this part of the Roman
history. But first of all, in considering the changes effected in the Roman con
stitution during the later period of the monarchy, we find another threefold divi
sion of them  presenting itself.  We have, 1st, the enlargement of the older
constitution, on the same principles, in the addition to the number of senators
and of the centuries of the knights, commonly ascribed to Tarquinius Priscus.
2nd, we have the establishment of a new constitution on different principles, in
the famous classes and centuries of Servius Tullius.    And, 3rd, we have the
overthrow, to speak generally, of this new constitution, and the return to the
older state of things, modified by the great increase of the king's power, in the
revolution effected by Tarquinius Superbus, and in his subsequent despotism.
I. The old constitution was enlarged upon the same principles, in the increase
Te alterations effecte  of the number of senators, and of the centuries of the knights.
by the elder Tarqanius. It has been already shown that the older constitution was an
oligarchy, as far as the clients and commons were concerned; it is no less true,
that it was democratical, as far as regarded the relations of the citizens, or members of the houses, to each other. Both these characters, with a slight modification, were preserved in the changes made by Tarquinius Priscus.   He doubled,"
it is said, the actual number of senators, or rather of patrician houses; which
involved a corresponding increase in the numbers of the senate; but the houses
thus ennobled, to use a modern term, were distinguished from the old ones by the
titles of the lesser houses; and their senators did not vote till after the senators
of the greater houses. According to the same system the king proposed to
double the number of the tribes, that is to divide his newly created houses into
three tribes, to stand beside the three tribes of the old houses, the Ramnenses,
Titienses, and Luceres. Now as the military divisions of the old commonwealths
went along with the civil divisions, the tribes of the commonwealth were the
centuries of the army; and if three new tribes were added, it involved also the
addition of three new centuries of knights or horsemen; and it is in this form
that the proposed change is represented in the common stories. But here it is
said that the interest of the old citizens, taking the shape of a religious objection,
was strong enough to force the king t. modify his project. No new tribes were
created, and consequently no new centuries; ' but the new houses were enrolled
in the three old centuries, so as to form a second division in each, and thus to

hiteris erudiri solitos. Livy rather x 1eves that
a knowledge of the Etruscan language was a
peculiar accomplishment of the Fabius who
went on the enterprise, namely, that of penetrating through the Ciminian Forest, and exploring
Etruria. But the story of this enterprise comes
evidently from the Fabian Family Memoirs, and
its authenticity is most suspicious. Whereas
the statement of the writers whom Livy refers
to, is extremely unsuspicious and probable.
15 See the famous passage of Cicero, de Divinatione, 1. 41. Â~ 92. I agree with Miller that
the " Principum flii" here spoken of arc Etruscans, and not Romans. The term   "Principes"
to express the Lucumones of Etruria is common
enough: I doubt whether it is ever used to
express the Roman patricians, or any class of
men in Rome. "Principes civitatis" is used
to express the most distinguisned individuals

of the commonwealth, not an order; besides,
the passage in the treatise de Legibus seems to
decide the question, II. 9, Â~ 21, "Etrurieque
principes disciplinam docento;" that is, " Let
them instruct the government in their discipline, when any occasion arises for consulting
them."   Valerius Maximus, I. 1, Â~ 2, has I
believe borrowed his story from Cicero, and
misunderstood hi; meaning.
16 Duplicavit illum pristinum Patrum numerum: et antiques Patres " majorum gentium"
appellavit, quos priores sententiam rogabat, a
se adscitos, "minorum."  Cicero, de Republica,
II. 20.
17 Neque tum Tarquinius de equitumn centuriis quicdquam  mutavit: numero alterum
tantum adjecit.... "Posteriores" mode
sub iisdem nominibus qui additi erant appellati
sunt. Livy, I. 836.




ï~~CHAP. V.]

HISTORY OF THE LATER KINGS, ETO.

25

o.mtinue inferior in dignity to the old houses in every relation of the commonwealth. It may be fairly supposed, that these second centuries in the army
were also second tribes and second curia in the civil divisions of the state; and
that the members of the new houses voted after those of the old ones no less in
the great council, the comitia of the curim, than in the smaller councils of the
senate.
The causes which led to this enlargement of the old constitution may be readily
conceived. Whether Tarquinius was a Latin or an Etruscan, all
the stories agree in representing him as a foreigner, who gained Theiobject.
the throne by his wealth and personal reputation. The mere growth of the
Roman state would, in the natural course of things, have multiplied new families,
which had risen to wealth, and were in their former country of noble blood; but
which were excluded from the curiae, that is, from the rights of citizenship at
Rome; the time was come to open to them      the doors of the commonwealth;
and a foreign king, ambitious of adding to the strength of his kingdom, if it were
but for the sake of his own greatness, was not likely to refuse or put off the
opportunity.  Beyond this we are involved in endless disputes and difficulties;
who the Luceres were, and whether Tarquinius had any particular reasons for
raising them to a level with the old tribes, we never can determine. That there
were only four vestal virgins before,18 and that Tarquinius made them six, would
certainly seem to show, that a third part of the state had hitherto been below
the other two-thirds, at least in matters of religion; for it was always acknowledged that the six vestal virgins represented the three tribes of the Ramnenses,
Titienses, and Luceres, two for each tribe. But in the additions made to the
senate and to the centuries, the new citizens must have been more than a third
of the old ones; and indeed here the story supposes that in military matters, at
any rate, the Luceres were already on an equality with the Ramnenses and
Titienses. It is enough, therefore, to say, that there had arisen at Rome so great
a number of distinguished families, of whatever origin, or from whatever causes,
that an extension of the rights of citizenship became natural and almost necessary:
but as these were still only a small part of the whole population, the change went
no further than to admit them into the aristocracy; leaving the character and
privileges of the aristocracy itself, with regard to the mass of the population,
precisely the same as they had been before.
II. But a far greater change was effected soon afterwards; no less than the
establishment of a new constitution, on totally different principles, constitution of Servius
This constitution is no doubt historical, however uncertain may mTullin..
be the accounts which relate to its reputed author.  "The good king Servius
and his just laws," were the objects of the same fond regret amongst the Roman
commons, when suffering under the tyranny of the aristocracy, as the laws of
the good king Edward the Confessor amongst the English after the Norman
conquest; and imagination magnified, perhaps, the merit of the one no less than
of the other: yet the constitution of Servius was a great work, and well deserves
to be examined and explained.
Servius, like Tarquinius, is represented as a foreigner, and is said also, like him,
to have ascended the throne to the exclusion of the sons of the
late king. According to the account which Livy followed, he      object in fo 'ingit.
was acknowledged" by the senate, but not by the people; and this, which
18 See Dionysius, III. 67; and compare Livy, Populum de se ipse consuluit, jussusque regX. 6.                                  nare, legem de imperio suo curiatam tulit." Da
"9 Primus injussu Populi, voluntate Patrum  Republica, II. 21. If indeed there existed a
regnavit. Livy, I. 41. Dionysius, confusing genuine "Lex Regia curiata de imperio" of
as usual the curim and the commons, and sup- the reign of Servius Tullius, then it must belong
posing that the most aristocratical body in the to a later period of his reign, when having esstate must needs be the senate, represents him tablished his power by means of his new conas chosen by the people in their curia, but not stitution, the curim would have had no choice,
confirmed by the senate. Cicero says, "Non but to acknowledge him; and this according to
commisit se Patribus, sed, Tarquinio sepulto, Livy's narrative was the case; for he says that




ï~~26

HISTORY OF ROME.

seemed contradictory so long as the people, populus, and the commons, plebs,
were confounded together, is in itself consistent and probable, when it is understood that the people, who would not acknowledge Servius, were the houses
assembled in their great council of the curiae, and that these were likely to be
far less manageable by the king whom they disliked, than the smaller council of
their representatives assembled in the senate. Now supposing that the king,
whoever he may have been, was unwelcome to what was then the people, that
is, to the only body of men who enjoyed civil rights; it was absolutely necessary
for him, unless he would maintain his power as a mere tyrant, through the help
of a foreign paid guard, to create a new and different people out of the large
mass of inhabitants of Rome who had no political existence, but who were free,
and in many instances wealthy and of noble origin; who therefore, although now
without rights, were in every respect well fitted to receive them.
The principle of an aristocracy is equality within its own body, ascendency
He establishes thirty over all the rest of the community. Opposed to this is the
tribes for the commons. system, which, rejecting these extremes of equality and inequality,
subjects no part of the community to another, but gives a portion of power to
all; not an equal portion, however, but one graduated according to a certain
standard, which standard has generally been property. Accordingly, this system
has both to do away with distinctions, and to create them; to do away, as it has
generally happened, with distinctions of birth, and to create distinctions of property. Thus at Rome, in the first instance, the tribes or divisions of the people
took a different form. The old three tribes of Ramnenses, Titienses, and Luceres,
had been divisions of birth, real or supposed: each was made up of the houses
of the curiae, and no man could belong to the tribe without first belonging to a
curia, and to a house; nor could any stranger become a member of a house
except by the rite of adoption, by which he was made as one of the same race,
and therefore a lawful worshipper of the same gods. Each of these tribes had
its portion of the Ager Romanus, the old territory of Rome. But now as many
others had become Romans in the course of time, without belonging to either of
these three tribes, that is, had come to live under the Roman kings, many in
Rome itself, and had received grants of land from the kings beyond the limits of
the old Ager Romanus, a new division was made including all these; and the
whole city and territorytt of Rome, except the Capitol, were divided into thirty

after the institution of the Comitia Centuriata,
Servius " ausus est ferre ad populum, ' vellent
juberentne se regnare?   tantoque consensu
quanto hand quisquam alius ante, rex est declaratus," I. 46. On the other hand Livy, or
the annalist whom he followed, may have acdecd
the circumstance " voluntate Patrum regnavit,"
because he could not conceive how Servius
could have reigned without the consent of either
senate or curie. But if we adopt the Etruscan
story, and suppose that the king whom the
Romans called Servius Tullius had gained his
power in the first instance as the leader of an
army, which after various adventures in Etruria
had been driven out from thence, and had taken
possession of the Cnlian Hill in Rome, it is very
conceivable that he may have reigned at first
independently of the consent of any part of the
old Roman people, whether Senate or burghers;
and that he may only have asked for that consent after his creation of a new Roman people,
formed perhaps in part out of his own soldiers,
when he would wish to reign according to all
the old legal forms, and to be no longer king
by the choice of a part of his subjects only, but
with the approbation of all.
o20 Every reader who is acquainted with the
subject knows the difficulties which beset the
whole question respecting the original number

of the tribes. On the whole I agree with Niebuhr in preferring the statement of Fabius,
preserved by Dionysius, IV. 15, that the country tribes in the Servian constitution were six
and twenty. But the great difficulty relates to
three points; the Capitol, the Aventine, and the
Ager Romanus. The four city tribes or regions,
for tribe as a local division is synonymous with
region, included neither the Capitol, nor the
Aventine. This we know from that curious
account preserved by Varro of the situation of
the twenty-four Argean chapels in these regions;
a passage which has been considered and corrected both by Miller and Bunsen, and may be
now read in an intelligible form either in Miller's edition of Varro, I. Â~ 45-54; or in Bunsen's
and Platner's Beschreibung Roms, Vol. I. pp.
688-702. But there is this farther perplexity,
that the chapels of the Argei are said by Varro
to have been distributed through twenty-seven
parts of the city; and yet the wooden figures
called Argei, which were every year thrown by
the Pontifices into the Tiber, ale by Varro himself, according to the MSS. said to have been
twenty-four, and by Dionysius thirty. [Antiqq.
Rom. I. 38.] Bunsen adopts this latter number,
and supposes that the three celle of the Capitoline Temple, and the three of the old Capitol on
the Quirinal, were ine"ded in the reckoning,




ï~~COAr. V.]

HISTORY OF THE LATER KINGS, ETC.

27

tribes, four for the city, and twenty-six for the country, containing all the Romans
who were not members of the houses, and classing them according to the local
situation of their property. These thirty tribes corresponded to the thirty curie
of the houses; for the houses were used to assemble, not in a threefold division,
according to their tribes, but divided into thirty, according to their curire: and
the commons were to meet and settle all their own affairs in the assembly of
their tribes, as the houses met and settled theirs in the assembly of their curiae.
Thus then were two bodies existing alongside of each other, analogous to the
house of lords and the house of commons of our own ancient The centuries, a milita
constitution, two estates distinct from and independent of eachdiot incuae both
other, but with no means as yet provided for converting them commons.
into states-general or a parliament. Nor could they have acted together as jointly
legislating for the whole nation; for the curia still regarded themselves as forming exclusively the Roman people, and would not allow the commons, as such,
to claim any part in the highest acts of national sovereignty. There was one
relation, however, in which the people and the commons felt that they belonged
to one common country, in which they were accustomed to act together, and in
which therefore it was practicable to unite them into one great body. This was
when they marched out to war against a foreign enemy; then, arrayed in the
same army, and fighting under the same standard, in the same cause, the houses
and the commons, if not equally citizens of Rome, felt that they were alike
Romans. It has ever been the case, that the distinctions of peace' vanish amidst
the dangers of war; arms and courage, and brotherhood in perils, confer of
necessity power and dignity. Thus we hear of armies" on their return home
from war stopping before they entered the city walls to try, in their military
character, all offences or cases of misconduct which had occurred since they had
taken the field: whereas when once they had entered the walls, civil relations
were resumed, and all trials were conducted according to other forms, and before
other judges. This will explain the peculiar constitution of the comitia of centuries, which was a device for uniting the people and the commons into a national
and sovereign assembly in their capacity of soldiers, without shocking those
prejudices which as yet placed a barrier between them as soon as they returned
to the relations of peace.
But in order to do this with effect, and to secure in this great assembly a

This appears to me unsatisfactory, but I can
offer nothing better. However, the exclusion
of the Capitol from the four city tribes is consistent enough; for the Capitol as the citadel of
Rome, and the seat of the three protecting gods
of the city, was reserved exclusively for the
patricians, or old citizens, and no plebeian might
dwell on it: whereas in the other parts of the
city both orders dwelt promiscuously, till the
famous Icili an law appropriated the Aventine
to the plebeians alone, as the Capitol was appropriated to the patricians. It will be remembered that the Eupatridn     at Athens were
distinguished in the old state of things by the
title of car' di'rv oioeres, and the  orv in the
earliest times would be the Acropolis of a later
age. With regard to the Aventine, it must I
conceive have been included in one of the
country tribes; nor is this to be wondered at,
as the Aventine was still considered properly
as a suburb, although it was included within
the walls. It is not to be supposed that the
whole of the land in the country tribes was the
property of the plebeians; much of it undoubtedly remained as domain land, and as such
became "possessed," in the Roman sense of
the term, by the patricians; as appears in the
account of the state of the Aventine Hill, before
the passing of the Lex-Icilia. But as such pos
session or occupation was not property, the
patricians might possess land in a tribe without
becoming members of it.    But if the Ager
Romanus had formed a tribe, then we might
be led to suppose that the patricians must
have been members of this tribe, and so the
tribes would cease to be an exclusively plebeian body, which Niebuhr, rightly, as I think,
supposes them to have been in the outset. It
is possible, however, that the whole territory,
not excepting even the Ager Romanus, might
locally have been included within the tribes,
inasmuch as no district would be wholly without
plebeian lands; and yet the patricians themselves, as belonging to a different political body,
might have had nothing to do with the tribe
politically: just as the estates of our peers are
geographically included within some county,
and yet no peer may be elected as knight of the
shire, nor even vote at any election.
1 "For he to-day who sheds his blood with
me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition."
HENRY V.
22 This was the case at Argos. rbv Opdlv\o
avaxwpdeavrei v rg Xapdp orep rasi ar orpa.
reatds a rpty ad a  xpivoeeo, pfa ro  sv
Thucyd. V. 60.




ï~~28

HISTORY OF ROME.

[camr. V

Change in the organi a. preponderance to the commons, a change in the military organition of the army.  zation and tactic of the army became indispensable.  In all aristocracies in an early stage of society, the ruling order or class has fought on
horseback3 or in chariots; their subjects or dependents have fought on foot.
The cavalry service under these circumstances has been cultivated, that of the
infantry neglected; the mounted noble has been well armed and carefully trained
in warlike exercises, whilst his followers on foot have been ill armed and ill disciplined, and quite incapable of acting with equal effect. The first great step
then towards raising the importance of the infantry, or, in other words, of the
commons of the state, was to train them to resist cavalry, to form them into
thick masses instead of a thin extended line, to arm them with the pike instead
of the sword or the javelin. Thus the phalanx order of battle was one of the
earliest improvements in the art of war; and at the time we are now speaking of,
this order was in general use in Greece, and must have been well known, if only
through the Greek colonies, in Italy also.24 Its introduction into the Roman
army would be sure to make the infantry from henceforward more important
than the cavalry; that is, it would enable the commons to assert a greater right
in Rome than would be claimed by the houses, inasmuch as they could render
better service. Again, the phalanx order of battle furnished a ready means for
giving importance to a great number of the less wealthy commons, who could
not supply themselves with complete armor; while, on the other hand, it suggested a natural distinction between them and their richer fellows, and thus
established property as the standard of political power, the only one which can
in the outset compete effectually with the more aristocratical standard of birth;
although in a later stage of society it becomes itself aristocratical, unless it be
duly tempered by the mixture of a third standard, education and intelligence. In
a deep phalanx, the foremost ranks needed to be completely armed, but those in
the rear could neither reach or be reached by the enemy, and only served to add
weight to the charge of the whole body. These points being remembered, we
may now proceed to the details of the great comitia of Servius.
He found the houses, that is to say, the nobility or citizens of Rome, for I canDetails of the institution not too often remind the reader that in this early period of Roman
of the entrag  e. The a history these three terms were synonymous, divided into three cencenturies of knightsa  turies of knights or horsemen, each of which, in consequence of
the accession to its numbers made by the last king, contained within itself two
centuries, a first and a second. The old citizens, anxious in all things to keep up
the old form of the state, had then prevented what were really six centuries from
being acknowledged as such in name; but the present change extended to the
name as well as the reality; and the three double centuries of the Ramnenses,
Titienses, and Luceres, became now5 the six votes (sex suffragia) of the new
united assembly. To these, which contained all the members of the houses,
there were now added twelve new centuries25 of knights, formed, as usual in the
Greek states, from the richest members of the community, continuing, like the
centuries below them, to belong to the thirty tribes of the commons.
It remained to organize the foot soldiers of the state. Accordingly, all those
The ceturies of infantry. of the commons whose property was sufficient to qualify them
The  ie clase.a.  for serving even in the hindmost ranks of the phalanx, were
23 Homer's battles are a sufficient example of rotsa pxatota obx  rinpxov, Str' v  i rosrsitie
this: it explains also the name of trar applied to evat rV taxOiv.
the three hundred Spartans of the king's guard,  24 Again, if Ser. Tullius was an Etruscan, he
and retained long after the reality had ceased, would have introduced the tactic of his own
and the guard no longer consisted of cavalry country, in arming the Roman infantry with
or chariots, but of infantry. See Thucydides, the long spear and shield: for these were the
V. 72. See also Aristotle, Politics, IV. 13., weapons used by the Etruscans as well as by
p if apxs (,rotrsta lyvro) -e rwv trrhov. rv the Greeks. See Diodorus Siculus, XXIII. 1,
y p'  ieXv inal rnvv rfepoxy Tv roL Lrrutv b rAe- Fragim. Mai.
Mos dexv  ivAv pt v yap avvrdfa fsw X parov -r bm<-  23 Festus in Sex Suffragia.
ruixd, at'     rspi rv roto6rov irnplat Kcal rd fst 1v  26 Livy, I. 43. Cicero de Rep; bl. II. 22.




ï~~CHAP. V.]

HISTORY OF THE LATER KINGS, ETC.

29

divided"7 into four classes. Of these, the first class contained all whose property
amounted to or exceeded one hundred thousand pounds weight of copper. The
soldiers of this class were required to provide themselves with the complete arms
used in the front ranks of the phalanx; the greaves, the coat of mail, the helmet
and the round shield, all of brass; the sword, and the peculiar weapon of the
heavy-armed infantry, the long pike. And as these were to bear the brunt of
every battle, and were the flower of the state's soldiers, so their weight in the
great military assembly was to be in proportion; they formed eighty centuries;
forty of younger men, between the ages of fifteen and forty-five years8 complete;
and forty of elders, between forty-five and sixty: the first to serve in the field,
the second to defend the city. The second class contained those whose property
fell short of one hundred thousand pounds of copper, and exceeded or amounted
to seventy-five thousand. They formed twenty centuries, ten of younger men,
and ten of elders; and they were allowed to dispense with the coat of mail, and
to bear the large oblong wooden shield called scutum, instead of the round brazen
shield, clipeus, of the first ranks of the phalanx. The third class contained a
like number of centuries, equally divided into those of the younger men and
elders; its qualification was property between fifty thousand pounds of copper,
and seventy-five thousand; and the soldiers of this class were allowed to lay
aside the greaves as' well as the coat of mail. The fourth class, again, contained
twenty centuries; the lowest point of its qualification was twenty-five thousand
pounds of copper, and its soldiers were required to provide no defensive armor,
but to go to battle merely with the pike and a javelin. These four classes composed the phalanx; but a fifth class, divided into thirty centuries, and consisting
of those whose property was between twenty-five thousand pounds of copper,
and twelve thousand five hundred, formed the regular light-armed infantry of
the army, and were required to provide themselves with darts and slings.
The poorest citizens,29 whose property fell short of twelve thousand five hundred
pounds, were considered, in a manner, as supernumeraries in this The Accensi and Velati,
division. Those who had more than one thousand five hundred and the Proletarii.
pounds of copper, were still reckoned amongst the tax-payers, Assidui, and were
formed into two centuries, called the Accensi and Velati. They followed the army,
but without bearing arms, being only required to step into the places of those who
fell; and, in the mean time, acting as orderlies to the centurions and decurions.
Below these came one century of the Proletarii, whose property was between
one thousand five hundred pounds and three hundred and seventy-five. These
paid no taxes, and in ordinary times had no military duty; but on great emergencies arms were furnished them by the government, and they were called out
as an extraordinary levy. One century more included all whose property was
less than three hundred and seventy-five pounds, and who were called Capite
Censi; and from these last no military service was at any time required, as we
are told, till a late period of the republic.
Three centuries of a different character from all the rest remain to be described,
centuries defined, not by the amount of their property, but by The Fabri, cornicines,
the nature of their occupation; those of carpenters and smiths, and Tubicines.
Fabrorum; of htorn-blowers, Cornicines; and of trumpeters, Tubicines, or, as
Cicero calls them, Liticines. The first of these was attached to the centuries of
the first class, the other two to the fourth.  The nature of their callings so connected them with the service of the army, that this peculiar distinction was
granted to them.
The position held in the comitia by the patricians' clients is involved in great
' See, for all this account of the census, Livy, buhr's quotations, if, indeed, any could suspect
I. 43, and Dionysius, IV. 16-19.        it; and having been fully satisfied with his
2 See Niebuhr, vol. I. p. 459. Ed. 2.  results, I have thought it best to refer to his
29 See Niebuhr, p. 465, and the authorities work, rather than to the original writers, as the.ere quoted. I have gone over the ground combined view of the several facts belongs to
myself, and have verified the accuracy of Nie- him, and not to them.




ï~~30

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. V

obscurity. We know that they had votes, and probably they must have been
enrolled in the classes according to the amount of their property, without reference
to its nature: at the same time, Niebuhr thinks that they did not serve in the
regular infantry along with the plebeians.  It would seem from the story of the
three hundred Fabii, and from the adventures related of Caius Marcius,3Â~ that
the clients followed their lords to the field at their bidding, and formed a sort
of feudal force quite distinct from the national army of the commons, like the
retainers of the nobles in the middle ages, as distinguished from the free burghers
of the cities.
Such is the account transmitted to us of the constitution of the comitia of
centuries. As their whole organization was military, so they were accustomed
to meet31 without the city, in the Field of Mars; they were called together, not
by lictors, like the comitia of the curire, but by the blast of the horn; and their
very name was, "the Army of the City," "Exercitus Urbanus.""2
It is quite plain that this constitution tended to give the chief power in the state
The ctitutin..to the body of the commons, and especially to the richer class
on destroyed, and among them, who fought in the first ranks of the phalanx. For.ver entirelyrestored, wherever there is a well-armed and well-disciplined infantry, it
constitutes the main force of an army; and it is a true observation of Aristotle,"
that in the ancient commonwealth the chief power was apt to be.possessed by that
class of the people whose military services were most important; thus, when the
navy of Athens became its great support and strength, the government became
democratical; because the ships were chiefly manned by citizens of the poorer
classes. But we know that for a very long period after the time of Servius, the
commons at Rome, far from being the dominant part of the nation, were excluded
from the highest offices in the state, and were grievously oppressed, both individually and as a body. Nay, further, whenever we find any details given of the
proceedings of the comitia, or of the construction of the army, we perceive a state
of things very different from that prescribed by the constitution of Servius.
Hence have arisen the difficulties connected with it; for, as it was never fully
carried into effect, but overthrown within a very few years after its formation,
and only gradually and in part restored; as thus the constitution with which
the oldest annalists, and even the law-books which they copied, were familiar,
was not the original constitution of Servius, but one bearing its name, while in
reality it greatly differed from it; there is a constant confusion between the two,
and what is ascribed to the one may often be true only when understood of the
other.
Other good and popular institutions were ascribed to the reign of Servius.
As he had made the commons an order in the state, so he gave
Servius appoints jo,u.o                        bd           alcii
for the common 0 of them judges out of their own body to try all civil34 causes;
their own order.  whereas before they had no jurisdiction, but referred all their
suits either to the king or to the houses. These judges were, as Niebuhr thinks,
the centumviri, the hundred men, of a later period, elected three from each
tribe, so that in the time of Servius their number would probably have been
ninety.
To give a further organization to the commons, he is said also to have instituted
Toe feastivols of the Pa- the festivals called Paganalia and Compitalia. In the tribes in the
ganagla and Compitalia. country, many strongholds on high ground, pagi,35 had been fixed
3o Dionysius, VII. 19, 20.             clans as formerly, rpi ra,  fl3aa IV. 43. The
a0 A. Gellius, XV. 27, quoted from Lalius Ephori, in like manner, at Sparta were judges in
Felix.                                   rds rwv avppoAaiwv ircag. Aristot. Polit. III 1.
5 Varro, de L. L., VI. 93.             Ed. Bekker.
" Politics, V. 4. VI. 7 Ed. Bekker.      3 It does not appear from Dionysius' account
30 Dionysius calls these causes halwrsed, as whether there were one or more pagi in every
opposed to ra ds r oeKoLr Â~ipora, IV. 25; but tribe. It would be most natural to suppose
afterwards he expresses himself more freely, that there was but one, as otherwise the numwhen he calls these laws, laws which hindered hers of the people would have been taken
the comrn ons from being wronged by the patri- according to a different division than that into




ï~~CHAP. V.]

HISTORY OF THE LATER KINGS, ETO.

31

upon as a general refuge for the inhabitants and their cattle in case of invasion.
Here they all met once a year, to keep festival, and every man, woman, and child
paid on these occasions a certain sum, which, being collected by the priests, gave
the amount of the whole population. And for the same purpose,6 every one living
in the city paid a certain sum at the temple of Juno Lucina for every birth in
his family, another sum at the temple of Venus Libitina for every death, and a
third at the temple of Youth for every son who came to the age of military
service. The Compitalia37 in the city answered to the Paganalia in the country,
and were a yearly festival in honor of the Lares or guardian spirits, celebrated at
all the compita, or places where several streets met.
Other laws and measures are ascribed to Servius, which seem to be the fond
invention of a later period, when the commons, suffering under a Other laws ascribed to
cruel and unjust system, and wishing its overthrow, gladly be- Sarvius.
lieved that the deliverance which they longed for had been once given them
by their good king, and that they were only reclaiming old rights, not demanding
new ones. Servius, it is said,38 drove out the patricians from their unjust occupation of the public land, and ordered that the property only, and not the person,
of a debtor should be liable for the payment of his debt.
Further, to complete the notion of a patriot king, it was said that he had drawn
out a scheme of popular government, by which two magistrates, chosen every year,
were to exercise the supreme power, and that he himself proposed to lay down
his kingly rule to make way for them. It can hardly be doubted that these two
magistrates were intended to be chosen the one from the houses and the other
from the commons, to be the representatives of their respective orders.
III. But the following tyranny swept away the institutions of Servius, and much
more prevented the growth of that society, for which alone his in. The constitution of
Servius succeeded by
stitutions were fitted.  No man can tell how much of the story of a tyracy.
the murder of the old king and of the impiety of the wicked Tullia is historical;
but it is certain that the houses, or rather a strong faction among them, supported
Tarquinius in his usurpation: nor can we doubt the statement that the aristocratical brotherhoods or societies served him more zealously than the legal assembly
of the curiae; because these societies are ever to be met with in the history of
the ancient commonwealths, as pledged to one another for the interests of their
order, and ready to support those interests by any crime. Like Sylla, in after
times, he crushed the liberties of the commons, doing away with the laws39 of

tribes; which does not seem probable.   The
pagus was in a manner the town of the tribe,
or rather would have become so, had this state
of things continued. Dionysius connects pagus
with the Greek,rdyon, which is likely enough;
although afterwards the word merely signified
a district or canton, whether in a plain country,
or in ahilly. Nor do Varro's words (L. L. V. p.
49. Edit. Dordr. 1619), "Feriae non populi sed
montanorum modo, ut Paganalibus, qui sunt alicujus pagi," imply that the Pagani were montani: for the whole passage,when rightly stopped,
and as Miller has now printed it, runs thus:"Dies Septimontium, nominatus ab his septem
montibus in queis sita urbs est, ferim non populi
sed montanorum modo: ut Paganalibus, qui
sunt aliuenjus pagi."  " Montani" refers to the
inhabitants of the seven hills (the seven hills
of old Rome, existing before the time of Servius); and Varro says that the Septimontium
was a festival kept not by the whole people, but
by the inhabitants of those hills only; just as,
at the Paganalia, the inhabitants of the pagus
alone shared in the festival. See Festus, in
Septimontio, " Septimontio ut alt Antistius
Laoeo, hisce montibus Feriae," &c.
" Dionysius, IV. 15.

s Dionysins, IV. 14. What Dionysius here
calls the Compitalia, and which he says were
kept a few days after the Saturnalia, are not
marked in the calendars, because, though the
seasons at which they fell was fixed, the day
was not so: they were amongst the "conceptive Feriae," or festivals announced every year
by the magistrates, of which the precise day in
some instances varied. (Macrobius, Saturnal.
I. 16.) They must not be confounded with the
festival of the Lares Prnstites on the first of
May. The Lares were the spirits of the dead,
aailovec, who watched over their living posterity; thence Dionysius calls them iipwes, because the heroes were deified men, like Ilesiod's
aibovsec, whom he calls Aaees vrrv &dOpcr.
The name of Lares is Etruscan, Lar is prince or
mighty one. Yet as spirits, and belonging to
the invisible world, they were called also the
children of Mania (Macrobius, Saturnal. I. 7),
a horrible goddess, whose name was given to
frightful masks, the terror of children. Mania
is clearly connected with the Dii Manes, who
were also the spirits of a man's departed ancestors.
 Dionysius, IV. 9.
SDionysius. IV. 48.




ï~~32

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. VL

Servius, and, as we are told, destroying the tables on which they were written;
abolishing the whole system of the census, and consequently the arrangement of
the classes, and with them the organization of the phalanx; and forbidding even
the religious meetings of the Paganalia and Compitalia, in order to undo all that
had been done to give the commons strength and union. Further, it is expressly
said,4Â~ that he formed his military force out of a small portion of the people, and
employed the great bulk of them in servile works, in the building of the Circus
and the Capitoline Temple, and the completion of the great drain or cloaca; so
that in his wars his army consisted of his allies, the Latins and Hernicans, in a
much greater proportion than of Romans. His enmity to the commons was all in
the spirit of Sylla; and the members of the aristocratical societies, who were his
ready tools in' every act of confiscation, or legal murder, or mere assassination,
were faithfully represented by the agents of Sylla's proscription, by L. Catilina
and his patrician associates. But in what followed, Tarquinius showed himself,
like Critias or Appius Claudius, a mere vulgar tyrant, who preferred himself to
his order, when the two came into competition, and far inferior to Sylla, the most
sincere of aristocrats, who, having secured the ascendancy of his order, was content to resign his own personal power, who was followed therefore by the noblest
as well as. by the vilest of his countrymen, by Pompeius and Catulus no less than
by Catilina. Thus Tarquinius became hated by all that was good and noble
amongst the houses, as well as by the commons; and both orders cordially joined
to effect his overthrow. But the evil of his tyranny survived him; it was not so
easy to restore what he had destroyed as to expel him and his family: the commons no longer stood beside the patricians as an equal order, free, wealthy, well
armed, and well organized; they were now poor, ill armed, and with no bonds of
union; they therefore naturally sunk beneath the power of the nobility, and the
revolution which drove out the Tarquins established at Rome not a free commonwealth, but an exclusive and tyrannical aristocracy.
CHAPTER VI,
MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES OF THE STATE OF THE ROMANS UNDER THEIR KINGS.
"Ad nos vix tenuis fame perlabitur aura."
VmnarIL, En. VII.
THE last chapter was long, yet the view which can be derived from it is imperfect. Questions must suggest themselves, as I said before, to which it contains
no answers. Yet it seemed better to draw the attention first to one main point,
and to state that point as fully as possible, reserving to another place much that
was needed to complete the picture. For instance, the account of the classes of
Servius leads naturally to questions as to the wealth of the Romans, its sources,
its distribution, and its amount: the division of the people into centuries excites
a curiosity as to their numbers: the mention of the change of the Roman worship,
and the introduction of Etruscan rites, dispose us to ask, how these rites affected
the moral character of the people; what that character was, and from whence
derived. Again, when we read of the great works of the later kings, we think
what advance or what style of the arts was displayed in them; and the laws of
king Servius written on tables, with the poetical and uncertain nature of the story
of his reign, make us consider what was the state of the human mind, and what
4 Dionysius, IV. 44.




ï~~CHAP. VI.]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES, ETC.

33

use had as yet been made of the great invention of letters. It is to these points,
so far as I am able, that the following chapter will be devoted.
I. Niebuhr has almost exhausted the subject of the Roman copper money. He
has' shown its originally low value, owing to the great abundance Of the wealth of the
of the metal; that as it afterwards became scarce, a reduction in R   Thinundr op>                         >               ter kin; s.  Their copthe weight of the coin followed naturally, not as a fraudulent de- per money.
preciation of it, but because a small portion of it was now as valuable as a large
mass had been before. The plenty of copper in early times is owing to this, that
where it is found, it exists often in immense quantities, and even in large masses
of pure nietal on the surface of the soil. Thus the Copper Indians of North
America found it in such abundance on their hills that they used it for all domestic purposes; but the supply thus easily obtained soon became exhausted: and as
the Indians have no knowledge of mining, the metal is now comparatively scarce.
The small value of copper at Rome is shown not only by the size of the coins, the
as having been at first a full pound in weight, but also by the price of the warhorse, according to the regulation of Servius Tullius, namely, ten thousand' pounds
of copper. This statement, connected as it is with the other details of the census,
seems original and authentic; nor considering the great abundance of cattle, and
other circumstances, is it inconsistent with the account in Plutarch's life of Publicola, that an ox, in the beginning of the commonwealth, was worth one hundred
oboli, and a sheep worth ten; nor with the provisions of the Aternian law, which
fixed the price of the one at one hundred ases and the other at ten.
The sources of wealth amongst the Romans, under their later kings, were agriculture, and also, in a large proportion, foreign commerce. Agri- Their principal sourculture, indeed, strictly speaking, could scarcely be called a source Ces ofwat.
of wealth; for the portions of land assigned to each man, even if from the beginning they were as much as seven jugera, were not large enough to allow of the
growth of much superfluous produce. The ager publicus, or undivided public
land, was indeed of considerable extent, and this, as being enjoyed exclusively by
the patricians, might have been a source of great profit. But in the earliest times
it seems probable that the greatest part of this land was kept as pasture; and only
the small portions of two jugera, allotted by the houses to their clients, to be held
during pleasure, were appropriated to tillage. The low prices of sheep and oxen
show that cattle must have been abundant; the earliest revenue, according to
Pliny, was derived from pasture; that is, the patricians paid so much to the state

SVol. I. p. 474, et seq. Ed. 2. See also Mdiller, Etrusker, I. 4. Â~ 13.
2 Ad equos emendos dena millia uris ex publico data." Livy, I. 43. It has been doubted
whether this sum be meant as the price of one
horse or two: Niebuhr supposes that it includes
the purchase of a slave to act as groom, and also
of a horse for him. And this seems confirmed
in some degree by Festus, who says that the Romans used two horses in battle, to have a fresh
one to nount when the first one was tired; and
that the money given to furnish these two horses was called Pararium. Festus in " Pararium,"
and "Paribus equis."  Yet I find in Von Ranmer's account of the prices of Things in the middle ages (Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, V. p.
436, et seqq.), that in the year 1097, at the siege
of Antioch, an ox was sold cheap at five shillings; and in 1225, at Verona, the average price
of a horse was twenty-five pounds. This is
reckoning by the Italian lira or pound, divided
into twenty solidi or shillings; but the value
of both the pound and the shilling differed so
much in different times and places, that the
comparison cannot be depended on without fiurther examination. We should like to know from
what Greek writer Plutarch borrowed his statement of the price of an ox in the time of Pub3

licola. Was it from Timnus, from whom Pliny
learnt that Servius Tullius was the first person
who stamped money at Rome? And if so, at
what did he reckon the as? Polybius reckoned
the light as of his time at half an obolus, wb.ch
would make the denarius, as it was already
equivalent to sixteen ases, equal to eight obolh,
or a drachm, and one-third. (II. 15.) By a comparison with the Aternian law, one would suppose that the obolus was meant to be equivalent
to the as; if so, copper had so risen in value,
that although the as of half an ounce weight was
equal to half an obolus, the as, when it weighed
twenty-four times as much, that is, a full pound,
had only been worth twice as much; a diminution in value of twelve hundred per cent.
3 " Din," says Pliny, XVIII. 3. "pascua solum
vectigal fuerant." Varro says, "Quos agros non
colebant propter silvas, aut id genus ubi pecus
posset pasci, et possideb ant, ab usu suo Saltus
nominarunt."  De L. L. V. Â~ 36. "Possidere,"
as Niebuhr's readers well know, is the proper
term for the occupation of the public land. And
the Scholiast on Thucydides, I.139, rightly considers yei dop erov to be equivalent to ou arruepojivn,, because undivided land was commonly left
in pasture.




ï~~34

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. VI

for their enjoyment of the ager publicus, which was left unenclosed as pasture
ground; and all accounts speak of the great quantities of cattle reared in Italy
from time immemorial. Cattle then may have been a source of wealth; but commerce must have been so in a still greater degree. The early foundation of Ostia
at the mouth of the Tiber, ascribed to Ancus Marcius, could have had no object,
unless the Romans had been engaged in foreign trade; and the treaty with Carthage, already alluded to, proves the same thing directly and undeniably. In this
treaty the Romans are allowed to trade with Sardinia, with Sicily, and with Africa westward of the Fair Headland, that is, with Carthage itself, and all the coast
westward to the Pillars of Hercules; and it is much more according to the common course of things that this treaty should have been made to regulate a trade
already in activity, than to call it for the first time into existence. By this commerce great fortunes were sure to be made, because there were as yet so many
new markets4 open to the enterprising trader, and none, perhaps, where the demand for his goods had been so steadily and abundantly supplied as to destroy the
profit of his traffic. But although much wealth must thus have been brought into
Rome, it is another question how widely it was distributed. Was foreign trade
open to every Roman, or was it confined to the patricians and their clients, and in
a still larger proportion to the king? The king had large domains of his own,'
partly arable, partly pasture, and partly planted with vines and olives; hence he
was in a condition to traffic with foreign countries, and much of the Roman commerce was, probably, carried on by the government for its own direct benefit, as
was the case in Judwa, in the reign of Solomon. The patricians also, we may be
sure, exported, like the Russian nobility, the skins and wool of the numerous herds
and flocks which they fed upon their public land, and were the owners of trading
ships, as it was not till three centuries afterwards that a law6 was passed with the
avowed object of restraining senators, a term then become equivalent with patricians, from possessing ships of a large burden. Nor can we suppose that the new
plebeian centuries of knights, who had been chosen from the richest of the commons, were excluded from those commercial dealings which their order in later
times almost monopolized. All these classes, "then, might, and probably did, become wealthy; but, it may be doubted whether the plebeian landholders had the
same opportunities open to them. Agriculture was to them the business of their
lives; if their estates were ill cultivated, they were liable to be degraded from
their order; nor had they the capital which could enable them to enter with
advantage upon foreign trade. It is possible, indeed, that foreign trade may have
been one of the privileges of the higher classes, as it is at this day in Russia;7 but
surely Niebuhr is not warranted by the passage which he quotes from Dionysius,
in asserting that the plebeians were excluded from commerce as well as from
handicraft occupations; retail trade,8 which is all that Dionysius speaks of, was

4 Thus Herodotus speaks of the enormous profits made by a Samian ship which accidentally
found its way to Tartessus; observing, r d 6trf6ptov rore v dscpaoro rov rav xp6vov. IV. 152.
Cicero de Republica, V. 2. These were the
Greek rqOP,, which the kings always had assigned to them. See HIerodot. IV. 161.
SBy Caius Flaminius, a short time before the
second Punic war. See Livy, XXI. 63.
S Of the " Merchants of the three Guilds,"
only those of the first guild, possessing a capital
of at least fifty thousand francs (something
mo a:han two thousand pounds), are allowed
to own merchant ships, and to carry on foreign
trade. Those of the second guild may only trade
within the Russian empire; those of the third
guild may only carry on retail trades.   See
Schnitzler, Statistique de l'Empire de Russie,
p. 117,
Oirs KdrXov oirs xc~porixvv fliov i ctv, IX.
25. It is true that Dionysius had just before used

the term ipr6pwv, but I think that it is fi~rdp v
which he uses in an improper sense, and not
scdAov. Cicero distinguishes between them in
a well-known passage. " Sordidi etiam putandi
qui mercantur a mercatoribus quod statim vendant; (rd',nXot) opificesque omnes (xeplrxvat)
in sordid arte versantur. *  *  *  Mereatura
antem, si tenuis est, sordida putanda est: sin
magna et copiosa multa undique apportans, multisque sine vanitate impertiens, non est admodum vituperanda." De Officiis, II. prope finem.
Cicero wrote at a time when all trade was considered degrading to a senator, and his language
breathes the spirit of modern aristocracy. Yet
even he distinguishes between the merchant and
the petty trader or shopkeeper. The plebeians
were excluded from following the latter callings
by positive institution; from the former they
might have been virtually excluded by their poverty.
Since writing the above note, I see that Nie



ï~~CHAP. VI.]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES, ETC.

35

considered by the ancients in a very different light from the wholesale dealings of
the merchant with foreign countries.
Beyond this we have scarcely the means of proceeding. Setting aside the
tyranny ascribed to Tarquinius, and remembering that it was his policy to deprive
the commons of their lately acquired citizenship, and to treat them like subjects
rather than members of the state, the picture given of the wealth and greatness
of Judtea under Solomon, may convey some idea of the state of Rome under its
later kings. Powerful amongst surrounding nations, exposed to no hostile invasions, with a flourishing agriculture, and an active commerce, the country was
great and prosperous; and the king was enabled to execute public works of the
highest magnificence, and to invest himself with a splendor unknown in the earlier times of the monarchy. The last Tarquinius was guilty of individual acts of
oppression, we may be sure, towards the patricians no less than the plebeians; but
it was these last whom he labored on system to depress and degrade, and whom
he employed, as Solomon did the Canaanites,9 in all the servile and laborious
part of his undertakings. Still the citizens or patricians themselves found that
the splendor of his government had its burdens for them also; as the great
majority of the Israelites, amid all the peace and prosperity of Solomon's reign,
and although exempted from all servile labor, and serving only in honorable
offices,to yet complained that they had endured a grievous yoke, and took the first
opportunity to relieve themselves from it by banishing the house of Solomon from
among them forever.
Of the population of Rome under its later kings nothing can be known with certainty, unless we consider as historical the pretended return of the Population.
census taken by Servius Tullius, eighty-four thousand seven hundred.  Nor is it possible to estimate the numbers of the army from the account
of the centuries. We are expressly told that the centuries were very unequal in
the number of men contained in them; and even with regard to the centuries of
the first class, we know not whether they consisted of any fixed number. It is
possible that the century in the Roman army, like the c&-g in the Athenian,
bore two different senses; the Athenian heavy-armed infantry were divided into
ten -E&ig, but the number contained in each of these must necessarily have been
indefinite. We read, however, of r&gsg and ra iagcxoi in particular expeditions, by
which, apparently, we are to understand certain drafts from the larger r&ess with
their commanders, and the numbers here would be fixed according to the force
required for the expedition.  So the centuriae" of the different classes must have
each furnished their contingents for actual service on a certain fixed proportion,
and these contingents from the centuries would be called centuries themselves;
but we do not know either their actual force, or their force comparatively with one
another; a century of the fifth class, consisting of light-armed soldiers, must have
contained many more men than a century of heavy-armed soldiers of the first
class.
II. It is difficult to form a clear idea of the moral character of the Roman people under its kings, because we cannot be sure that the pictures Moa.,and  o oitca
character of the 1%ohanded down to us of that period were not copied from the man- mans.
ners of a later time, and thus represent, in fact, the state of the commonwealth
rather than that of the monarchy. Thus the simple habits of Lucretia seem copied from the matrons of the republic in the time of its early poverty, and cannot
safely be ascribed to the princesses of the magnificent house of the Tarquinii.
Again, we can scarcely tell how far we may carry back the origin of those charbuhr has himself tacitly corrected his mistake  10 1 Kings, v. 22. Compare xii. 4-16.
ii the second volume, p. 450, 2d Ed. by trans-  n I propose to reserve all consideration of the
lating Ks1,7rso in this same passage of Diony- numbers and constitution of the early Roman
sius, " wer.IJamhandel erwtihlte," instead legion for the next volume, when we shall for
of " IHandel."  " Kramhandel" is " retail the first time have any historical accounts in detrade."                                tail of the military operations of the Roman ar' 1 Kings, ix. 20, 21.               mies.




ï~~36

HISTORY OF ROME,

[CHaP. V]

acteristie points in the late2 Roman manners, the absolute authority possessed by
the head of a family over his wife and children.  But it is probable that they are
of great antiquity; for the absolute power of a father over his sons extended only
to those who were born in that peculiar form of marriage called Connubium, a
connection which anciently could only subsist between persons of the same order,
and which was solemnized by a peculiar ceremony called Confarreatio; a ceremony so sacred, that a marriage thus contracted could only be dissolved by certain unwonted and horrible rites, purposely ordered, as it seems, to discourage
the practice of divorce. All these usages point to a very great antiquity, and
indicate the early severity of the Roman domestic manners, and the habits of obedience which every citizen learned under his father's roof. This severity, however,
did not imply an equal purity; connubium could only be contracted with one wife,
but the practice of concubinage was toleratied, although the condition of a concubine is marked as disreputable by a law so old as to be ascribed to Numa.12 And
the indecency of some parts of the ancient religious worship, and the license
allowed at particular festivals, at marriages, and in the festal meetings of men
amongst themselves, belong so much to an agricultural people, as well as to human nature in general, that these, too, may be safely presumed to be coeval with
the very origin of the Roman nation.
But the most striking point in the character of the Romans, and that which has
Their love of institu- SO permanently influenced the condition of mankind, was their love
tions a l aw.  of institutions and of order, their reverence for law, their habit of
considering the individual as living only for that society of which he was a member. This character, the very opposite to that of the barbarian and the savage,
belongs, apparently, to that race to which the Greeks and Romans both belong, by
whatever name, Pelasgian, Tyrrhenian, or Sikelian, we choose to distinguish it. It
has, indeed; marked the Teutonic race, but in a less degree: the Kelts have been
strangers to it, nor do we find it developed amongst the nations of Asia: but it
strongly characterizes the Dorians in Greece, and the Romans; nor is it wanting
among the Ionians, although in these last it was modified by that individual freedom
which arose naturally from the surpassing vigor of their intellect, the destined wellspring of wisdom to the whole world. But in Rome, as at Lacedmemon, as there was
much less activity of reason, so the tendency to regulate and to organize was much
more predominant.    Accordingly, we find traces of this character in the very earliest traditions of Roman story. Even in Romulus, his institutions go hand in hand
with his deeds in arms; and the wrath of the gods darkened the last years of the
warlike Tullus, because he had neglected the rites and ordinances established by
Numa.     Numa and Servius, whose memory was cherished most fondly, were
known only as lawgivers; Ancus, like Romulus, is the founder of institutions as
well as the conqueror, and one particular branch of law is ascribed to him as its
author, the ceremonial to be observed before going to war.    The two Tarquinii
are represented as of foreign origin, and the character of their reigns is foreign
also.  They are great warriors and great kings; they extend the dominion of
Rome; they enlarge the city, and embellish it with great and magnificent works;
but they add nothing to its institutions; and it was the crime of the last Tarquinius to undo those good regulations which his predecessor had appointed..
It is allowedr  on all hands, that the works df art executed in Rome under the
Of the tatee he er-. later kings; whether architecture" or sculpture,"4 were of Etruscan
origin; but what is meant by "Etruscan," and how far Etruscan
12 Pellex aram Junonis ne tangito... si tan- been Etruscan. (Pliny, XXXV. 12.) Micali
get, Junoni crinibus demissis agnum foeminam supposes the temple here meant to have been
cmdito. Festus in "Pellex."             the one vowed by A. Postumius, dictator at the
1" Intentus perficiendo templo, fabris undique battle of the lake Regillus (Tacitus, Annal. II.
ex Etruria accitis, &c. Livy, I. 56.    49), described as a temple, "Libero, Libereque
14 Before the ornamenting of the temple of et Cereri, juxta Circum Maximnum."  At any
Ceres at Rome, near the Circus Maximus, by two rate, the two Greek artists must belong to a
Greeks, Damophilus and Gorgasus, all works of period later than the foundation of the cappainting or sculpture, according to Varro, had itol.




ï~~ChAr. VI.]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES, ETC.

37

art was itself derived from Greece, is a question which has been warmly disputed.
The statue of Jupiter" in the capitol, and the four-horsed chariot on the summit
of the temple, together with most of the statues of the gods, were at this period
wrought in clay; bronze was not generally employed till a later age. There is
no mention of any paintings in Rome itself earlier than the time of the commonwealth; but Pliny speaks of some frescoes at Arden and at Cmaere, which he considered to be older than the very foundation of the city, and which in his own age
preserved the freshness of their coloring, and in his judgment were works of remarkable merit. The Capitoline Temple'6 itself was built nearly in the form of a square,
each side being about two hundred feet in length; its front faced southwards,
towards the Forum and the Palatine, and had a triple row of pillars before it, while
a double row inclosed the sides of the temple. These, it is probable, were not of
marble, but made either of the stone of Rome itself, like the cloaca, or possibly
from the quarries of Gabii or Alba.
The end of the reign of the last king of Rome falls less than twenty years before the battle of Marathon. The age of the Greek heroic poetry Languange and intel.
lectual character of the
was long since past; the evils of the iron age, of that imperfect civil- Romans.
ization, when legal oppression has succeeded to the mere violence of the plunderer and the conqueror, had been bewailed by Hesiod three centuries earlier;
Theognis had mourned over the sinking importance of noble birth, and the growing influence of riches; the old aristocracies had been overthrown by single tyrants, and these, again, had everywhere yielded to the power of aristocracies under
a mitigated form, which in some instances admitted a mixture of popular freedom.
Alcaus and Sappho had been dead for more than half a century; Simonides was
in the vigor of life; and prose history had already been attempted by Hecateus
of Miletus. Of the works of these last, indeed, only fragments have descended to
us; but their entire writings, together with those of many other earlier poets, scattered up and down through a period of more than two hundred years, existed till
the general wreck of ancient literature, and furnished abundant monuments of the
vigor of the Greek mind, long before the period when history began faithfully to
record particular events. But of the Roman mind under the kings, Cicero knew
no more than we do. He had seen no works of that period, whether of historians
or of poets; he had never heard the name of a single individual whose genius had
made it famous, and had preserved its memory, together with his own. A certain number of laws ascribed to the kings, and preserved, whether on tables of
wood or brass, in the capitol, or in the collection of the jurist Papirius, were almost
the sole monuments which could illustrate the spirit of the early ages of the Ro
15 Pliny, XXXV. 12, quotes Varro, as saying
"Turrianum  a Fregellis accitum, cui locaret
Tarquinius Priscus effigiem Jovis in capitolio
dicandam." He had just before said that all the
images of this period were Etruscan; how, then,
do we find the statue of Jupiter himself ascribed
to an artist of Fregeli, a Volscian town on the
Livis, with which the Romans in Tarquinius'
reign are not known to have had any connection? Besides, " Turrianus" is apparently only
another form of "Tyrrhenus," and seems to
mark the artist as an Etruscan. Are we, then,
to read Fregens instead of Fregellm, or are we
to suppose the artist's fame to have been so eminent that the people of Fregelle had first invited him thither from his own country, and the
Roman king afterwards brought him from Fregelle to Rome? In this manner, Polycrates of
Samos sent for Democedes, the physician, from
Athens; and the Athenians had invited him
from Xgina, where he had first settled after
Leaving his own country, Croton. Herodotus,
III. 131.
But the question still returns, What is meant
by Etruscan art?  Are we to understand this

term of the Etruscans, properly so called, the
conquerors of the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians, or of
these Tyrrheno-Pelasgians themselves, who
must have held Agylla at least, if not other places
on the coast, down to the time of the last kings
of Rome; or, again, how much of Etruscan art
was introduced directly into Italy from Greece
itself, as is indicated in the story of Demaratus
coming from Corinth to Tarquinii, with the artists Euchir and Eugrammus, "Cunning hand"
and "Cunning carver?"  The paintings at Ardea and Care, mentioned by Pliny, both occur
in towns of Pelasgian origin; and the arts may
have thus been cultivated to a certain degree in
Italy, even before the beginning of any communication with Greece. But the vases and other
monuments now found in Etruscan towns, in
the ruins of Tarquinii, for instance, and of Vulci,
belong to a later period, and are either actually
of Greek workmanship, or were executed by
Etruscans to whom Greek art was familiar. See
M. Bunsen's " Discours," in the 6th volume of
the Annals of the Antiquarian Institute of Rome,
p. 40, &c.
1B Dionysius IV. 61.




ï~~38

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHar. VI

man people. But even these, to judge from the few extracts with which we are
acquainted, must have been modernized in their language; for the Latin of a law
ascribed to Servius Tullius, is perfectly intelligible, and not more ancient in its
forms than that of the fifth century of Rome; whereas the few genuine monuments of the earliest times, the Hymns of the Salii, and of the Brotherhood of
Husbandry, Fratres Arvales, required to be interpreted to the Romans of Cicero's
time, like a foreign language; and of the hymn of the Fratres Arvales we can
ourselves judge, for it has been accidentally preserved to our days, and the meaning of nearly half of it is only to be guessed at. This agrees with what Polybius
says of the language of the treaty between Rome and Carthage, concluded in the
first year of the commonwealth; it was so unlike the Latin of his own time, the
end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh century of Rome, that even those
who understood it best found some things in it which, with their best attention,
they could scarcely explain. Thus, although verses were uindoubtedly made and
sung in the times of the kings, at funerals and at feasts, in commemoration of the
worthy deeds of the noblest of the Romans; and although some of the actual stories of the kings may, perhaps, have come down from this source, yet it does not
appear that they were ever written, and thus they were altered from one generation to another, nor can any one tell at what time they attained to their present
shape. Traces of a period much later than that of the kings may be discerned in
them; and I see no reason to differ from the opinion of Niebuhr, who thinks that
as we now have them they are not earlier than the restoration of the city after
the invasion of the Gauls.
If this be so, there rests a veil not to be removed, not only on the particular
history of the early Romans, but on that which we should much more desire to
know, and which in the case of Greece stands forth in such full light, the nature
and power of their genius; what they thought, what they hated, and what they
loved. Yet although the legends of the early Roman story are neither historical,
nor yet coeval with the subjects which they celebrate, still their fame is so great,
and their beauty and interest so surpassing, that it would be unpardonable to sacrifice them altogether to the spirit of inquiry and of fact, and to exclude them from
the place which they have so long held in Roman history. Nor shall I complain
of my readers, if they pass over with indifference these attempts of mine to put
together the meagre fragments of our knowledge, and to present them with an
outline of the times of the kings, at once incomplete and without spirit; while
they read with eager interest the immortal story of the fall of Tarquinius, and the
wars with Porsenna and the Latins, as it has been handed down to us in the rich
coloring of the old heroic lays of Rome.




ï~~CHAPTEIR VII.
THE STORY OF THE BANISHING OF KING TARQUINIUS AND HIS HOUSE, AND OF
THEIR ATTEMPTS TO GET THEMSELVES BROUGHT BACK AGAIN.
" Vis et Tarquinios reges, animamque superbam
Ultoris Bruti, fascesque videre receptos?"
 VmmGIL, En. VI.
WHILE king Tarquinius was at the height of his greatness, it chanced upon a time,
that from the altar' in the court of his palace there crawled out a How kin;g arquiniu,
affrighted by a prodisnake, which devoured the offerings laid on the altar.  So the king gy in his p.ace, sent
two of hia sons with
thought it not enough to consult the soothsayers of the Etruscans Lucius Brutus to con-.
sult the oracle of Delwhom he had with him, but he sent two of his own sons to Del- phi.
phi, to ask counsel of the oracle of the Greeks; for the oracle of Delphi was famous in all lands. So his sons Titus and Aruns went to Delphi, and they took with
them their cousin Lucius Junius, whom men call Brutus, that is, the Dullard; for he
seemed to be wholly without wit, and he would eat wild figs with honey.3 This
Lucius was not really dull, but very subtle; and it was for fear of his uncle's
cruelty, that he made himself as one without sense; for he was very rich, and he
feared lest king Tarquinius should kill him for the sake of his inheritance. So when
he went to Delphi he carried with him a staff of horn, and the staff was hollow, and
it was filled within with gold, and he gave the staff to the oracle4 as a likeness
of himself; for though he seemed dull, and of no account to look upon, yet he had
a golden wit within. When the three young men had performed the king's bidding, they asked the oracle for themselves, and they said, "0 Lord Apollo, tell
us which of us shall be king in Rome?"  Then there came a voice from the sanctuary and said, "Whichever of you shall first kiss his mother."  So the sons of
Tarquinius agreed to draw lots between themselves, which of them should first
kiss their mother, when they should have returned to Rome; and they said they
would keep the oracle secret from their brother Sextus, lest he should be king
rather than they.  But Lucius understood the mind of the oracle better; so as
they all went down from the temple, he stumbled as if by chance, and fell with
his face to the earth, and kissed the earth; for he said, " The earth is the true
mother of us all."
Now when they came back to Rome, king Tarquinius was at war with the people of Ardena;5 and as the city was strong, his army lay a long How, at the siege ofAr.
while before it, till it should be forced to yield through famine. dea,.,oRo an pritce.
disputed  about  the
So the Romans had leisure for feasting and for diverting them- oth of their wives,
selves: and once Titus and Aruns6 were supping with their brother judged the worthiest.

1 Ovid, Fasti, II. 711.
Ecce, nefas visu, mediis altaribus anguis
Exit, et extinctis ignibus exta rapit.
2 Livy, I. 56, maxime inclitum in terris oraculum. The story of the last of the Roman kings
sending to consult the oracle at Delphi, is in itself nothing improbable. We read of the Agyllmans of Agylla or Care doing the same thing
at an earlier period. Ierodotus, I. 167. These
were Tyrrhenians, or Pelasgians; and there was
a sufficient mixture of the same race in the Roman people, to give them a natural connection
with the religion of Greece.
3 A. Postumius Albinus, cotemporary with
Cato the censor, quoted by Macrobius, Saturnalia, II. 16. Grossulos ex melle edebat. "Ex
nelle," dipping them into the honey, and eat
ing them when just taken out of it, i. e. with the
honey clinging all about them. Compare Plautus, Merc. I. 2, 28, " Resinam ex melle devorato," where the sense of the preposition can hardly be distinguished from that of" cum." Grossi
and grossuli are imperfect and unripe figs; either those of the wild fig which never come to
perfection, or the young fruit of the cultivated
fig gathered before its time.
SPer ambages effigiem ingenii sui. Livy, L
56.
6 Livy, I. 57. This is one of the incongruities of the story. Ardea, in the first year of the
commonwealth, is mentioned as one of.the dependent allies of Rome. See the famous treaty
with Carthage, as given by Polybius, III. 22.
6 Livy, I. 57.




ï~~40

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. VIL

Sextus, and their cousin Tarquinius of Collatia was supping with them. And
they disputed about their wives, whose wife of them all was the worthiest lady.
Then said Tarquinius of Collatia, "Let us go and see with our own eyes what our
wives are doing, so shall we know which is the worthiest." Upon this they all
mounted their horses, and rode first to Rome; and there they found the wives of
Titus, and of Aruns, and of Sextus, feasting and making merry. They then rode
on to Collatia, and it was late in the night, but they found Lucretia, the wife of
Tarquinius of Collatia, neither feasting nor yet sleeping, but she was sitting with all
her handmaids around her, and all were working at the loom. So when they saw
this, they all said, "Lucretia is the worthiest lady."  And she entertained her
husband and his kinsmen, and after that they rode back to the camp before
Ardea.
But a spirit of wicked passion7 seized upon Sextus, and a few days afterwards
Of the wicked deed of he went alone to Collatia, and Lucretia received him hospitably,
Sextus  Tarquinius  a
gainst Lcretia.  for he was her husband's kinsman. At midnight he arose and went
to her chamber, and he said that if she yielded not to him, he would slay her and
one of her slaves with her, and would say to her husband that he had slain her in her
adultery.  So when Sextus had accomplished his wicked purpose, he went back
again to the camp.
Then Lucretia' sent in haste to Rome, to pray that her father Spurius Lucretius
HowLnretia,havin tol? would come to her; and she sent to Ardea to summon her husband.
thed end her fatherelaw Her father brought along with him Publius Valerius, and her hus-.eef"         band brought with him Lucius Junius, whom     men call Brutus.
When they arrived, they asked earnestly, "Is all well?"   Then she told them
of the wicked deed of Sextus, and she said, "If ye be men, avenge it."     And
they all swore to her that they would avenge it.   Then she said again, " I am
not guilty; yet must I too share in the punishment of this deed, lest any should
think that they may be false to their husbands and live."  And she drew a knife
from her bosom, and stabbed herself to the heart.
At that sight9 her husband and her father cried aloud; but Lucius drew the
now her father and her knife from the wound, and held it up, and said, "By this blood
husbend nd Lucius Br I swear, that I will visit this deed upon king Tarquinius, and all
tus excited the people to
drive ot king T rqinius his accursed race; neither shall any man hereafter be king in
and his house.  Rome, lest he do the like wickedness."   And he gave the knife
to her husband, and to her father, and to Publius Valerius. They marvelled to
hear such words from him whom men called dull; but they swore also, and they
took up the body of Lucretia, and carried it down into the forum; and they said,
"Behold the deeds of the wicked family of Tarquinius."       All the people of
Collatia were moved, and the men took up arms, and they set a guard at the gates,
that none might go out to carry the tidings to Tarquinius, and they followed
Lucius to Rome. There, too, all the people came together, and the crier summoned
them to assemble before the tribune of the Celeres, for Lucius held that office.0
And Lucius spoke to them of all the tyranny of Tarquinius and his sons, and
of the wicked deed of Sextus. And the people in their curim took back from
Tarquinius the sovereign power, which they had given him, and they banished
him and all his family. Then the younger men followed Lucius to Ardea, to
win over the army there to join them; and the city was left in the charge of
Spurius Lucretius.   But the wicked Tullia fled in haste from her house, and all,
Livy, I. 58.                         with Gravis; this would show a connexion beLivy, I. 58.                         tween the word and the Greek f3ap. It is
Livy, I. 59.                         very possible that its early signification, as a
10 The tribune of the Celeres was to the king cognomen, may have differed very little from
what the master of the horse was afterwards to that of Severus. When the signification of
the dictator. It is hardly necessary to point " dulness" came to be more confirmed, the
out the extravagance of the story, in represent- story of Brutus' pretended idiotcy would be
ing Brutus, though a reputed idiot, yet invested invented to explain the fact of so wise a man
with such an important office. Festus says being called by such a name.
that Brutus, in old Latin, was synonymous




ï~~ClAP. VI.L]  THE BANISHING OF KING TARQUINIUS, ETC.

41

both men and women, cursed her as she passed, and prayed that the furies of
her father's blood might visit her with vengeance.
Meanwhile" king Tarquinius set out with speed to Rome to put down the
tumult. But Lucius turned aside from the road, that he might Of the driving out of king
not meet him, and came to the camp; and the soldiers joyfully Tarquiniys, antd howtwo
received him, and they drove out the sons of Tarquinius. King appointed hisroom.
Tarquinius came to Rome, but the gates were shut, and they declared to him,
from the walls, the sentence of banishment which had been passed against him
and his family.  So he yielded to his fortune, and went to live at Caere with
his sons Titus and Aruns. His other son, Sextus," went to Gabii, and the people
there, remembering how he had betrayed them to his father, slew him. Then
the army left the camp before Ardea, and went back to Rome. And all men
said, "Let us follow the good laws of the good king Servius; and let us meet in
our centuries, according as he directed," and let us choose two men year by year
to govern us, instead of a king."  Then the people met in their centuries in the
Field of Mars, and they chose two men to rule over them, Lucius Junius,
whom men called Brutus, and Lucius Tarquinius of Collatia.
But the people14 were afraid of Lucius Tarquinius for his name's sake, for it seemed as though a Tarquinius was still king over them. So they prayed How Lncis Tarquinius,
him to depart from Rome, and he went and took all his goods twasdrivehusbandout falsoforhi
with him, and settled himself at Lavinium. Then the senate name's sake.
and the people decreed that all the house of the Tarquinii should be banished,
even though they were not of the king's family. And the people met again in
their centuries, and chose Publius Valerius to rule over them together with
Brutus, in the room of Lucius Tarquinius of Collatia.
Now at this time5 many of the laws of the good king Servius were restored,
which Tarquinius the tyrant had overthrown. For the commons The laws of the goodking
again chose their own judges, to try all causes between a man servi s restored.
and his neighbor; and they had again their meetings and their sacrifices in the
city and in the country, every man in his own tribe and in his own district. And
lest there should seem to be two kings instead of one, it was ordered that one
only of the two should bear rule at one time, and that the lictors, with their
rods and axes, should walk before him alone. And the two were to bear rule
month by month.
Then king Tarquinius5 sent to Rome, to ask for all the goods that had belonged
to him; and the senate, after a while, decreed that the goods
shoul  be gven bck.                             ow certain of the young
should be given back. But those whom he had sent to Rome       omans plotted to bring
to ask for his goods, had meetings with many young men of back kigTearquinius.
noble birth, and a plot was laid to bring back king Tarquinius. So the young
men wrote letters to Tarquinius, pledging to him their faith, and among them
were Titus and Tiberius, the sons of Brutus. But a slave happened to overhear
them talking together, and when he knew that the letters were to be given to
the messengers of Tarquinius, he went and told all that he had heard to Brutus
and to Publius Valerius. Then they came and seized the young men and their
letters, and so the plot was broken up.
After this there was a strange and piteous sight to behold. Brutus and
Publius" sat on their judgment-seats in the Forum, and the young How cie nts sat in
men were brought before them. Then Brutus bade the lictors to judgment upon his own
bind his own two sons, Titus and Tiberius, together with the others,s.
and to scourge them with rods, according to the law. And after they had been
" Livy, I. 60.                        1 Consules inde comitiis centuriatis-ex com12 Livy, I. 60. Dionysius makes Sextus live mentariis Ser. Tullii creati sunt. Livy, I. 60.
till the battle by the lake Regillus, and describes  14 Livy, II. 2.
him as killed there. When the stories differ,  1 Dionysius, V. 2.
I have generally followed Livy, as the writer  s Livy, II. 3, 4.
of the best taste, and likely to give the oldest  ' Livy, II. 5.
and most poetical version of them.




ï~~42

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP.  TI1

scourged, the lictors struck off their heads with their axes, before the eyes of
their father; and Brutus neither stirred from his seat, nor turned away his eyes
from the sight, yet men saw as they looked on him that his heart was grieving
inwardly'" over his children. Then they marvelled at him, because he had loved
justice more than his own blood, and had not spared his own children when
they had been false to their country, and had offended against the law.
When"9 king Tarquinius found that the plot was broken up, he persuaded the
How the people of Veii people of Veii and the people of Tarquinii, cities of the Etruscans,
po tlouinii. manho to try to bring him back to Rome by force of arms. So they
Lucius Brutus was slain. assembled their armies, and Tarquinius led them  within the
Roman border. Brutus and Publius led the Romans out to meet them, and it
chanced that Brutus with the Roman horsemen, and Aruns, the son of king
Tarquinius, with the Etruscan horse, met each other in advance of the main
battles. Aruns seeing Brutus in his kingly robe, and with the lictors of a king
around him, levelled his spear, and spurred his horse against him. Brutus met
him, and each ran his spear through the body of the other, and they both fell
dead. Then the horsemen on both parts fought, and afterwards the main battles,
and the Veientians were beaten, but the Tarquinians beat the Romans, and the
battle was neither won nor lost; but in the night there came a voice out of the
wood that was hard by, and it said, "One man more20 has fallen on the part of
the Etruscans than on the part of the Romans; the Romans are to conquer in
the war." At this the Etruscans were afraid, and believing the voice, they
immediately marched home to their own country, while the Romans took up
Brutus, and carried him home and buried him; and Publius made an oration in
his praise, and all the matrons of Rome mourned for him for a whole year,
because he had avenged Lucretia well.
When Brutus was dead,2"' Publius ruled over the people himself; and he began
How PubliusValerius was to build a great and strong house on the top of the hill Velia,
suspected by thepeople, which looks down upon the Forum.22  This made the people say,
and how he cleared himsol.           " Publius wants to become a king, and is building a house in a
strong place, as if for a citadel where he may live with his guards, and oppress
us." But he called the people together, and when he went down to them, the
lictors who walked before him lowered the rods and the axes which they bore, to
show that he owned the people to be greater than himself. He complained that
they had mistrusted him, and he said that he would not build his house on the
top of the hill Velia, but at the bottom of it, and his house should be no stronghold. And he called on them to make a law,23 that whoever should try to make
himself king should be accursed, and whosoever would might slay him. Also,
that if a magistrate were going to scourge or kill any citizen, he might carry his
cause before the people, and they should judge him. When these laws were
passed, all men said, "Publius is a lover of the people, and seeks their good:"
and he was called Poplicola, which means, "the people's friend," from that day
forward.
Then Publius called the people together24 in their centuries, and they chose
Spurius Lucretius, the father of Lucretia, to be their magistrate for the year in
the room of Brutus. But he was an old man, and his strength was so much
gone, that after a few days he died.    They then chose in his room Marcus
Horatius.25
Now Publius and Marcus cast lots which should dedicate the temple to Jupiter
15 Eminente animo patrio inter publicoe pcenm Palatine, up which the Via Sacra passes. The
ministerium. Livy, II. 5.              arch of Titus is on the Velian Hill.
Â~ Livy, II. 6.                         23 Livy, II. 8.
20 Uno plus Etruscorum ceeidisse in acie;  24 Livy, II. 8.?incere bello Romanum. Livy, II. 7.     25 The treaty with Carthage makes M. uHora21 Livy, II. 7.                       tius the colleague of Brutus: another proof of
S It is the rising ground just under the the irreconcilableness of the common story
with the real but lost history.




ï~~CHAP. VII.]  THE BANISHING OF KING TARQUINIUS, ETC.

43

on the hill of the Capitol, which king Tarquinius had built; and
Of the dedicating of the
the lot fell to Marcus, to the great discontent of the friends of temple on the Capitol by
Publius.5   So when Marcus was going to begin the dedication, Ma.orti.
and had his hand on the door-post of the temple, and was speaking the set
words of prayer, there came a man running to tell him that his son was
dead.   But he said, "Then let them    carry him  out and bury him;" and he
neither wept, nor lamented, for the words of lamentation ought not to be
spoken when men are praying to the blessed gods, and dedicating a temple
to their honor. So Marcus honored the gods above his son, and dedicated the
temple on the hill of the Capitol; and his name was recorded on the front of
the temple.
But when king Tarquinius found that the Veientians and Tarquinians were not
able to restore him to his kingdom, he went to Clusium,21 a city in How king Porsenna mado
the farthest part of Etruria, beyond the Ciminian forest, and be- eao e  theom take bn kt
sought Lars Porsenna,t the king of Clusium, to aid him. So Por- king Tarquini.
senna raised a great army, and marched against Rome, and attacked the Romans on
the hill Janiculum, the hill on the outside of the city beyond the Tiber; and he
drove them down from the hill into the city. There was a wooden bridge over
the Tiber at the bottom of the hill, and the Etruscans followed close upon the
Romans to win the bridge, but a single man, named Horatius Of the worthy deed of Ho.
Cocles, stood fast upon the bridge, and faced the Etruscans;r mioes coolee.
two others then resolved to stay with him, Spurius Lartius and Titus Herminius;
and these three men stopped the Etruscans, while the Romans, who had fled
over the river, were busy in cutting away the bridge. When it was nearly all
cut away, Horatius made his two companions leave him, and pass over the
bridge into the city.  Then he stood alone on the bridge, and defied all the army
of the Etruscans; and they showered their javelins upon him, and he caught
them on his shield, and stood yet unhurt. But just as they were rushing on
him to drive him from his post by main force, the last beams of the bridge were
cut away, and it all fell with a mighty crash into the river; and while the
Etruscans wondered, and stopped in their course, Horatius turned and prayed
to the god of the river, " 0 father35 Tiber, I pray thee to receive these arms,
and me who bear them, and to let thy waters befriend and save me." Then he
leapt into the river; and though the darts fell thick around him, yet they did
not hit him, and he swam across to the city safe and sound." For this the
Romans set up his statue in the comitium, and gave him as much land as he
could drive the plough round in the space of a whole day.
But the Etruscans still lay before the city, and the Romans suffered much
from hunger.   Then a young man of noble blood, Caius MuciusH How  aisMiden.sought
by name, went to the senate, and offered to go to the camp of thli eoof kin ~ eho nna
the Etruscans, and to slay king Porsenna. So he crossed the own hand in the fire.
river and made his way into the camp, and there he saw a man sitting on a high
place, and wearing a scarlet robe, and many coming and going about him; and
saying to himself, "This must be king Porsenna," he went up to his seat amidst
the crowd, and when he came near to the man he drew a dagger from under
his garment, and stabbed him. But it was the king's scribe whom he had slain,
who was the king's chief officer; so he was seized and brought before the king,
Livy, II. 8.                        It is vain to attempt to write a history of these
21 Livy, II. 9.                        events; and none can doubt that the poetical
2 "Lars," like "lucumo," is not an indi- story, which alone I am wishing to preserve,
vidual name, but expresses the rank of the per- was that given by Livy.
son, like va. Micali connects it with the Ten-  2 " Adolescens nobilis," Livy, II. 12. Nietonic word "Lord."                      buhr doubts whether the old story called him
2 Livy, II. 10.                       by any other name than Caius. Mucius, he
S" Tiberine pater, te sancte precor, hmnc thinks, was a later addition; because the Mucii
arma et hunec militem propitio fiumine acci- had the same cognomen of Scevola; and he
pias." Livy, II. 10.                    considers it inconsistent, because the Mace
u Polybius says that he was killed, VI. 55. were plebeians.




ï~~44

IIISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. VIL

and the guards threatened"3 him with sharp torments, unless he would answer
all their questions. But he said, "See now, how little I care for your torments;"
and he thrust his right hand into the fire that was burning there on the altar,
and he did not move it till it was quite consumed. Then king Porsenna marvelled at his courage, and: said, "Go thy way, for thou hast harmed thyself
more than me; and thou art a brave man, and I send thee back to Rome unhurt
and free."  But Caius answered, "For this thou shalt get more of my secret
than thy tortures could have forced from me. Three hundred noble youths of
Rome have bound themselves by oath to take thy life. Mine was the crst
adventure; but the others will each in his turn lie in wait for thee. I warn you,
therefore, to look to thyself well." Then Caius was let go, and went back again
into the city.
But king Porsenna was greatly moved,34 and made the Romans offers of peace,
Of the peace made be- to which they listened gladly, and gave up the land beyond the
twee kingPorsenna   Tiber, which had been won in former times from the Veientians;
the Romans: and of the
great spirit of the maiden and he gave back to them the hill Janiculum. Besides this, the
Cloelia.       Romans gave hostages to the king, ten youths and ten maidens,
children of noble fathers, as a pledge that they would truly keep the peace
which they had made. But it chanced, as the camp of the Etruscans was near
the Tiber, that Clcelia, one of the maidens, escaped with her fellows, and fled to
the brink of the river, and as the Etruscans pursued them, Clcelia spoke to the
other maidens, and persuaded them, and they rushed all into the water, and
swam across the river; and got safely over. At this king Porsenna marvelled
more than ever, and when the Romans sent back Clcelia and her fellows to him,
for they kept their faith truly, he bade her go home free, and he gave her some of
the youths also who were hostages, to choose whom she would; and she chose
those who were of tenderest age, and king Porsenna set them free. Then the
Romans gave lands to Cams, and set up a statue of ClOkelia in the highest part
of the Sacred Way; and king Porsenna led away his army home in peace.
After this king Porsenna35 made war against the Latins, and his army was
ow Trqain iussought beaten, and fled to Rome;. and the Romans received them kindly,
for afromtheLatina. and took care of those Who were wounded, and sent them back
safe to king Porsenna. For this the king gave back to the Romans all the rest
of their hostages whom he had still with him, and also the land which they had
won from the Veientians. So Tarquinius, seeing that there was no more hope
of aid from king Porsenna, left Clusium and went to Tusculum of the Latins;
for Mamilius Octavius, the chief of the Tusculans, had married his daughter, and
he hoped that the Latins would restore him to Rome, for their cities were many,
and when he had been king he had favored them rather than the Romans.
So after a time thirty cities of the Latins joined together and made Octavius
Mamilius their general, and declared war against the Romans.
Of the war between the
Romae and Latis eon a- Now Publius Valerius was dead, and the Romans so loved and
countofTTarquinius. honored him that they buried him within the city,36 near the hill
Velia, and all the matrons of Rome had mourned for him for a. whole year: also
because the Romans7 had the Sabines for their enemies as well as the Latins,
they had made one man to be their ruler for a time instead of two; and he was
called the Master of the people, or the commander, and he had all the power
which the kings of Rome had in times past. So Aulus Postumius was appointed
Master of the people at this time, and Titus Ebutius was the chief or Master of
the horsemen; and they led out the whole force of the Romans, and met the
Latins by the lake Regillus, in the country of Tusculum; and Tarquinius himself
" Here I have followed Dionysius rather than  34 Livy, II. 18.
Livy, because in Livy's story Mucius tells Por-  " Livy, II. 14, 15.
senna in reward of his generosity no more than  3 Plutarch in Publicola, 28. Livy, II. 16.
he had told him at first as a mere vaunt to  " Livy, II. 18.
frighten him.




ï~~CHAP. VII.]  THE BANISHING OF KING TARQUINIUS, ETC.

45

was with the army of the Latins, and his son and all the houses of the Tarquinii: for this was their last hope, and fate was now to determine whether the
Romans should be ruled over by king Tarquinius, or whether they should be free
forever.
There were many Romans who had married Latin wives,"8 and many Latins
who had married wives from among the Romans. So before the How the Roman women
war began, it was resolved that the women on both sides might who were married to at.
war ugan, resoe                        ml~-~Uin husbands canmp hotel,
leave their husbands if they chose, and take their virgin daughters to Rome.
with them, and return to their own country. And all the Latin women, except
two, remained in Rome with their husbands: but the Roman women loved Rome
more than their 'husbands, and took their young daughters with them, and came
home to the houses of their fathers.
Then the Romans and the Latins joined battle by the lake Regillus.3  There
might you see king Tarquinius, though far advanced in years, Of the great battle by the
yet mounted on his horse and bearing his lance in his hand, as lake Regillus.
bravely as though he were still young. There was his son Tarquinius, leading on
to battle all the band of the house of the Tarquinii, whom the Romans had banished for their name's sake, and who thought it a proud thing to win back their
country by their swords, and to become again the royal house, to give a king to
the Romans. There was Octavius Mamilius, of Tusculum, the leader of all the
Latins, who said, that he would make Tarquinius his father king once more in
Rome, and the Romans should help the Latins in all their wars, and Tusculum
should be the greatest of all the cities, whose people went up together to sacrifice to Jupiter of the Latins, at his temple on the high top of the mountain of
Alba. And on the side of the Romans might be seen Aulus Postumius, the
Master of the people, and Titus iAbutius, the Master of the horsemen. There
also was Titus Herminius, who had fought on the bridge by the side of Horatius
Cocles, on the day when they saved Rome from king Porsenna. There was
Marcus Valerius, the brother of Publius, who said he would finish by the lake
Regillus40 the glorious work which Publius had begun in Rome; for Publius had
driven out Tarquinius and his house, and had made them live as banished men,
and now they should lose their lives as they had lost their country. So at the
first onset king Tarquinius levelled his lance, and rode against Aulus; and on
the left of the battle, Titus iEbutius spurred his horse against Octavius Mamilius.
But king Tarquinius, before he reached Aulus, received a wound in his side, and
his followers gathered around him, and bore him out of the battle. And Titus
and Octavius met lance to lance, and Titus struck Octavius on the breast, and
Octavius ran his lance through the arm of Titus. So Titus withdrew from the
battle, for his arm could no longer wield its weapon; but Octavius heeded not
his hurt, but when he saw his Latins giving ground, he called to the banished
Romans of the house of the Tarquinii, and sent them into the thick of the fight.
On they rushed so fiercely that neither man nor horse could stand before them;
for they thought how they had been driven from their country, and spoiled of
their goods, and they said that they would win back both that day through the
blood of their enemies.
Then Marcus Valerius, the brother of Publius, levelled his lance and rode fiercely
against Titus Tarquinius, who was the leader of the band of the How twa ohrsemen o
Tarquinii. But Titus drew back, and sheltered himself amidst wite hoe aear   dightf
his band; and Marcus rode after him in his fury, and plunged the Romans.
into the midst of the enemy, and a Latin ran his lance into his side as he was
rushing on; but his horse stayed not in his career till Marcus dropped from him
dead upon the ground. Then the Romans feared yet more, and the Tarquinii
charged yet more vehemently, till Aulus, the leader of the Romans, rode up with
" Dionysius, VI. 1.                 familim decus ejecti reges erant, ejusdem inter
0 Livy, II. 19.                     fecti forent. Livy, II. 20.
4 Domestics etiam glorid accensus, ut cujus




ï~~46

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. VII.

his own chosen band; and he bade them level their lances, and slay all whose
faces were towards them, whether they were friends or foes. So the Romans
turned from their flight, and Aulus and his chosen band fell upon the Tarquinii;
and Aulus prayed, and vowed that he would raise a temple to Castor and to Pollux,4 the twin heroes, if they would aid him to win the battle; and he promised
to his soldiers that the two who should be the first to break into the camp of the
enemy should receive a rich reward. When behold, there rode two horsemen at
the head of his chosen band,42 and they were taller and fairer than after the stature and beauty of men, and they were in the first bloom of youth, and their
horses were white as snow. Then there was a fierce battle when Octavius, the
leader of the Latins, came up with aid to rescue the Tarquinii; for Titus Herminius rode against him, and ran his spear through his body, and slew him at one
blow; but as he was spoiling him of his arms, he himself was struck by a javelin,
and he was borne out of the fight and died. And the two horsemen on white
horses rode before the Romans; and the enemy fled before them, and the Tarquinii were beaten down and slain, and Titus Tarquinius was slain among them;
and the Latins fled, and the Romans followed them to their camp, and the two
horsemen on white horses were the first who broke into the camp. But when the
camp was taken, and the battle was fully won, Aulus sought for the two horsemen to give them the rewards which he had promised; and they were not found
either amongst the living or amongst the dead, only there was seen imprinted"
on the hard black rock"4 the mark of a horse's hoof, Which no earthly horse had
ever made; and the mark was there to be seen in after ages. And the battle was
ended, and the sun went down.
Now they knew at Rome45 that the armies had joined battle, and as the day
wore away all men longed for tidings. And the sun went down,
Ilow the two horsemen
appeared at Rome in and suddenly there were seen in the forum two horsemen, taller and
the evenin, and tols
that the lttl wa fairer than the tallest and fairest of men, and they rode on white
won.          horses, and they were as men just come from the battle, and their
horses were all bathed in foam. They alighted by the temple of Vesta, where a
spring of water bubbles up from the ground and fills a small deep pool. There
they washed away the stains of the battle, and when men crowded round them,
and asked for tidings, they told them how the battle had been fought, and how
it was won. And they mounted their horses and rode from the forum, and
were seen no more; and men sought for them in every place, but they were not
found.
Then Aulus and all the Romans knew how Castor and Pollux, the twin heroes,
had heard his prayer, and had fought for the Romans, and had yanThe two horsemen weroe 'ter        adhd          tefrt     bek       {
the twin hero, ostr quished their enemies, and had been the first to break into the eneand ox.   mies' camp, and had themselves, with more than mortal speed,
borne the tidings of their victory to Rome. So Aulus built a temple according to
his vow to Castor and Pollux, and gave rich offerings; for he said, "These are the
rewards which I promised to the two who should first break into the enemies'
camp; and the twin heroes have won them, and they and no mortal men have
won the battle for Rome this day."
So perished the house of the Tarquinii, in the great battle by the lake Regillus,
How Tarquins us, after and all the sons of king Tarquinius, and his son-in-law, Octavius
the ruin of his house, Mamilius, were slain on that battle-field. Thus king Tarquinius saw
went to Cumax. and
died.         the ruin of all his family and of all his house, and he was left alone,
utterly without hope.  So he went to Cume,46 a city of the Greeks, and there he
41 Livy, II. 20.                     under La Colonna, Labicum, to the ordinary
42 Dionysius, VI. 13.                level of the Campagna, min going to Rome. Ci4' Cicero, de Natura Deorum, III. 5.  cero speaks of the mark being visible " in sill44 The lake of Regillus is now a small and ce;" and silex is the name given by the Roman
weedy pool surrounded by crater-like banks, writers to the lava and basalt of the neighborand with much lava or basalt about it, situated hood of Rome.
at some height above the plain on the right hand  41 Dionysius, VI. 18.
of the road as you descend from the high ground  46 Livy, II. 21.




ï~~CHAP. VIII.]  ROME AFTER THE END OF THE MONARCHY.

47

died. And thus the deeds of Tarquinius and of the wicked Tullia, and of Sextue
their son, were visited upon their own heads; and the Romans lived in peace, and
none threatened their freedom any more.
CHAPTER VIII.
ROME AFTER THE END OF THE MONARCHY-THE DICTATORSHIP-THE TRIBUNES OF THE COMMONS.
'Hse v pyv riaapltcrtv ifrLX4davreg &LsLtv roIroLT 7TrepL(asv ro rpdrog" iv ya pa ron'roivc ca'
sbot la LSa.-HERODOT. III. 81.
MEN love to complete what is imperfect, and to realize what is imaginary.
The portraits of king Fergus and his successors in Holyrood palace The Roman history is
were an attempt to give substance to the phantom names of the stillmeager and u erearly Scotch story; those of the founders of the oldest colleges in tar.
the gallery of the Bodleian library betray the tendency to make much out of little,
to labor after a full idea of those who are only known to us by one particular action of their lives. So it has fared with the early history of Rome; Romulus and
Numa are like king Fergus; John of Balliol, and Walter of Merton, are the counterparts of Servius Tullius, and Brutus, and Poplicola. Their names were known,
and their works were living; and men, longing to image them to their minds more
completely, made up by invention for the want of knowledge, and composed in
one case a pretended portrait, in the other a pretended history.
There have been hundreds, doubtless, who have looked on the portrait of John
of Balliol, and, imposed upon by the name of portrait and by its being the first in
a series of pictures of which the greater part were undoubtedly copied from the
life, have never suspected that the painter knew no more of the real features of
his subject than they did themselves. So it is that we are deceived by the early
history of the Roman commonwealth. It wears the form of annals, it professes
to mark accurately the events of successive years, and to distinguish them by the
names of the successive consuls, and it begins a history which, going on with these
same forms and pretensions to accuracy, becomes, after a time, in a very large
proportion really accurate, and ends with being as authentic as any history in the
world. Yet the earliest annals are as unreal as John of Balliol's portrait; there is
in both cases the same deception. I cannot as yet give a regular history of the
Roman people; all that can be done with the first years of the commonwealth,
as with the last of the monarchy, is to notice the origin and character of the institutions, and for the rest, to be contented with that faint outline which alone can
be relied upon as real.
The particulars of the expulsion of the last king of Rome, and his family and
house, can only be given, as they already have been, in their poeti-The commons gained
cal form. It by no means follows that none of them are historical, someth ing by the exbut we cannot distinguish what are so. But we may be certain, pulsion of Tarquinius,
whether Brutus belonged to the commons, as Niebuhr thinks, or not, that the
commons immediately after the revolution recovered some of the rights of which
the last king had deprived them; and these rights were such as did not interfere
with the political ascendancy of the patricians, but yet restored to the commons
their character of an order, that is, a distinct body with an internal organization




ï~~48

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. VIIL

of its own.  The commons again chose their judges to decide ordinary civil causes
when both parties belonged to their own order, and they again met in their Compitalia and Paganalia, the common festivals.of the inhabitants of the same neighborhood in the city and in the country. They also gained the important privilege
of being, even in criminal matters, judges of their own members, in case of an
appeal from the sentence of the magistrate. As a burgher might appeal to the
people or great council of the burghers, so a commoner might appeal to the commons assembled in their tribes, and thus in this respect the two orders of the nation
were placed on a footing of equality. It is said also that a great many of the richest families of the commons who belonged to the centuries of knights, or horsemen,
were admitted as new patrician houses into the order of the patricians, or burghers,
or people of Rome; for I must again observe, that the Roman people or burghers,
and the Roman commons, will still for a long period require to be carefully distinguished from each other.
In the first year of the commonwealth, the Romans still possessed the dominForeign relti.ns of ion enjoyed by their king; all the cities of the coast of Latium, as
Rmi.n upte  oftho we have already seen, were subjected to them as far as Terracina.
alliance with the Latins. The territoryon Within twelve years, we cannot certainly say how much sooner,
the right bank of the
Tiber is conquerd by these were all become independent.  This is easily intelligible, if we
tho Etruocnos.
othe Etruscans.  nly take into account the loss to Rome of an able and absolute
king, the natural weakness of an unsettled government, and the distractions produced by the king's attempts to recover his throne. The Latins may have held,
as we are told of the Sabines' in this very time, that their dependent alliance with
Rome had been concluded with king Tarquinius, and that as he was king no
longer, and as his sons had beeni driven out with him, all covenants between Latium and Rome had become null and void. But it is possible also, if the chronology of the common story of these times can be at all depended on, that the
Latin cities owed their independence to the Etruscan conquest of Rome. For that
war, which has been given in its poetical version as the war with Porsenna, was
really a great outbreak of the Etruscan power upon the nations southward of
Etruria, in the very front of whom lay the Romans. In the very next year after
the expulsion of the king, according to the common story, and certainly at some
time within the period with which we are now concerned, the Etruscans fell upon
Rome. The result of the war is, indeed, as strangely disguised in the poetical
story as Charlemagne's invasion of Spain is in the romances. Rome was completely conquered; all the territory which the kings had won on the right bank
of the Tiber was now lost.3   Rome itself was surrendered to the Etruscan conqueror;4 his sovereignty was fully acknowledged,5 the Romans gave up their arms
and recovered their city and territory on condition of renouncing the use of iron6
except for implements of agriculture.    But this bondage did not last long: the
Etruscan power was broken by a great defeat sustained before Aricia; for after
the fall of Rome the conquerors attacked Latium, and while besieging Aricia, the
united force of the Latin cities, aided by the Greeks? of Cumin, succeeded in de'
1 A(Ka repi reTv ovptoXaliov. Dionysius, V. 2.  " Deditio" meant may be seen by the form pre
2 Dionysius, V. 40.                    served by Livy, I. 88.
SThis is confessed in the poetical story: only  s The senate, says Dionysius, V. 84, voted him
it is added that Porsenna, out of admiration for an ivory throne, a sceptre, a golden crown, and
the Romans, gave the conquered land back triumphal robe. These very same honors had
again to them after the war. But Niebuhr has been voted, according to the same writer, to the
well observed that the Roman local tribes, which Roman king Tarquinius Priscus by the Etruswere thirty in number in the days of Ser. Tul- cans, as an acknowledgment of his supremacy,
lius, appear reduced to twenty' in the earliest II. 62.
mention of them after the expulsion of Tarquin-  0 Pliny, XXXIV. 14. In fcedere quod expulins; and it appears from the account of the Vei- sis regibus populo Romano dedit Porsenna, noentian war of 271, that the Roman territory could minatim comprehensum invenimus, ne ferro
not then have extended much beyond the hill nisiin agriculturA uterentur. Compare l Samuel
Janiculum.                               xiii. 19, 20. These passages from Tacitus and
STacitus, Histor. III. 72. Sedem Jovis op- Pliny were first noticed by Beaufort in his Essay
timi maximi,-quam non Porsenna dedita urbe, on the Uncertainty of the Early Roman History
neque Galli capt, temerare potuissent. What  Dionysius, V. 86, et VII. 2-11.




ï~~CHr. VIII.]  ROME AFTER THE END OF THE MONARCHY.

49

stroying their army, and in confining their power to their own side of the Tiber. Still,
however, the Romans did not recover their territory on the right bank of that
river, and the number of their tribes, as has been already noticed, was consequently
lessened by one third, being reduced from thirty to twenty.
Thus, within a short time after the banishment of the last king, the Romans lost
all their territory on the Etruscan side of the Tiber, and all their Relations of Rome
dominion over Latium. A third people were their immediate neigh- with the Sabi.ne.
bors on the northeast, the Sabines. The cities of the Sabines reached, says Varro,
from Reate, to the distance of half a day's journey from Rome, that is, according
to the varying estimate of a day's journey,8 either seventy-five or a hundred stadia, about ten or twelve miles. But with the more distant Sabines of Reate, and
the high valley of the Velinus, our history has yet no concern. The line of mountains which stretches from Tiber to the neighborhood of Narnia was a natural
division between those Sabines who lived within it, and those who had settled
without it, in the lower country nearer Rome. These last were the Sabines of
Cures,9 twenty-four miles from Rome, of Eretum, five miles nearer to it, of Nomentum, about the same distance, of Collatia and Regillus, southward of the Anio,
and in the midst of Latium; and at a more ancient period, these same Sabines
possessed Crustumerium, Caenina, Antemnme, and, as we have seen, two of the very
hills which afterwards made up the city of Rome. But living so near I o rr even
in the midst of the Latins, these more lowland Sabines had become in some degree Latinized, and some of their cities partook in the worship of Diana on the
Aventine," together with the Romans and the Latins, during the reign of the last
king of Rome. Perhaps they also were his dependent allies, and, like the Latins,
renounced their alliance with Rome immediately after his expulsion. At any rate,
we read of a renewal of wars between them and the Romans four years after the
beginning of the commonwealth, and it is said, that at this time Attus Clausus,'
a citizen of Regillus, as he strongly opposed the war, was banished by his countrymen, and went over to the Romans with so large a train of followers, that he
was himself received immediately as a burgher, gave his name to a new tribe,
which was formed out of those who went over with him, and oltained an assignment of lands beyond the Anio, between Fidenm and Ficulea. But when we read
of the lake Regillus as belonging to the territory of Tusculum," and when we also
find Nomentum included amongst the thirty cities of the Latins, which concluded
the great alliance with Rome, in the consulship of Spurius Cassius, we are inclined
to suspect that the lowland Sabines about this time were forced to join themselves
some with the Romans and some with the Latins, being pressed by both on different quarters, when the alliance between the three nations was broken up. Thus
Collatia, Regillus, and Nomentum fell to the Latins; and then it may well have
happened that the Claudii and Postumii, with their followers, may have preferred
the Roman franchise to the Latin, and thus removed themselves to Rome; while
if Niebuhr's conjecture be true, that the Crustuminian tribe as well as the Claudian was created at this time, we might suppose that Crustumeria,. and other Sabine cities in its neighborhood, whose very names have perished, united themselves
rather with the Romans: certain it is that from this time forward we hear of no
Sabine city nearer to Rome than Eretum, which, as I have already said, was nineteen miles distant from it. It is certain also that the first enlargement of the
Roman territory, after its great diminution in the Etruscan war, took place towards
the northeast, between the Tiber and the Anio; and here were the lands of the
only new tribes that were added to the Roman nation, for the space of more than
one hundred and twenty years3 after the establishment of the commonwealth.
Herodotus reckons the day's journey in one  14 As appears from the story in Livy, I. 45.
place at two hundred stadia, IV. 801, and in an-  2 Livy, II. 16. Dionysius, V. 40.
other place at one hundred and fifty stadia, V. 58.  1 Livy, II. 19, "ad lacum Regillum in agro
e Bunsen, "Antichi Stabilimenti Italici," in Tusculano."
the  Annali dell' Instituto. di Corrispondenza  1 The number of tribes continued to be
Archeologica," Vol. VI. p. 183.        twenty-one till three years after the invasion M
4




ï~~50

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. VIII

The chronology of this period is confessed by Livy'4 to be one mass of confusion; it was neither agreed when the pretended battle at the lake
Of the fpretended iret. f the cens  Regillus was fought, nor when the first dictator was created; and
during this period.
during this period. accordingly, Dionysius sets both events three years later than they
are placed by Livy. But a far more surprising disorder is indicated by the returns of the census, if we may rely on them as authentic; for these make the
number of Roman citizens between fifteen and sixteen years of age to have been
one hundred and thirty thousand,'5 in the year following the expulsion of the
Tarquinii; to have risen to one hundred and fifty thousand seven hundredt at
the end of the next ten years, and again five years later to have sunk to one
hundred and ten thousand.17 It should be added, that these same returns gave
eighty-four thousand seven hundred as the number of citizens, at the first census
of Servius Tullius; and for this amount Dionysius quotes expressly the tables of
the census. Now, Niebuhr rejects the census of Servius Tullius as unhistorical,
but is disposed to admit the authenticity of the others. Yet surely if the censor's
tables are to be believed in one case, they may be in the other; a genuine record
of the census of Servius Tullius might just as well have been preserved as that of
Sp. Lucretius and P. Valerius Poplicola. And it is to be noted, that although
Dionysius gives the return of the census taken by the dictator T. Lartius, as one
hundred and fifty thousand seven hundred, yet he makes Appius Claudius, five
years afterwards, give the number at one hundred and thirty thousand;18 and then,
although Appius quotes this number as applying to the actual state of things,
yet the return of the census, at the end of that same year, gives only one hundred
and ten thousand. I am inclined to suspect that the actual tables of the census,
before the invasion of the Gauls, perished in the destruction of the city; and that
they were afterwards restored from the annalists, and from the records of different families, as was the case with the Fasti Capitolini. If this were so, different
annalists might give different numbers, as they also give the names of consuls differently; and exaggeration might creep in here, as in the list of triumphs, and
with much less difficulty. For although Niebuhr's opinion is no less probable than
ingenious, that the returns of the census include the citizens of all those foreign
states which enjoyed reciprocally with Rome each other's franchise, still the numbers in the period under review seem inconsistent, not only with the common
arrangement of the events of these years, but with any probable arrangement that
can be devised. For if the Latins and other foreigners are not included in the
census of Poplicola, the number of one hundred and thirty thousand is incredibly
large; if they are included, with what other states can we conceive the interchange of citizenship to have been contracted in the ten following years, so as to
have added twenty thousand names to the return made at the end of that period?
I am inclined, therefore, to think that the second pretended census of the commonwealth, taken by the dictator T. Lartius, which gives an amount of one hundred and fifty thousand seven hundred citizens within the military age, is a mere
exaggeration of the annalist or poet, whoever he was, who recorded the acts of the
first dictator.
But the really important part of the history of the first years of the commonProgress of distress wealth is the tracing, if possible, the gradual depression of the coma.ongst the ommonos. mons to that extreme point of misery which led to the institution
of the tribuneship. We have seen that, immediately after the expulsion of the
king, the commons shared in the advantages of the revolution; but within a few
years we find them so oppressed and powerless, that their utmost hopes aspired,
the Gauls, when four new ones were added, rum modo sed etiam auctorum digerere pos
Livy, VI. 5.                           sis.
4 II. 21. Tanti errores implicant temporum,  15 Dionysius, V. 20.
uliter apud alios ordinatis magistratibus, ut nee  16 Dionysius, V. 715.
qui consules secundum quosdam, nee quid quo-  Dionysius, V. 96.
que anno actum sit, in tanta vetustate non re-  1 Dionysius, V. 6.




ï~~CHAP. VIII.]  ROME AFTER THE END OF THE MONARCHY.

51

not to the assertion of political equality with the burghers, but merely to the obtaining protection from personal injuries.
The specific character of their degradation is stated to have been this: that there
prevailed19 among them severe distress, amounting in many cases to
Its particular characactual ruin; that to relieve themselves from their poverty, they er, that they became
were in the habit of borrowing money of the burghers; that the involved in debt.
distress continuing, they became generally insolvent; and that as the law of debtor
and creditor was exceedingly severe, they became liable in their persons to the
cruelty of the burghers, were treated by them as slaves, confined as such in their
workhouses, kept to task-work, and often beaten at the discretion of their taskmasters.
In reading this statement, a multitude of questions suggest themselves. Explanations and discussions must occupy a large space in this part of our history,
for when the poetical stories have been once given, there are no materials left for
narrative or painting; and general views of the state of a people, where our means
of information are so scanty, are little susceptible of liveliness, and require at every
step to be defended and developed. The perfect character of history in all its
freshness and fulness is incompatible with imperfect knowledge; no man can step
boldly or gracefully while he is groping his way in the dark.
A population of free landowners naturally engages the imagination; but such
a state of society requires either an ample territory or an uninter- The causes which led
scauses which led
rupted state of peace, if it be dependent on agriculture alone. The ththis lstate of debt.
The plundering invaRoman territory might be marched through in a day; and after sions of the neionborthe overthrow of the powerful government of Tarquinius, which, gnations.
by the extent of its dominion, kept war at a distance, the lands of the Roman
commons were continually wasted by the incursions of their neighbors, and were
actually to a large extent torn away by the Etruscan conquest. The burghers
suffered less, because their resources were greater: the public undivided land,
which they alone enjoyed, was of a very different extent from the little lots assigned to each commoner, and besides, as being chiefly left in pasture, it suffered much less from the incursions of an enemy; a burgher's cattle might often
be driven off in time to one of the neighboring strongholds, while a commoner's
corn and fruit-trees were totally destroyed. Again, if commerce were forbidden
to a commoner, it certainly was not to a burgher; and those whose trade with
Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa was sufficiently important to be made the subject of
a special treaty, were not, like the commoners, wholly dependent on a favorable
season, or on escaping the plundering incursions of the neighboring people.
Thus it is easy to conceive how, on the one hand, the commoner would be driven
to borrow, and on the other how the burgher would be able to lend.
The next step is also plain.  Interest was as yet wholly arbitrary; and where
so many were anxious to borrow, it was sure to be high.   Thus The high rate of inter
again the commons became constantly more and more involved et.
and distressed, while the burghers engrossed more and more all the wealth of
the community.
Such a state of things the law of the Israelites had endeavored by every means
to prevent or to mitigate.  If a small proprietor found himself The severity of the law
ruined by a succession of unfavorable seasons, or by an inroad of of debtor and creditor.
the Philistines or Midianites, and was obliged to borrow of his richer neighbor,
the law absolutely forbade his creditor to take any interest at all. If he were
obliged to pledge his person for payment, he was not to serve his creditor without hope, for at the end of seven years, at the farthest, he was restored to his
freedom, and the whole of his debt cancelled. Or if he had pledged his land to
his creditor, not only was the right secured to him and to his relations of redeeming
it at any time, but even if not redeemed it was necessarily to return to him or to his

1 See the story of the old centurion, in Livy, II. 28.




ï~~52

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHIAP. VIII

heirs in the year of jubilee, that no Israelite might by any distress be degraded for,
ever from the rank of a freeman and a landowner.   A far different fate awaited the
plebeian landowner at Rome. When he found hiniself involved in a debt which
he could not pay, his best resource was to sell himself to his creditor, on the condition that unless the debt were previously discharged, the creditor, at the expiration of a stated term, should enter into possession of his purchase. This was
called, in the language of the Roman law, the entering into a nexum,20 and the
person who had thus conditionally sold himself was said to be "nexus."     When
the day came, the creditor claimed possession, and the magistrate awarded it;
and the debtor, thus given over to his purchaser, addictus, passed, with all that
belonged to him, into his power; and as the sons were considered their father's
property, they also, unless previously emancipated, were included in the sale,
and went into slavery together with their father. Or if a man, resolved not by
his own act to sacrifice his own and his children's liberty, refused thus to sell
himself, or, in the Roman language, to enter into a nexum, and determined to
abide in his own person the consequences of his own debt, then he risked a fate
still more fearful. If, within thirty days after the justice of the claim had been
allowed, he was unable to discharge it, his creditor might arrest him, and bring
him before the court; and if no one then offered to be his security, he was given
over to his creditor, and kept by him in private custody, bound with a chain of
fifteen pounds weight, and fed with a pound of corn daily.- If he still could not,
or would not, come to any terms with his creditor, he was thus confined during
sixty days, and during this period was brought before the court in the comitium,
on three successive market-days, and the amount of his debt declared, in order
to seewhether any one would yet come forward in his behalf.    On the third market-day, if no friend appeared, he was either to be put to death, or sold as a
slave into a foreign land beyond the Tiber; that is, into Etruria, where there was
as yet no interchange of franchise with Rome, amidst a people of a different language. Or if there were several creditors, they might actually hew his body in
pieces; and whether a creditor cut off a greater or smaller piece than in proportion to his debt,2" he incurred no penalty.
Aulus Gellius, who wrote in the age of the Antonines, declares that he had
never heard or read of a single instance in which this concluding provision had
been acted upon. But who was there to. record the particular cruelties of the
Roman burghers in the third century of Rome? and when we are told generally
that they enforced the law against their debtors with merciless severity, can we
doubt that there were individual monsters, like the Shylock and Front de Bceuf
of fiction, or the Earl of Cassilis of real history, who would gratify their malice
against an obnoxius or obstinate debtor, even to the extremest letter of the law?
It is more important to observe that this horrible law was continued in the twelve
tables, for we cannot suppose it to have been introduced there for the first time;
that is to say, that it made part of a code sanctioned by the commons, when they
were triumphant over their adversaries.   This shows, that the extremest cruelty
against an insolvent debtor was not repugnant, in all cases, to the general feeling of the commons themselves, and confirms the remark of Gellius, that the Romans had the greatest abhorrence of breach of faith, or a failure in performing
engagements, whether in private matters or in public. It explains also the long
For this explanation of the term " Nexus," lock had in his bond omitted to insert. " Si
see Niebuhr, Vol. I. p. 601, et seqq. Ed. 2.  plus minusve secuerunt, se fraude esto" (" se"
21 See the Extracts from the law of the XII. is the old form for "sine"). Besides, the last
tables in A. Gellius, XX. 1.Â~ 45, et seqq. Some penalty, reserved for him who continued obstimodern writers have imagined that the words nate, was likely to be atrocious in its severity.
" partes secanto" were toJ be understood of a What do we think of the I peine foirte et dure"
division of the debtor's property, and not of his denounced by the English law against a prisoner
person; But Niebuhr well observes, that the who refused to plead? a penalty not repealed till
following provision alone refutes such anotion; the middle of the last century, and quite as
a provision giving to the creditor that very se- cruel as that of the law of the XII. tables, and
eurity in the infliction of his cruelty, which Shy- not less unjust.




ï~~CHAP. VIII.]  ROME AFTER THE END OF TIHE MONARCHY.

53

patience of the commons under their distress, and, when at last it became too
grievous to endure, their extraordinary moderation in remedying it. Severity
against a careless or fraudulent debtor seemed to them perfectly just; they only
desired protection in cases of unavoidable misfortune or wanton cruelty, and this
object appeared to be fulfilled by the institution of the tribuneship, for the tribune's power of protection enabled him to interpose in defence of the unfortunate,
while he suffered the law to take its course against the obstinate and the dis
honest.
Such a state of things, however, naturally accounts for the political degradation of the commons, and the neglect of the constitution of Servius The distress of the
Tullus.The distress                                      of the
Tullius. The Etruscan conquest had deprived the Romans of their commons led to their
arms: how, amidst such general distress, could the conimons again k.  potly.
provide themselves with the full arms of the phalanx; or how could they afford
leisure for that frequent training and practice in warlike exercises, which were
essential to the efficiency of the heavy-armed infantry? It may be going too far
to say that the tactic of the phalanx was never in use after the establishment
of the commonwealth; but it clearly never existed in any perfection. It is quite
manifest, that if the heavy-armed infantry had constituted the chief force of the
nation, and if that infantry, according to the constitution of Servius Tullius, had
consisted exclusively of the commons, the commons and not the burghers would
soon have been the masters of Rome; the comitia of the centuiries would have
drawn all power to itself, the comitia of curia would have been abolished, as incompatible with the sovereignty of the true Roman people. The comitia of the
tribes would have been wholly superfluous, for where could the commons have
had greater weight than in an assembly where they formed exclusively every
century except six?   Whereas the very contrary to all this actually happened:
the commons remained for more than a century excluded from the government;
the curim retained all their power; the comitia of tribes were earnestly desired
by the commons, as the only assembly in which they were predominant; and
when, after many years, we can trace any details of the comitia of centuries, we
find them in great measure assimilated to those of the tribes, and the peculiarity
of their original constitution almost vanished.
But the comitia of centuries were not an assembly in which the commons were
all-powerful. We are expressly told2 that the burghers' clients Influence exercised by
voted in these centuries; and these were, probably, become a more theirbur hers throt e
wealthy and a more numerous body, in proportion as the commons comitia of centuries.
became more and more distressed and miserable. If a third part of the commons had lost their lands by the event of the Etruscan war, if a large proportion
of the rest were so involved in debts that their property was scarcely more than
nominally their own, we may feel quite sure that there would be many who would
voluntarily become clients, in order to escape from their actual misery. What
they lost, indeed, by so doing, was but little in comparison of what they gained;
they gave up their order, they ceased to belong to a tribe, and became personally
dependent on their patron; but, on the other hand, they might follow any retail
trade or manufacture; they retained their votes in the comitia of centuries, and
were saved by the protection of their patron from all the sufferings which were
the lot of the insolvent commoner. For as the patron owed his client protection,
he was accounted infamous if he allowed him to be reduced to beggary: and thus
we read of patrons granting lands to their clients, which, although held by them
only at will, were yet, under present circumstances, a far more enviable possession than the freeholds of the commons. And whilst the clients had thus become
more numerous, so they would also, from the same causes, become more wealthy,
and a greater number of them would thus be enrolled in the higher classes,
whilst the commons, on the other hand, were continually sinking to the lower.
22 Livy, II. 64. Irata plebs interesse consularibus comitiis noluit. Per patres, clientesque
patrum consules creati.




ï~~54

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. VIII

Yet, amidst the general distress of the commons, we meet with an extraordiSeparatioc ofthe rich nary statement in one of the speeches" in Dionysius, that more than.romo.nsfrom the four hundred persons had been raised in one year from the infanmoos of their order.
mass of their order  try to the cavalry service on account of their wealth.  This, strange
as it seems at first, is probable, and full of instruction. When money bore so high
a rate of interest, capital was sure to increase itself rapidly, and in a time of distress, whilst many become poorer, there are always some also who, from that very
circumstance, become richer. The rich commons were thus likely to increase
their fortunes, whilst the poorer members of their order were losing every thing.
It was, then, the interest of the burghers to separate these from the mass of the
commons, and to place them in a class which already seems to have acquired its
character of a moneyed and commercial interest; a class which resigned the
troubles and the honors of political contests for the pursuit and safe enjoyment
of riches. Further, the removal of the richest commoners from the infantry service rendered the organization of the phalanx more and more impracticable, and
thus preserved to the burghers, whether serving as cavalry or heavy-armed infantry, their old superiority; for that the burghers in these times did sometimes
serve on foot,24 although generally they fought cn horseback, is proved not only
by the story of L. Tarquitius, whose poverty, it is said, had forced him to do so,
but by the legend of the valiant deeds of Caius Marcius, and of the three hundred Fabii who established themselves on the Cremera. It is probable that, when
occasion required it, they were the principes in rich armor who fought in the van
of the infantry, although, in ordinary circumstances, they fought on horseback;
and as the infantry of the neighboring nations was not better organized than their
own, the horsemen in these early times are constantly described as deciding the
issue of the battle.
Thus the monarchy was exchanged for an exclusive aristocracy, in which the
The g.vroment be- burghers or patricians possessed the whole dominion of the state.
romeo.oen ousi For, mixed as was the influence in the assembly of the centuries,
a stocracy.    and although the burghers through their clients exercised no small
control over it, still they did not think it safe to intrust it with much power. In
the election of consuls, the centuries could only choose out of a number of patrician or burgher candidates; and even after this election it remained for the
burghers in their great council in the curim to ratify or to annul it, by conferring
upon, or refusing to the persons so elected, "the Imperium;" in other words, that
sovereign power which belonged to the consuls as the successors of the kings, and
which, except so far as it was limited within the walls of the city, and a circle of
one mile without them, by the right of appeal, was absolute over life and death.
As for any legislative power, in this period of the commonwealth, the consuls
were their own law.    No doubt the burghers had their customs, which, in all
great points, the consuls would duly observe, because otherwise, on the expiration of their office, they would be liable to arraignment before the curiam, and to
such punishment as that sovereign assembly might please to inflict; but the commons had no such security, and the uncertainty of the consuls' judgments was
the particular grievance which afterwards led to the formation of the code of the
twelve tables.
We are told, however, that within ten years of the first institution of the conA. U. C. 53. A.C.4499. suls, the burghers found it necessary to create a single magistrate
Institution of the dicta- with powers still more absolute, who was to exercise the full sovtorship.       ereignty of a king, and even without that single check to which the
kings of Rome had been subjected.     The Master of the people,3 that is, of the
23 That of M. Valerius on resigning his dic- foot, are given by Dionysius, VI. 83, and VIII:
tatorship in the year 260. See Dionysius, VI. 67 and by Livy, II. 65. III. 62. IV. 88.
48-45.                                     5"Magister populi." See Varro, de Ling.
24 Instances of battles won by the cavalry, Lat. V. 82. Ed. Iviiller, et Festus in " optima
when they had left their horses and fought on lex."




ï~~CHAP. VIII.]  ROME AFTER THE END OF THE MONARCHY.

55

burghers, or, as he was otherwise called, the Dictator, was appointed, it is true,
for six months only; and therefore liable, like the consuls, to be arraigned, after
the expiration of his office, for any acts of tyranny which he might have committed during its continuance.  But whilst he retained his office he was as absolute within the walls of the city, as the consuls were without them; neither commoners nor burghers had any right to appeal from his sentence, although the latter had enjoyed this protection in the times of the monarchy. This last circumstance seems to prove that the original appointment of the dictator was a measure of precaution against a party amongst the burghers themselves, rather than
against the commons; and gives a probability to that tradition" which Livy
slighted, namely, that the consuls who were for the first time superseded by "the
Master of the burghers," were inclined to favor the return of the exiled king. It
is not likely that they were the only Romans so disposed: and if a strong minority amongst the burghers themselves, and probably a large portion of the commons, were known to favor the restoration of the old government, it is very intelligible that the majority of the burghers should have resolved to strengthen the
actual government, and to appoint an officer who might summarily punish all conspirators, of whatever rank, whether belonging to the commons or to the burghers.
If the consuls were superseded by the dictator because they could not be relied upon, we may be quite sure that the appointment was not left to their free
choice."7 One of the consuls received the name of the person to be declared dictator from the senate; he then declared him dictator, and he was confirmed and
received the imperium by a vote of the great council of the curie.  The dictator
must previously have held the highest magistracy in the state," that is, he must
have been prmtor, the old title of the consuls. Thus, afterwards, when the powers
of the original pretors were divided between the consuls and prmtors of the later
constitution, any man who had been prmtor was eligible to the dictatorship, no
less than one who had been consul.
Together with the Master of the burghers, or dictator, there was always appointed the Master of the knights or horsemen.  In later times this The Master of the
officer was always named by the dictator himself, but at first it knightsorhorsemen.
seems as if both alike were chosen by the senate. The Master of the knights
was subject, like every other citizen, to the Master of the burghers; but his own
authority was equally absolute within his own jurisdiction, that is, over the knights
and the rest of the commons. Lydus expressly says that from his sentence there
was no appeal; Varro says that his power was supreme29 over the knights and
over the accensi; but who are meant by this last term it is difficult to determine.
Fifteen years after the expulsion of Tarquinius, the commons, driven to despair by their distress, and exposed without protection to the ca- Secession of hcompricious cruelty of the burghers, resolved to endure their degraded,o.andfith appotstate no longer. The particulars of this second revolution are as menot of the tribunes.
uncertain as those of the overthrow of the monarchy; but thus much is certain,
and is remarkable, that the commons sought safety, not victory; they desired to
escape from Rome, not to govern it. It may be true that the commons who were
left in Rome gathered together0 on the Aventine, the quarter appropriated to
their order, and occupied the hill as a fortress; but it is universally agreed that
the most efficient part of their body, who were at that time in the field as soldiers, deserted their generals, and marched off to a hill3' beyond the Anio; that
is, to a spot beyond the limits of the Ager Romanus, the proper territory of the
26 Ex factione Tarquinia essent (consules), i  29 "Magister equitum, quod summa potestas
quoque enim traditur, parum creditum  sit. hujus in equites et accensos." Varro, de L. L.,
Livy, II. 81.                            V. 82. Ed. Muiller.
See on this point Niebuhr, Vol. I. p. 591,  30 "Piso auctor est in Aventinum secessioet seqq.                                 nem factam." Livy, II. 32. So also Cicero, do
28  Consulares legere." Livy, II. 18. This, Republica, II. 33, and Sallust, Fragm. Histor.
in the language of the time, would have been I. 2.
" prtetorios legere."                     31 "Trans Anienem amnem est." Livy, I. 82.




ï~~HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. VIIi,

burghers, but within the district which had been assigned to one of the newly
created tribes of the commons, the Crustuminian.2 Here they established themselves, and here they proposed to found a new city of their own, to which they
would have gathered their families, and the rest of their order who were left
behind in Rome, and have given up their old city to its original possessors, the
burghers and their clients.
But the burghers were as unwilling to lose the services of the commons, as the
Egyptians in the like case to let the Israelites go, and they endeavored, by every
means, to persuade them to return. To show how little the commons thought
of gaining political power, we have only to notice their demands. They requireds
a general cancelling of the obligations of insolvent debtors; and the release of all
those whose persons, in default of payment, had been assigned over to the power
of their creditors: and, further, they insisted on having two4 of their own body
acknowledged by the burghers as their protectors; and to make this protection
effectual, the persons of those who afforded it were to be as inviolable as those
of the heralds; the sacred messengers of the gods; whosoever harmed them was
to be held accursed, and might be slain by any one with impunity. To these
terms the burghers agreed; and a solemn treaty was concluded between them
and the commons, as between two distinct nations; and the burghers swore for
themselves, and for their posterity, that they would hold inviolable the persons
of two officers, to be chosen by the centuries on the Field of Mars, whose business
it should be to extend full protection to any commoner against a sentence of the
consul; that is to say, who might rescue any debtor from the power of his creditor, if they conceived it to be capriciously or cruelly exerted. The two officers
thus chosen retained the name which the chief officers of the commons had borne
before: they were called Tribuni, or tribe-masters; but instead of being merely
the officers of one particular tribe, and exercising an authority only over the
members of their own order, they were named tribunes of the commons at large,
and their power, as protectors in stopping any exercise of oppression towards
their own body, extended over the burghers, and was by them solemnly acknowledged. The number of the tribunes was, probably, suggested by that of the
consuls;35 there were to be two chief officers of the commons, as there were of
the burghers.
When these conditions had been formally agreed to, the commons returned to
Rome. The spot on which this great deliverance had been achieved became to
the Romans what Runnymede is to Englishmen: the top of the hill36 was left
forever unenclosed and consecrated, and an altar was built on it, and sacrifices
offered to Jupiter, who strikes men with terror and again delivers them from
their fear; because the commons had fled thither in fear, and were now returning in safety. So the hill was known forever by the name of the Sacred Hill.

52 Hence Varro calls it " secessio Crustumerina," de L. L., V. 81. Ed. M iller.
33 Dionysius, VI. 88-89.
4 " Two" is the number given by Piso (Livy,
II. 58), and by Cicero, Fragm. pro Cornelio, 23.
Ed. Nobb., et de Republic, II. 34. "Two,"
according to Livy and Dionysius, were originally created, and then three more were added to
the number immediately. According to Piso,
there were only two for the first twenty-three
years, and by the Publilian law they became five.
Fourteen years after this, in 297, the number,
according to Livy and Dionysius, was raised to
ten. (Livy, III. 30. Dionys. X. 80.) But Cicero, in his speech for the tribune Cornelius, says
that ten were chosen in the very next year after
the first institution of the office, and chosen by
the comitia curiata. So great are the varieties
in the traditions of these times. Possibly, however, the number really was altered backwards

and forwards; and it may have been raised to
ten in the year 261, when Sp. Cassius was consul, and afterwards reduced to its original number, when his popular measures were repealed
or set aside by the opposite party. With regard
to the curie, I agree with Niebuhr, that their
share in the appointment of the tribunes must
have been rather a confirmation or rejection of
the choice of the centuries, than an original election. This the curie would claim at every election made by the centuries; and it was the object of the Publilian law to get rid of this claim,
amongst other advantages, by transferring the
appointment to the comitia of the tribes.
5 Or, as Niebuhr supposes, by the number of
tribes, at this time reduced to twenty-one, so
that each decury of tribes should have one tribune of its own. But the odd number, twentyone, may seem to make against this supposition.
1 Dionysius, VI. 90.




ï~~Cnsr. IX.]    SPURIUS CASSIUS-LEAGUE WITH THE LATINS.                     5,
Thus the dissolution of the Roman nation was prevented; the commons had
gained protection; their rights as an order were again and more fully recognized;
their oppressions were abated; better times came to relieve their distress, and
they became gradually more and more fitted for a higher condition, to become
citizens and burghers of Rome in the fullest sense, sharing equally with the old
burghers in all the benefits and honors of their common country.
CHAPTER IX.
SPURIUS CASSIUS-THE LEAGUE WITH THE LATINS AND HERNICANS-THE
AGRARIAN LAW.-A. U. C. 261-269.
" The noble Brutus
IHath told you, Cesar was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Cesar answered it."
Of rpoardra roi e4bov, rs roX s coi yvotvro, rvpavvidL rsrievro 7advrec i roiro ipwv 6ir ro
pjeov 7rLere v9vre5, fR  7ricrtg ',v  j iarixSLa b rp  rou   7r ouwovs..-AlIsToT. P olitic. V. 5.
BRUTUS and Poplicola were no doubt real characters, yet fiction has been so
busy with their actions, that history cannot venture to admit them within her
own proper domain.    By a strange compensation of fortune, the first Roman
whose greatness is really historical, is the man whose deeds no poet sang, and
whose memory the early annalists, repeating the language of the party who
destroyed him, have branded with the charge of treason, and attempted tyranny.
This was Spurius Cassius. Amidst the silence and the calumnies of his enemies, he
is known as the author of three works to which Rome owed all her future greatness; he concluded the league with the Latins in his second consulship, in his
third he concluded the league with the Hernicans, and procured, although with
the price of his own life, the enactment of the first agrarian law.
I. We know that the Latins were in the first year of the commonwealth
subject to Rome. We know that almost immediately afterwards League with the,
they must have become independent; and it is probable that they insmay have aided the Tarquinii in some of their attempts to effect their restoration.
But the real details of this period cannot be discovered: this only is certain,
that in the year of Rome 261, the Latin confederacy, consisting of the old
national number of thirty cities, concluded a league with Rome on terms of
perfect equality; and the record of this treaty, which existed at Rome on a
brazen pillar' down to the time of Cicero, contained the name of Spurius Cassius,
as the consul who concluded it, and took the oaths to the Latin deputies on
behalf of the Romans. It may be that the Roman burghers desired to obtain
the aid of the Latins against their own commons, and that the fear of this union
led the commons at the Sacred Hill to be content with the smallest possible concessions from their adversaries; but there was another cause for the alliance, no
less natural, in the common danger which threatened both Rome and Latium
from the growing power of their neighbors on the south, the Oscan, or Ausonian,
nations of the.fEquians and the Volscians.
The thirty cities which at this time formed the Latin state, and concluded the
'Cicero pro Balbo, 28. Livy, II. 33.




ï~~58

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. IX

A..c..1.The ti. league with Rome, were these:2 Ardea, Aricia, Bo ille, Bubenty states of tum. turn, Corniculum, Carventum, Circeii, Corioli, Corbio, Corn, For.
Conditifthleg  tuna or Foretii, Gabii, Laurentum, Lanuvium, Lavinium, Lavici,
Nomentum, Norba, Prmeneste, Pedum, Querquetulum, Satricum, Scaptia, Setia,
Tellena, Tibur, Tusculum, Toleria, Tricrinum, Velitrm. The situation of several
of these places is unknown; still the list clearly shows to how short a distance
from the Tiber the Roman territory at this time extended, and how little was
retained of the great dominion enjoyed by the last kings of Rome. Between
this Latin confederacy and the Romans there was concluded a perpetual league:'
"There shall be peace between them so long as the heaven shall keep its place
above the earth, and the earth its place below the heaven: they shall neither
bring nor cause to be brought any war against each other, nor give to each
other's enemies a passage through their land; they shall aid each other when
attacked with all their might, and all spoils and plunder won by their joint arms
shall be shared equally between them. Private causes shall be decided within
ten days, in the courts of that city where the business which gave occasion to
the dispute may have taken place." Further, it was agreed that the command
of the Roman and Latin armies, on their joint expeditions, should one year4 be
given to the Roman general, and another to the Latin: and to this league nothing
was to be added, and nothing taken away, without the mutual consent of the
Romans and the confederate cities of the Latins.
II. Seven years afterwards the same Spurius Cassius, in his third consulship,5
A. v. c.26s. League concluded a similar league with the cities of the Hernicans. The
with the Hernit s.  Hernicans were a Sabine, not a Latin people, and their country
lay chiefly in that high valley which breaks the line of the Apennines at Prmneste,
and running towards the southeast, falls at last into the valley of the Liris. The
number of their cities was probably sixteen; but with the exception of Anagnia,
Verulme, Alatrium, and Ferentinum, the names of all are unknown to us. They,
like the Latins, had been the dependent allies of Rome under the last Tarquinius;
they, too, had broken off this connectibn after the establishment of the commonwealth, and now renewed it on more equal terms for mutual protection against
the.fEquians and Volscians. The situation of their country, indeed, rendered
their condition one of peculiar danger; it lay interposed in the very midst of the
country of these enemies, having the.AEquians on the north, and the Volscians
on the south, and communicating with the Latin cities and with Rome only by
the opening in the Apennines already noticed under the citadel of Prmneste.

2 Dionysius, V. 61. I have followed the readings of the Vatican MS. given in the various
readings in Reiske's Edition, with Niebuhr's
corrections, Vol. II. p. 19, 2d Ed.
3 Dionysius, VI. 95.
4 Cincius de Consulum Potestate, quoted by
Festus in "Prntor ad Portam."    The whole
passage is remarkable. " Cincius ait, Albanos
rerum potitos usque ad Tullum regem: Alba
deinde diruta usque ad P. Decimn Murem cos.
populos Latinos ad caput Ferentin, quod est
sub Monte Albano, consulere solitos, et imperium communi consilio administrare. Itaque quo
anno Romanos imperatores ad exercitum mittere oporteret jussu nominis Latini, complures
nostros in Capitolio a sole oriente auspiciis operam dare solitos. Ubi ayes addixissent, milltern illum qui a communi Latio missus esset,
ilium quem ayes addixerant pratorem salutare
solitum, qul eamrn provinciam obtineret prntoris
nomine." Cincius lived in the time of the second Punic war, and his works on various points
ofRoman law and antiquities were of high value.
His statement, which bears on the face of it a
character of authenticity, is quite in agreement
with what Dionysius reports of the treaty itself,

and only gives an additional proof of the'-systematic falsehood of the Roman annals in their
accounts of the relations of Rome with foreigners. It is true that the words of Cincius, " quo
anno," do not expressly assert that the command was held by a Roman every other year;
and it may be that after the Hernicans joined
the alliance, the Romans had the command only
once in three years. But as the Latin states
were considered as forming one people, and the
Romans another, it is most likely that so long
as the alliance subsisted between these two parties only, the command shifted from the one to
the other year by year.
5 Dionysius, VIII. 69. T g spas 'Epvyica E f
veyxeV bpoloyag " avrat a' aav itvrtypapo ri
rpas Aarivov syevoapvov. Amongst other clauses,
therefore, of the treaty was one which secured to
the Hernicans their equal share of all lands conquered by the confederates; namely, one-third
part. This is disfigured by the annalist, whom
Livy copied, in a most extraordinary manner;
he represented the Hernicans as being deprived
by the treaty of two-thirds of their own land.
" Cum Hernicis fedus ictum, agri partes dui
ademtne." Livy, II. 41.




ï~~CHAP. IX.]

THE AGRARIAN L.4W.

59

On the other hand, the Romans were glad to obtain the willing aid of a brave
and numerous people, whose position enabled them to threaten the rear of the
Volscians, so soon as they should break out from their mountains upon the plain
of Latium or the hills of Alba.
Thus by these two treaties with the Latins and Hernicans, Spurius Cassius
had, so far as was possible, repaired the losses occasioned to the importance of these two
Roman power by the expulsion of Tarquinius, and had reorganized treaties.
that confederacy to which, under her last kings, Rome had been indebted for her
greatness. The wound was healed at the very critical moment, before the storm of
the great Volscian invasions burst upon Latium. It happened of necessity that
the Latins, from their position, bore the first brunt of these attacks; Rome could
only be reached when they were conquered: whereas, had it not been for the
treaty concluded by Spurius Cassius, the Volscians, on their first appearance in
Latium, might have been joined by the Latins; or the surviving cities of the confederacy, after the conquest of some of their number, might have taken refuge
under the protection of the conquerors.
But in restoring the league with the Latins and Hernicans, Spurius Cassius
had only adopted a part of the system of the Roman kings. sp. Cassius proposes an
Another, and a far more difficult part, yet remained: to strengthen agrarian law.
the state within; to increase the number of those who, as citizens, claimed their
share of the public land, and out of this public land to relieve the poverty of
those who united the two inconsistent characters of citizenship and beggary.
Spurius Cassius proposed, what tradition ascribed to almost every one of the
kings as amongst his noblest acts, an agrarian law. But he was not a king; and
it is but too often a thankless act in the eyes of the aristocracy, when one of
their own members endeavors to benefit and to raise the condition of those who
are not of his own order.
If, amongst Niebuhr's countless services to Roman history, any single one may
claim our gratitude beyond the rest, it is his explanation of the Th true character of
true nature and character of the agrarian laws. Twenty-four th agian e.wsas
years have not yet elapsed since he first published it, but it has buhr.
already overthrown the deeply rooted false impressions which prevailed universally on the subject; and its truth, like Newton's discoveries in natural science,
is not now to be proved, but to be taken as the very corner-stone of all our
researches into the internal state of the Roman people. I am now to copy so
much of it as may be necessary to the right understanding of the views and
merits of Spurius Cassius.
It seems to have been a notion generally entertained in the ancient world, that
every citizen of a country should be a landholder, and that the Of the publio or deterritory of a state, so far as it was not left unenclosed or reserved..ne laud tin s...cient commonwealths
for public purposes, should be divided in equal portions amongst and its occupation.
the citizens. But it would almost always happen that a large part of it was left
unenclosed; the complete cultivation of a whole country, without distinction of
soil, being only the result of an excess of population, and therefore not taking
place till a late period. The part thus left out of cultivation was mostly kept as
pasture, and a revenue was raised from it, not only from every citizen who had
turned out sheep or cattle upon it, but also from strangers, who, although incapable of buying land, might yet rent a right of pasture for their flocks and herds.
But when a new territory was gained in war, the richer parts of it already in
cultivation were too valuable to be given up to pasture; while, on the other hand,
if they were divided, the division could only follow the general rule, and allot
an equal portion to every citizen. In these circumstances, it was the practice at
Rome, and doubtless in other states of Italy, to allow individuals to occupy such
lands, and to enjoy all the benefits of them, on condition of paying to the state
the tithe of the produce as an acknowledgment that the state was the proprietor
of the land, and the individual merely the occupier. With regard to the state,




ï~~60

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. 1L

the occupier was merely a tenant at will; but with respect to other citizens, he
was like the owner of the soil, and could alienate the land which he occupied
either for a term of years or forever, as much as if he had been its actual proprietor.
This public land thus occupied was naturally looked to as a resource on every
rortions of it were admission of new citizens. They were to receive their portion of
granted to new citizens. freehold land, according to the general notion of a citizen's condition; but this land could only be found by a division of that which belonged to
the public, and by the consequent ejectment of its tenants at will. Hence, in the
Greek states, every large accession to the number of citizens6 was followed by a
call for a division of the public land; and as this division involved the sacrifice
of many existing interests, it was regarded with horror by the old citizens,' as an
act of revolutionary violence. For although the land was undoubtedly the
property of the state, and although the occupiers of it were in relation to the
state mere tenants at will, yet it is in human nature that a long undisturbed
possession should give a feeling of ownership, the more so, as while the state's
claim lay dormant, the possessor was in fact the proprietor; and the land would
thus be repeatedly passing by regular sale from one occupier to another. And
if there was no near prospect of the state's claiming its right, it is manifest that
the price of land thus occupied would, after some years of undisturbed possession,
be nearly equal to that of an actual freehold.
Under such circumstances the English law, with its characteristic partiality to
The occupier s of the individual and existing interests, would no doubt have decided, as
wabaltd eed y- it did in the somewhat similar case of the copyholds, that the
ways he ejected at     thtoewheo                        cpaoas           h
pleasure of the state. occupier could not be ejected so long as he continued to pay his
tithe to the state. The Roman law, on the other hand, in a spirit no less characteristic, constantly asserted the utterly precarious tenure of the occupier,8 whenever the state might choose to take its property into its own hands. And
accordingly, most of the kings of Rome are said to have carried an agrarian law,
that is, to have divided a portion, more or less, of the public land amongst those
whom they admitted to the rights of citizenship. Yet it was understood that
these new citizens, the Roman commons, although they received their portion of
land as freehold, whenever the public land was divided, had still no right to
occupy it' while it lay in the mass unallotted; while the old burghers, who

SAovrtvot--roAirat re rsypdiiavro roaXoic, cati
& d o rilv yiv irov6et Avad dcaaOat. Thucyd. V. 4.
So, again, when the Cyrenmans in Africa
wished to increase the number of their citizens,
they invited over any Greek that chose to come,
holding out the temptation of an allotment of
land. Herodotus, IV. 159.
'7 Hence it was a clause of the oath taken by
every member of the court of Helima at Athens,
that he would allow no division of the land of
the Athenians (Demosthen. Timocrat. p. 746);
by which it was not meant that there was any
dream of a division of the private property of
Athenian citizens, but of the public land of the
commonwealth, which being beneficially enjoyed by the existing citizens, could not, without loss to them, be allotted out to furnish freehold properties, scOpot, for any citizens newly
admitted to the franchise.
8 I have used the words "occupation" and
t occupier," rather than " possession" and
c possessor," to express the Latin terms " possessio" and "possessor," because the English
word "possession" is often usedto denote what
is a man's own property, whereas it was an essential part of the definition of "possessio,"
that it could relate only to what was not a man's
own property. Hence the clause in the Licinon law, "Ne quis plus quingenta jugera agri

possideret," was understood by every Roman
without the addition of the word "publici" to
" agri," because the word " possidere" could
not in a legal sense apply to private property,
although there is no doubt that in common language it is often found in that signification.
SThis was because the plebs was not yet considered to be a part of the populus: bIpos and
nd6X, were still carefully distinguished, and the
state, or people, or burghers, claimed the exilusive administration of what may be called
the corporate property of the state. Those who
are acquainted with the affairs of the colleges
of the English universities will recollect the
somewhat similar practice there with regard to
fines. Whatever benefits arise out of the administration of the college property belong exclusively to the ruling part of the society: the
fellows engross the fines to themselves, just as
the burghers at Rome enjoyed the exclusive
right of occupying the publie land. But the
rents of college lands are divided in certain
fixed proportions amongst the fellows and scholars, the populus and plebs of the society. And
a law which should prohibit the practice of
taking a fine on the renewal of a lease of college property, and should order the land to be
let at its full value, in order to secure to the
scholars their due share in all the benefits aris



ï~~CHAP. IX.]

THE AGRARIAN L &W,

61

enjoyed exclusively the right of occupation with regard to the undivided public
land, had no share in it whatever when it was divided, because they already
enjoyed from ancient allotment a freehold property of their own. Thus the
public land was wholly unprofitable to the commons, so long as it was undivided,
and became wholly lost to the burghers whenever it was divided.
Now twenty-four years after the expulsion of Tarquinius, there must have
been at least as great need of an agrarian law as at any former An agrarian law was
period of the Roman history. The loss of territory on the right pgreodofneeeodat this
bank of the Tiber, and all those causes which had brought on the tory.
general distress of the commons, and overwhelmed them hopelessly in debts,
called aloud for a remedy; and this remedy was to be found, according to precedent no less than abstract justice, in an allotment of the public land. For as
the burghers who occupied this land had even grown rich amidst the distress of
the commons, so they could well afford to make some sacrifice; while the reservation to them of the exclusive right of occupying the public land till it was
divided, held out to them the hope of acquiring fresh possessions, so soon as the
nation, united and invigorated by the proposed relief, should be in a condition to
make new conquests.
Spurius Cassius accordingly proposed an agrarian law1Â~ for the division of a
certain proportion of the public land, while from the occupiers of Spurius cassisu pro
the remainder, he intended to require the regular payment of the roe lo aw, o  wohbyi to
tithe, which had  been greatly neglected, and to apply the revenue the burghers.
thus gained to paying the commons, whenever they were called out to serve as
soldiers. Had he been king he could have carried the measure without difficulty,
and would have gone down to posterity invested with the same glory which
rendered sacred the memory of the good king Servius. But his colleague,
Proculus Virginius,n headed the aristocracy in resisting his law, and in maligning
the motives of its author. His treaties with the Latins and Hernicans were
represented as derogating from the old supremacy of Rome; and this cry roused
the national pride even of the commons against him, as, four centuries afterwards,
a similar charge of sacrificing the rights of Rome to the Italian allies ruined the
popularity of M. Drusus. Still it is probable that the popular feeling in favor
of his law was so strong, that the burghers yielded to the storm for the moment,
and consented to pass it." They followed the constant policy of an aristocracy,

ing out of the college property, would give no
bad idea of the nature and objects of an agrarian law at Rome.
10 1 have here followed Niebuhr (Vol. II. 188,
2d ed.) in assuming as the original proposal of
Cassius, what is represented in Dionysius as
the proposal of A. Sempronius Atratinus, to
which the senate assented. Dionysius, VIII.
75 76.
li Livy, II. 41. This was the great quarrel
between the nobles and the commons in Castile.
The commons complained that the crown domains had been so granted away to the nobles,
that now, as the nobles were exempt from taxation, the commons were obliged to defray all
the expenses of the public service at their own
private cost. And it was the commons' insistming that the nobles should give up the domains
as being strictly public property, which determined the nobles to take part with the crown,
in the famous war of the commons in the reign
of Charles V. See Ranke, Fursten und Volker
von Sid-Europa. Vol. I. p. 218.
12 See Niebuhr, Vol. II. p. 196. He argues,
that as the tribunes, before the Publilian laws,
had no power of originating any legislative
measure, and as we hear of their agitating the
question of the agrarian law, year after year
from the death of Cassius, the fact must have

been that the law was passed, and its execution
fraudulently evaded; and that the tribunes demanded no more than the due execution of an
existing law. And he supposes that the words
of Dionysius, rorro r al6ypa ld 6V hr tov invtexOsy, rdv re Kdarcrov lravees  rlpaywyiaS icai rilv
avaopptco  fiv EK TWv vrcvrwv OTrdaLV oni d'ae r'epatrrp o po EA ev, VIII. 76, are taken from some
Roman annalist, who by the words "ad populum
latum" meant the old populus, the assembly of
the burghers in their curie. At any rate, the
words dgT rav iov dEoeve xOev seem to imply more
than the mere communicating to the people
the knowledge of a decree of the senate. They
must apparently signify that the decree of the
senate, as a rpof3oAsvga, was submitted to the
people for its acceptance and ratification; and
this t"people" must have been the burghers in
their curie, and by its being stated that the
bringing the measure before the people put an
end to the agitation, it must surely be conceived that the measure was not rejected, but
passed. For the'words, i  svpLVne T r7-6 jaov, as
signifying "to submit a measure to the people
for their confirmation of it," it can hardly be
necessary to quote instances, rour (vyypaotagevyyp avra yvpvII. v67 yivS r v, ov.Thucyd. VIII. 67.




ï~~62

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CIIAP.X

to separate the people from their leaders, to pacify the former by a momentary
resignation of the point in dispute, and then to watch their time for destroying
the latter, that so when the popular party is deprived of its defenders, they may
wrest from its hands that concession which it is then unable to retain.
When, therefore, the year was over, and Spurius Cassius was no longer consul,
Spunrius Cassius is im- the burghers knew that their hour of vengeance had arrived.
poho, borem te Ser. Cornelius and Quintus Fabiust" were the new consuls; Kmeso
berghees, condemned,
and executed.  Fabius, the consul's brother, and Lucius Valerius, were the inquisitors of blood, questores parricidii, who, as they tried all capital offences subject
to an appeal to the burghers or commons, were also empowered to bring any offender at once before those supreme tribunals, instead of taking cognizance of his
case themselves. Cassius was charged with a treasonable attempt to make himself king, and the burghers, assembled in their curiae, found him guilty. He
shared the fate of Agis and of Marino Falieri; he was sentenced to die as a
traitor, and was, according to the usage of the Roman law, scourged and beheaded, and his house razed to the ground,
CHAPTER X.
ASCENDENCY OF THE ARISTOCRACY-THE FABII AND THEIR SEVEN CONSULSHIPS-THE PUBLILIAN LAW.-A. U. C. 269-288.
'HavxtavIx se to x hsafa Kardi Kr~T tV rov'roTv a ers K4tolpo 5 I  irdex v re 3atoov, dKai  ayqn, iv46pts.
--THUCoYD. VIII. 66.
"Les abus rfcens avaient brav6 la force et dipass6 la prfvoyance des anciennes lois: ii fallait
des garanties nouvelles, explicites, rev~tues de la sanction du parlement tout entier. C'ftait no
rien faire que de renouveler vaguement des promesses tant de fois violees, des statuts si longtemps oublifs."-GUIzor, Rvolution d'Angleterre, Livre I. p. 45.
THE release of all existing debts by the covenant concluded at the Sacred Hill,
and the appointment of the tribunes to prevent any tyrannical enThe burghers claim
the excosive appoint- forcement of the law of debtor and creditor for the time to come,
met of the conss.  had relieved the Roman commons from  the extreme of personal
degradation and misery. But their political condition had made no perceptible
advances; their election of their own tribunes was subject to the approval of the
burghers; and their choice of consuls, subject also to the same approval, was
further limited to such candidates as belonged to the burghers' order.       Even
this, however, did not satisfy the burghers; the death of Spurius Cassius enabled
them to dare any usurpation; while on the other hand, they needed a more absolute power than ever, in order to evade their own concession in consenting to
his agrarian law. Accordingly, they proposed to elect' the consuls themselves,
" Livy, II. 41.                         ation then made in the constitution. And Zo1 See Niebuhr, Vol. II. p. 202, et seqq. Dio- naras, who copies Dion Cassius, says expressly
nysius and Livy both ascribe the election of that the commons, in the year 278, insisted on.2Emilius and Fabius to the influence of the pa- electing one of the consuls, for at that time both
tricians; but Dionysius (VIII. 83) further noti- were chosen by the patricians. It seems, thereces their coming into office as a marked period fore, probable that the period from 270 to 273
in the Roman history, and mentions the date, was marked by a decided usurpation on the part
and the name of the archon at Athens for that of the burghers, and that during that time they
year; as if there had been some important alter- alone elected both consuls.




ï~~CHAP. X.]

ASCENDENCY OF THE ARISTOCRACY.

63

and only to require the confirmation of them by the centuries; a form which
would be as unessential as the crowd's acceptance of the king at an English coronation, inasmuch as it was always by the vote of the burghers in their curiae
that the imperium or sovereignty was conferred; and when a consul was already
in possession of this, it mattered little whether the centuries acknowledged his title
or not.  In this manner were Lucius.iEmilius, and Kaeso Fabius, A  c.0.
the prosecutor of Spurius Cassius, chosen consuls by the burghers;
and it was in vain that the commons demanded the execution of the agrarian
law; the consuls satisfied the object of those who had elected them, and the law
remained a dead letter. The same spirit was manifested in the
elections of the following year, and was attended with the same A..C..
result; the other prosecutor of Cassius, L. Valerius, was now chosen by the
burghers, and with him another member of the Fabian house, Marcus, the brother
of K eso and of Quintus.
But the complete usurpation of the consulship by the burghers served to call
into action the hitherto untried powers of the tribuneship. In the The tribunes protect
n~eamle   -the commons in their
year 271, the tribune Caius Maenius2 set the first example of ex- e fosmm ton stheir
tending the protection of his sacred office to those of the com- soldiers.
mons, who on public grounds resisted the sovereignty of the consuls, by refusing
to serve as soldiers.  This was the weapon so often used from this time forwards
in defence of the popular cause: the Roman commons, like those of England,
sought to obtain a redress of grievances by refusing to aid the government in its
wars; they refused to furnish men, as our fathers refused to furnish money.
But the first exercise of this privilege was overborne with a high hand; the consuls held their enlistment of soldiers without the city; there the tribunes' protection had no force; and if any man refused to appear, and kept his person safe
within the range of the tribunes' aid, the consuls proceeded to lay waste his land,
and to burn and destroy his stock and buildings, by virtue of that sovereign
power which, except within the walls of the city, was altogether unlimited. Accordingly the tribunes' opposition totally failed, and the consuls obtained the army
which they wanted.
But there is an undying power in justice which no oppression can altogether
put down.   Caius Mmnius had failed, but his attempt was not The centuries recover
entirely fruitless; a spirit was excited amongst the commons     e power o p photwno
which induced the burghers the next year, after long disputes and consuls.
delays, to choose for one of the consuls a man well affected to the cause of the
commons; and the year afterwards it was agreed by both orders AU.272.
that the election should be divided between them; that one consul
should be chosen by the burghers in their curiae, and the other by the whole
people in their centuries. Still, however, it must not be forgotten, that the votes
of the burghers' clients were at this time so numerous in the centuries, as to give
to their patrons no small influence even in the election of that consul who was
particularly to be the representative of the commons. Yet the commons regarded
the change as a triumph, and it was marked as a memorable event3 in the annals,
that in the year 273, Kaeso Fabius was again chosen consul by the burghers, and
that Spurius Furius was elected as his colleague by the people in their centuries.
The refusal of the burghers to execute the agrarian law still rankled in the
minds of the commons; and when men were again wanted to A.U.C. 273. The Roan soldiers  soffer
serve against the.Equians and Veientians, Spurius Licinius,4 one themselvesutobe bsueaten
of the tribunes, again offered his protection to those who refusedg biat for the burghto enlist. But his colleagues betrayed him, and either as being aer
majority of the college overruled the opposition of Licinius, or by an abuse of
their peculiar power, offered their protection to the consuls in enforcing their

SDionysius, VIII. 87.
SZonaras, VII. 17. Dionysius, IX. 1.

4 Livy, II. 43.




ï~~64

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. X,

orders against the refractory. Thus an army was raised; but the soldiers who
followed Keso Fabius into the field, regarded him and the burghers as more their
enemies than the Yeientians, and according to the Roman annalists, they refused
to conquer, and retreated before an enemy whom they could have vanquished if
they would. This is merely the habitual style of Roman arrogance; but that
brave men may be found capable of allowing themselves to be slaughtered by
the enemy rather than risk the possibility of winning a victory for a commander
whom they detest, we know, not merely from the suspicious accounts of the Roman writers, but from the experience of our own naval service in the last war, in
one memorable instance as melancholy as it was notorious.
Marcus Fabius was again chosen as the burghers' consul for the next year, and
A. U. c. 274. The On. Manlius5 was elected by the centuries. Another attempt to
ouse h taue e Fob s  stop the raising of an army was made by the tribune Tiberius
ports the cause of     rasioeo
comons.       Pontificius, and was again baffled by the opposition of his colleagues. But this year witnessed an accession to the cause of the commons, of
importance more than enough to compensate for the defection of the majority of
the tribunes. The Fabian house had now been in possession of one place in the
consulship for six years without interruption, a clear proof that no other house
among the burghers could compare with them in credit and in power. Standing
at the head of their order, they had been most zealous in its cause, and had incurred proportionably the hatred of the commons. But they had men amongst
them of a noble spirit, who could not bear to be so hated by their countrymen,
as that their own soldiers should rather allow themselves to be slaughtered by
the enemy than conquer under the command of a Fabius. Thus the new consul,
Marcus Fabius, was resolved to conciliate the commons;7 he succeeded so far as
to venture to give battle to the Veientians; in the battle. he and his brothers
fought as men who cared for nothing else than to recover their countrymen's
love; Quintus Fabius, the consul of the year 272, was killed; but the Romans
gained the victory. Then the Fabii, to show that they were in earnest, persuaded
the burghers to divide amongst their houses the care of the wounded soldiers;
they themselves took charge of a greater number than any other house, and discharged the duty which they had undertaken with all kindness and liberality.
Thus, when the burghers named Kaso Fabius to be again their consul, he was
as acceptable to the centuries as his colleague whom they themselves appointed,
Titus Virginius.
Kaso did not delay an instant in showing that his sense of the wrongs of the
A.U. c... a - commons was sincere; he immediately9 required that the agrarian
tion of the Fabii to h  law of Spurius Cassius should be duly carried into effect. But
Cremera,where they are
t off bytVie- the burghers treated him with scorn; the consul, they said, had
tisos.
forgotten himself, and the applause of the commons had intoxicated him. Then K eso and all his house, finding themselves reproached for
having deserted their former cause, resolved to quit Rome altogether. The war
with the Veientians showed them how they might still be useful to their old
country: they established themselves on the Cremera, a little stream that runs
into the Tiber from the west, a few miles above Rome. Here they settled with
their wives and families,'0 with a large train of clients," and with some of the
burghers also who were connected with them by personal ties, and who resolved
to share their fortune. The Fabii left Rome as the Claudii had left Regillus a
few years before; they wished to establish themselves as a Latin colony in
Etruria, serving the cause of Rome even while they had renounced her. But two
Patres-M. Fabium consulem creant: Fabio  9 Livy, II. 48.
collega On. Manlius datur. Livy, II. 43.  1 See Niebuhr, Vol. II. p. 219. Aulus GelSLivy, II. 44.                       lius says, Sex et trecenti Fabii cum familiis suis
7 Neque immemor ejus, quod initio consula- -oeurcumventi perierunt.
tus imbiberat, reconciliandi animos plebis, &c.  n indras r ro To  lavrv tray$evos scal iXov"
Livy, II. 17. ad fin.                  and again, a little below, r te urrAcov 7rNaryw
Livy, II. 45-47.                     rs ta ioratpwov bv. Dionysius, IX. 15.




ï~~CHAP. X.]

THE PUBLILIAN LAW.

65

years afterwards they fell victims to the Veientians, who surprised A. U. C. 7.
them, put them all to the sword, and destroyed their settlement.
The commons had gained strength and confidence from the coming over of
the Fabii to their cause; they gratefully honored the spirit which The commons impeach
had made them leave Rome, and when they heard of their over- the console for allowing
throw, they at once accused the burghers of having treacherously the Fb to be cu.
betrayed them. Titus Menenius, one of the consuls, had been quietly lying
encamped1" near the Cremera when the Fabii were cut off., He was accused,
therefore, in the following year of treason, and was condemned; A.U.c2.18.
but the tribunes themselves pressed for no heavier sentence than
a fine, although he actually died from vexation and shame at having been subjected to such a sentence. In the next year'3 another consul was A
accused by the tribunes, because he had been defeated in battle A.U.C..
by the Veientians, but he defended himself manfully, and was acquitted.
This habit of acting on the offensive for two successive years emboldened the
commons, and they now began again to call for the execution of Genucis impeaches the
the agrarian law of Cassius. The consuls L. Furius and C. Man- coslfo..ito i ongthe
execution of the agralius resisted this demand during their year of office, but as soon cian law.
as that was expired, Cn. Genucius,'4 one of the tribunes, impeached them both
before the commons for the wrong done to that order.            A.t c.
The burghers were now alarmed, for they saw that the commons were learning
their own strength, and putting it in practice. They desired, at A. U. C. 281. He is
any risk, to produce a reaction, and they acted at Rome as the found dead in his bed
Spartans some years afterwards treated their Helots, or as thebeothtr.
Venetian nobles in modern times silenced those bold spirits whom they dreaded.
On the night before the day fixed for the trial of the consuls, Genucius the tribune was found dead in his bed.15
The secrecy and treachery of assassination are always terrifying to a popular
party, who have neither the organization among themselves to be
Other assassinations the
able to concert reprisals, nor wealth enough to bribe an assassin, tribune VoleroPubli a
romeo forward.
even if no better feeling restrained them from  seeking such aid. e owa.
Besides, the burghers were not satisfied with a single murder; others whom they
dreaded were put out of the way by the same means as Genucius; and like the
Athenian aristocratical conspirators in the Peloponnesian war, they freely used
the assassin's dagger to secure their ascendency."  Thus the tribunes for awhile
were silenced, and the consuls proceeded to enlist soldiers to serve against the.Equians and Volscians. Amongst the rest was one Volero Publilius,1 who had
served before as a centurion, and who was now called on to serve as a common
soldier; he refused to obey, and being a man of great vigor and activity, he
excited the commons to support him, and the consuls and their lictors were
driven from the Forum. Here the disturbance rested for the time, but Volero
was chosen to be one of the tribunes for the year ensuing.
Volero was a man equal to the need. The tribunitian power might be crippled by the influence of the burghers at the elections; the burgh- A. U. C.28. The Pub.
ers' clients were so numerous in the centuries, that they could ilian law.
elect whom they would; and thus, in ordinary times, the college of tribunes
might, perhaps, contain a majority who were the mere tools of the burghers, and
who could utterly baffle the efforts of their colleagues. This Volero was impatient to prevent, and taking advantage of the excitement of the moment, when
the commons were enraged by the murder of Genucius, he proposed a law that
the tribunes, for the time to come,18 should be chosen by the votes of the commons in their tribes, and not by those of the whole people in their centuries.
12 Livy, II. 52.                       1 Zonaras, VII. 17. Dion Cass. Fragm. V'
13 Livy, II. 52.                     tic. XXII.
14 Livy, II. 54.                       " Livy, II. 55.
15 Livy, II. 54.                       18 Livy, II. 56.




ï~~66

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. X.

No tribune could be persuaded to betray the cause of his order and of public
It is violently opposed freedom by opposing Volero on this occasion; but the year passed
y the burghers.  away, and the burghers were thus long successful in obstructing
the ftheher progress of the law. It should be remembered that Volero could
but propose his measure to the commons assembled in their tribes, and that even
if accepted by them, it did not, therefore, become a law, but rather resembled
the old petitions of the house of commons, which required the sanction of the
king and the house of lords before they could become the law of the land.    So
any resolution of the tribes was no more than a petition addressed to the senate
and burghers; but there is a moral power in such petitions which is generally
irresistible, and the burghers well understood the policy of an aristocracy, to fight
its battle in the assembly of the commons themselves, rather than to commit their
order in an open contest with the whole order of the commons.      Accordingly,
the burghers labored to prevent Volero from carrying his petition in the assembly of the tribes.  With this view, their method was delay: the tribes met to
transact business only once in eight days, once, that is, in a Roman week;19 and
no measure could be proposed unless notice had been given of it two full weeks
beforehand, while any measure that was not carried on the day that it was
brought forward, was held to be lost, and could not be again put to the vote till
after the lapse of two full weeks more. The object, therefore, of the burghers
was so to obstruct the course of business, whenever the tribes met, as to spin it
out to sunset without a division; then the measure was lost, and could not be
brought on again till after a fortnight's interval. And they interrupted and delayed the business of the tribes, by appearing with their clients in the Forum,
and purposely exciting a disturbance with the commons. Besides, we are told
that Rome was this year visited with a severe epidemic disorder, which, though
it lasted only a little while, was exceedingly fatal. This was an interruption to
ordinary business, and this, together with the arts of the burghers, prevented
the commons from coming to a resolution in favor of their measure throughout
the whole course of the year.
Volero was re-elected tribune;"0 Appius Claudius was chosen consul by the
A. U. c. s283. But at burghers, and T. Quintius was elected as his colleague by the
last carried.  centuries. With Volero there was chosen also another tribune
more active than himself, Caius Letorius;21 the oldest of all the tribunes, but a
man endowed with a resolute spirit, and well aware of the duty of maintaining
the contest vigorously.  Fresh demands were added to those contained in Volero's first law: the mediles were to be chosen by the tribes as well as the tribunes,
and the tribes were to be competent" to consider all questions affecting the whole
nation, and not such only as might concern the commons. Thus the proposed
law was rendered more unwelcome to the burghers than ever, and Appius determined to resist it by force.  Letorius was provoked by the insulting language
of the consul, and he swore that on the next day on which the law could be
brought forward, he would either get it passed by the commons before evening,
or would lay down his life upon the place."3 Accordingly, when the tribes assembled, Appius stationed himself in the Forum, surrounded by a multitude of the
younger burghers and of his own clients, ready to interrupt the proceedings of the
commons.    Letorius called the tribes to vote, and gave the usual order that all
strangers, that is, all who did not belong to any tribe, should withdraw from the
Forum. Appius refused to stir;24 the tribune sent his officer to enforce obedience, but the consul's lictors beat off the officer, and a general fray ensued, in
SIn the Roman Kalendars which have been elusive manner of reckoning, common to all the
preserved to us, eight letters are used to mark nations of antiquity.
the several days of the month, just as seven are  2o Livy, II. 56.
used by us. Thus, the nones of the month fell  21 Dionysius, IX. 46.
always one Roman week before the ides; the  n Dionysius, IX. 48. Zonaras, VII. 17.
term nonse, like that of nundine to express the  23 Livy, II. 56.
weekly market-day, having reference to the in-  24 Livy, II. 56.




ï~~CHAP. X.]

THE PUBLILIAN LAW.

67

which Lmtorius received some blows; and matters would have come to extremity, it is said, had not T. Quintius interposed, and with great difficulty parted the
combatants. This, however, appears to be one of the usual softenings of the
annals, which delighted to invest these early times with a character of romantic
forbearance and innocence. Both parties were thoroughly in earnest; Lretorius had received such injuries as to rouse the fury of the commons to the utmost;
again had the sacred persons of the tribunes been profaned by violence, and Laetorius might soon share the fate of Genucius. Accordingly, the commons acted
this time on the offensive: they neither withdrew to the Sacred Hill, nor shut
themselves up in their own quarter on the Aventine, but they attacked and occupied" the Capitol, and held it for some time as a fortress, keeping regular guard,
under the command of their tribunes, both night and day. The occupation of
the citadel in the ancient commonwealths implied an attempt to effect a revolution; and a popular tribune, thus holding the Capitol with his partisans, might,
at any instant, make himself absolute, and establish his tyranny, like so many of
the popular leaders in Greece, upon the ruins of the old aristocracy. The senate, therefore, and the wiser consul, T. Quintius, resisted the violent counsels of
Appius and the mass of the burghers; it was resolved that the law, which we
must suppose had been passed by the commons immediately before they took
possession of the Capitol, should be immediately laid before the senate, to receive the assent of that body. It received the senate's sanction,2" and with this
double authority it was brought before the burghers in their curiae, to receive
their consent also; the only form wanting to give it the force of a law. But the
decision of the wisest and most illustrious members of their own body overcame
the obstinacy of the burghers: they yielded to necessity; and the second great
charter of Roman liberties, the Publilian law, was finally carried, and became the
law of the land. Some said that even the number of tribunes was now, for the
first time, raised to five, having consisted hitherto of two only. At any rate, the
names of the first five tribunes, freely chosen by their own order, were handed
down to posterity; they were C. Siccius,2 L. Numitorius, M. Duilius, Sp. Icilius,
and L. Maecilius.
In this list we meet with neither Volero nor Letorius. Volero, as having
been already tribune for two years together, and having been less prominent in
the final struggle, may naturally have been passed over; but Letorius,. like
Sextius at a later period, would surely have been the first choice of the commons, when they came to exercise a power which they owed mainly to his exertions. Was it, then, that his own words had been prophetic; that he had, in fact,
given up his life in the Forum on the day when he brought forward the law; that
the blows of Appius' burghers were as deadly as those of Keso Quinctius, or of
the murderers of Genucius, and that Letorius was not only the founder of the
greatness of his order, but its martyr also?
Thus, after a period of extreme depression and danger, the commons had again
begun to advance, and the Publilian law, going beyond any former charter, was
a sure warrant for a more complete enfranchisement yet to come. The commons could now elect their tribunes freely, and they had formally obtained the
right of discussing all national questions in their own assembly. Thus their power
spread itself out on every side, and tried its strength, against that time when,
from being independent, it aspired to become sovereign, and swallowed up in itself
all the powers of the rest of the community.
2 Dionysius, IX. 48.                  2 Livy, II. 58. He borrows the names from
SDionysius, IX. 49.                 the annals of Piso.




ï~~CHAPTER XI.

WARS WITH THE AEQUIANS AND VOLSCIANS-LEGENDS CONNECTED WITH
THESE WARS-STORIES OF CORIOLANUS, AND OF CINCINNATUS.
" Pandite nune Helicona Den, cantusque movete:
Qui bello exciti reges; que quemque secute
Complerint campos acies; quibus Itala jam turn
Floruerit terra alma viris, quibus arserit armis."
VmaG, En. VII. 641.
NOTHIN   conveys a juster notion of the greatness of Roman history than those
Introduction to the for- chapters in Gibbon's work, in which he brings before us the state
ei history of Rome. of the east and of the north, of Persia and of Germany, and is led
unavoidably to write a universal history, because all nations were mixed up with
the greatness and the decline of Rome. This, indeed, is the peculiar magnificence of our subject, that the history of Rome must be in some sort the history
of the world; no nation, no language, no country of the ancient world, can altogether escape our researches, if we follow on steadily the progress of the Roman
dominion till it reached its greatest extent. On this vast field we are now beginning to enter; our view must be carried a little beyond the valley of the Tiber,
and the plain of the Campagna; we must go as far as the mountains which divide Latium from Campagna, which look down upon the level of the Pontine
marshes, and even command the island summits of the Alban hills: we must
cross the Tiber, and enter upon a people of foreign extraction and language, a
mighty people, whose southern cities were almost within sight of Rome, while
their most northern settlements were planted beyond the Apennines, and, from
the great plain of the Eridanus, looked up to that enormous Alpine barrier which
divided them from the unknown wildernesses watered by the Ister and his thousand tributary rivers.
In the days of Thucydides, the Greek city of Cuma' is described as situated
The Opicans or Ausoni- in the land of the Opicans. The Opicans, Oscans, or Ausonians,.ann, aon the twotqO- for the three names all express the same people, occupied all the
an and Vols cians.  country between (Enotria and Tyrrhenia, that is to say, between
the Silarus and the Tiber; but the sea-coast of this district was full of towns
belonging to people of other nations, such as the Greek cities of Cuma and Neapolis, and those belonging to the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians, such as Tarracina, Circeii, Antium, and Ardea. The Opicans were an inland people, and it was only
by conquest that they at last came down to the sea-coast, and established themselves in some of the Tyrrhenian towns. They had various subdivisions; but
the two nations of them with whom the Romans had most to do, and whose
encroachments on Latium we are now to notice, are known to us under the name
of the.Equians and Volscians.
It is absolutely impossible to offer any thing like a connected history of the
Volscian and _Equian wars with Rome during the first half century from the
beginning of the commonwealth. But in order to give some clearness to the
following sketch, I must first describe the position of the two nations, and class
their contests with Rome, whether carried on singly or jointly, under the names
respectively of the.Equian and Volscian wars, according to the quarter which
was the principal field of action.
Thucyd. VI. 4.




ï~~CHAP. XI.]  WARS WITH THE EQUIANS AND VOLSCIANS,

69

The Volscians, when they first appear in Roman history, are found partly
settled on the line of highlands overlooking the plain of Latium, Their geographical pofrom near Praneste to Tarracina, and partly at the foot of the sition.
hills, in the plain itself. It has been already noticed, that just to the south of
Preneste a remarkable break occurs in this mountain wall, so that only its mere
base has been left standing, a tract of ground barely of sufficient elevation to
turn the waters in different directions, and to separate the source of the Trerus,
which feeds the Liris, from the streams of the Campagna of Rome. This breach
or gap in the mountains forms the head of the country of the Hernicans, who
occupied the higher part of the valley of the Trerus, and the hills on its left bank
downward as far as its confluence with the Liris. But at Prreneste the mountain wall rises again to its full height, and continues stretching to the northward
in an unbroken line, till it is again interrupted at Tibur or Tivoli by the deep valley of the Anio.   Thus from   the Anio.to the sea at Tarracina, the line of hills
is interrupted only at a single point, immediately to the south of Praneste, and
is by this breach divided into two parts of unequal length, the shorter one extending from Tibur to Preneste, the longer one reaching from the point where
the hills again rise opposite to Prueneste as far as Tarracina and the sea. Of
this mountain wall the longer portion was held by the Volscians, the shorter by
the.Equians.
But it is not to be understood that the whole of this highland country was
possessed by these two Opican nations. Latin towns were scat- seat of the wars with
tered along the edge of it overlooking the plain of Latium, such the quians,;
as Tibur and Preneste in the Equian portion of it, and in the Volscian, Ortona,
Corn, Norba, and Setia.   The Aquians dwelt rather in the interior of the mountain country; their oldest seats were in the heart of the Apennines, on the lake
of Fucinus, from whence they had advanced towards the west, till they had
reached the edge overhanging the plain. Nor is it possible to state at what time
the several Latin cities of the Apennines were first conquered, or how often they
recovered their independence.    Tibur and Preneste never fell into the hands of
the.AEquians, their natural strength helping, probably, to secure them from the
invaders.  The   Equians seem    rather to have directed their efforts in another
direction, against the Latin towns of the Alban hills, pouring out readily through
the breach in the mountain line already noticed, and gaining thus an advanced
position from which to command the plain of Rome itself.
The Volscian conquests, on the other hand, were effected either in their own
portion of the mountain line, or in the plain nearer the sea, or with the vocian..
finally, on the southern and western parts of the cluster of the vocian conques ts in
Alban hills, as the.Elquians attacked their eastern and northern Latium.
parts. Tarracina3 appears to have fallen into their hands very soon after the
overthrow of the Roman monarchy; and Antium4 was also an early conquest.
In the year 261, Boville, Circeii, Corioli, Lavinium, Satricum, and Velitre, were
still Latin cities; but allP these were conquered at one time or other by the Vol2 Taking a parallel case from English geogra- seems, therefore, to have fallen soon after me
phy, the gap in the oolitic limestone chain of date of the treaty with Carthage, in which it is
hills which occurs in Warwickshire, between spoken of as a Latin city.
Farnborough and Edge Hill, may be compared  4 It belonged to the Volscians in the year 261,
to the gap at Preneste; the line of hills north- the year in which the Roman league with the
ward and southward from this point, overlook- Latins was concluded. Livy, II. 33.
ing the lias plain of Warwickshire, may repre-  bThe present text of Dionysius has Boas or
sent respectively the countries of the AEquians Bods (VIII. 20). Plutarch has B4AXag (Coriand Volscians; whilst Banbury and the valley olanus, 29); but it appears that Boville, and not
of the Cherwell answer to the country of the Bola, is meant, because the conquest of Bola is
Hernicans., mentioned separately by both writers, and bea It is mentioned as a Volscian town.under cause Plutarch gives the distance of B GAai from
the name of Anxur in the year 349. (Livy, IV. Rome at one hundred stadia, which suits Bo59.) Its capture by the Volscians is nowhere villn, but is too little for Bola. The conquest
recorded; but in the earliest Volscian wars, af- of Circeii, Corioli, Lavinium, and Satricum, is
ter the expulsion of the Tarquins, the seat of noticed by Livy, II. 39. Velitra was taken by
war lies always on the Roman side of it. It the Romans from the Volscians in the year 200,




ï~~70

HISTORY OF ROME,

[CHAP. 1

scians, so that at the period of their greatest success they must have advanced
within twelve miles of the gates of Rome. The legend of Coriolanus represents
these towns, with the exception of Velitre, as having been taken between the
years 263 and 266, in the great invasion conducted jointly by Coriolanus and by
Attius Tullius.  But Niebuhr has given reasons for believing that these conquests were not made till some years later, and that they were effected not all
at once, but in the course of several years. Be this as it may, it is certain that
some of the towns thus taken, Satricum, for instance, Cerceii, and Velitrw, remained for many years in possession of the Volscians. Corioli was destroyed,
and is no more heard of in history, while Bovills and Lavinium were in all probability soon recovered either by the Romans or by the Latins.
Whilst the Volscians were thus tearing Latium to pieces on one side, the Aquiu  c.quess.  ans were assailing it with equal success on the other.  Their conS conquests. quests also are assigned by the legend of Coriolanus to his famous
invasion, when he is said to have taken Corbio,5 Vitellia, Trebia, Lavici, and Pedum.
All these places, with the exception of Trebia, stood either on the Alban hills, or
close to them, and three of them, Corbio, Lavici, and Pedum, are amongst the
thirty Latin cities which concluded the treaty with Spurius Cassius in the year
261. They were retained for many years' by their conquerors; and thus Tibur
and Prmneste were isolated from the rest of Latium, and the Â~Equians had
established themselves on the Alban hills above and around Tusculum, which
remained the only unconquered Latin city in that quarter, and was so thrown
more than ever into the arms of Rome.
Now, had all these conquests been indeed achieved as early as the year 26G,
These conquests were and within the space of one or two years, what could have pre -
effected gradually, du-vented the Equians and Volscians from  effecting the total conizg a period of severalv d  qo                a
years thi.o ef quest of Rome, or what could their armies have been doing in
the  third  century
Rome.          the years from 273 to 278, when the Romans were struggling so
hardly against the Yeientians? Or how comes it, as Niebuhr well observes, if
the zEquians had taken Pedum, and Corbio, and Lavici, in 266, that their armies
are mentioned as encamping on Algidus for the first time in the year 289; a
spot which from that time forwards they continued to occupy, year after year,
till Rome regained the ascendency? It is much more probable that the first
years of the war after 263 were marked by no decisive events; that the league
with the Hernicans in 268 opposed an additional obstacle to the progress of the
Opican nations; but that subsequently, the wars with the Veientians, and the
domestic disputes which raged with more or less violence from the death of Spurius Cassius to the passing of the Publilian law, distracted the attention of the
Romans, and enabled the.zEquians and Volscians to press with more effect upon
the Latins and Hernicans. But Antium was wrested from the Volscians by the
three confederate nations in 286; and the great period of the Roman disasters
is to be placed in the ten years following that event, unless we choose to separate the date of the Volscian conquests from  those of the iEquians.   We must,
then, suppose that Corioli, Satricum, Lavinium, and the towns in that quarter,
had been taken by the Volscians between 266 and 286, that some of these were
afterwards recovered, and that the Romans during the latter part of the period
but it must afterwards have been lost again; pretended revolts of Roman colonies to have
for we find it in arms withthe Volscians against been properly a revolt of the old inhabitants, in
Rome, and afterwards with the Latins; and al- which the Roman colonists, as amatter of course,
though this is spoken of as the revolt of a Re- were expelled or massacred. See Vol. II. p. 44,
man colony, as if the descendants of the cole- 45. Engl. Transl.
nists, sent there after its first conquest in 260,  6 Livy, II. 39.
had always continued in possession of it, yet  7 Lavici was conquered by the Romans in 336.
the well-known inscription found there, known (Livy, IV. 47.) Corbio in 297. (Livy, III. 80.)
by the name of" La Lamina Volsca," or " Bor- No recapture of Pedum is mentioned; but the
giana," is written in the Oscan language, and town probably joined the Latin confederacy
contains the Oscan title " Medix." See Lanzi, again, when it shook offthe Volscian yoke: it
Saggio di Lingua Etrusca, Vol. III. p. 616. I is mentioned in the time of the great Latin war
believe Niebuhr is right in considering such as taking an active part on the Latin side.




ï~~CSAP. XL]  WARS WITH THE 2EQUIANS AND VOLSCIANS.

71

had been regaining their lost ground, till in 286 they became, in their turn, the
assailants, and conquered Antium. Then the.Equians united their arms more
zealously with the Volscians; the seat of the war was removed to the frontier of
Latium, bordering on the Equians, and then followed the invasion of that frontier, the establishment of the iEquians on Algidus, and the repeated ravages of
the Roman territory between Tusculum and Rome.
The period between the year 286 and the end of the century was marked by
the visitations of pestilence as well as by those of war. A short That period was als
but most severe epidemic had raged in the year 282;8 it broke mar ked by the vst.
out again in 288,' and then in 291,10 when its ravages were most tions of pestilence.
fearful. It carried off both the consuls, two out of the four augurs, the Curio
Maximus, with a great number of other persons of all ages and conditions; and
this sickness, like the plague of Athens, was aggravated by the inroads of the.Equians and Volscians, which had driven the country people to fly with their
cattle into Rome, and thus crowded a large popui&tion into a narrow space with
deficient accommodations, while the state of the atmosphere was in itself pestilential, even had it been met under circumstances the most favorable. It is manifest that at this time the Romans were in possession of no fortified towns between
Rome and the Equian frontier; when the Roman armies could not keep the
field, the enemy might march without obstacle up to the very walls of Rome
itself; and there was nothing for them to win, except the plunder of the Roman
territory, and the possession of the capital.
Perhaps, too, these disastrous times were further aggravated by another evil,
which the Roman annals were unwilling openly to avow. When And by internal dismatters came to such a crisis that the commons occupied the Cap-    ons, twhi cdre
p      P_ many Romans in exile,
itol in arms, as was the case immediately before the passing of the 'wo aoinet..d
Publilian law, when we read of dissensions so violent, that the voisceians.
consuls of three successive years were impeached by the tribunes, and a tribune
was on the other hand murdered by the aristocracy; when again, at a somewhat
later period, we read of the disputes about the Terentilian law, and hear of the
banishment of Kieso Quinctius for his violences towards the commons on that
occasion, we may suspect that the whole truth has not been revealed to us, and
that the factions of Rome, like those of Greece, were attended by the banishment of a considerable number of the vanquished party, so that Roman exiles
were often to be found in the neighboring cities, as eager to return as the Tarquinii had been formerly, and as little scrupulous as they of effecting that retur'
through foreign aid. That this was actually the case, is shown by the surprise
of the Capitol, in the year 294, when a body of men, consisting, as it is expressly
said, of Zxles and slaves," and headed by Appius Herdonius, a Sabine, made

8 Dionysius, IX. 42.
s Livy, III. 2. Dionysius, IX. 60.
10 Livy, III. 6, 7. Dionysius, IX. 67.
11 It is not, indeed, expressly said that the
exiles were Roman exiles; and Livy, who, in
his whole narrative of the transaction, says
nothing of Kso, or of his connection with the
conspiracy, uses language which might be applicable to the case of exiles of other countries.
He makes Hercdonius say (III. 15), " Se miserrimi cujusque suscepisse causam, ut exules injuria pulses in patriam   reduceret; id malle
populo Romano auctore fieri: si ibi spes non
sit, Volscos et.Equos, et omnia extrema tentaturum  et concitaturum."    Still even these
words, especially the expression "in patriam,"
instead of "in patrias," are most naturally to
be understood of Roman exiles; if they had
been all Sabines, or Equians, or Volscians, the
attempt would have been made on the citadel
of Cures, or Lavici, or Anxur; not on the Capitol at Rome. But Dionysius' words (X. 14)

admit of no doubt. 'Hv    eabro uyvr6i peria ra
Kparrjtat rv finrtscatpordrov rd7rwve (of Rome, namely) roe re vydeas de 3xcoOat, Ta ro  toi Aov  cis
AveOpiav scaXeiv.  These can certainly be no
other than the exiles and the slaves of Rome.
The supposition in the text receives further
confirmation from a remarkable statement in
Dionysius, that in the year 262, just before the
banishment of Coriolanus, many Roman citizens
were invited by the neighboring cities to leave
their country and to come and live with them
and enjoy their franchise of citizenship. And
a great many ro Xo r dvv left Rome with their
families, he says, on these terms; some of whom
returned afterwards, when better times arrived,
but others continued to live in their new countries. See Dionys. VII. 18. This undoubtedly
must mean that many Romans were obliged to
go into banishment, and these availed themselves of the treaty with the Latins, which
established an interchange of citizenship between Rome and Latium, and became citizens




ï~~72

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. 1

themselves masters of the citadel of Rome. There is, therefore, in all probability, a foundation in truth for the famous story of Coriolanus, but it must be
referred to a period much later than the year 263, the date assigned to it in the
common annals; and the circumstances are so disguised, that it is impossible to
guess from what reality they have been corrupted. It would be a beautiful
story, could we believe that Coriolanus joined the conquering.Equians and Volscians with a body of Roman exiles; that the victories of foreigners put it in his
power to procure his own recall and that of his companions, but that, overcome
by the prayers of his mother, he refrained from doing such violence to the laws
of his country; and, contented with the conquests of his protectors, he refused
to turn them to his own personal benefit, and chose rather to live and die an
exile than to owe his restoration to the swords of strangers. Be this as it may,
the common story is so famous and so striking that it must not be suppressed;
and the life and death of Coriolanus are no unworthy sequel to the story of the
life and death of the last king Tarquinius.
CAIus MAnRcIus was a noble Roman, of tke race of that worthy king, Ancus
story of coriolanus. Marcius;18 his father died when he was a child, but his mother,
the bae aly prohwe at whose name was Volumnia, performed to him  the part both of
the battle by the take             aeerto                      he       bh
Regie s.      father and of mother; and Caius loved her exceedingly, and when
he gained glory by his feats of arms, it was his greatest joy that his mother
should hear his praises; and when he was rewarded for his noble deeds, it was
his greatest joy that his mother should see him receive his crown. And cle
fought at the battle by the lake Regillus,14 against king Tarquinius and the Latins, and he was then a youth of seventeen years of age; and in the heat of the
battle he saw a Roman beaten to the ground, and his foe was rushing on him to
slay him, but Caius stepped before him, and covered him, and slew the enemy,
and saved the life of his fellow-soldier. So Aulus, the general, rewarded him
with an oaken wreath, for such was the reward given to those who saved the life
of a comrade in battle. And this was his first crown, but after this he won many
in many battles, for he was strong and valiant, and none of the Romans could
compare with him.
After this there was a war between the Romans and the Volscians; and the
How e tookbetRomans attacked the city of Corioli.1   The citizens of Corioli
of Corioli, and won opened their gates and made a sally, and drove the Romans back
enameocoriolanus. to their camp.  Then Caius ran forwards with a few brave men,
and called back the runaways, and he stayed the enemy, and turned the tide of
the battle, so that the Volscians fled back into the city. But Caius followed
them, and when he saw the gates still open, for the Volscians were flying into
the city, then he called to the Romans, and said, "For us are yon gates set wide
rather than for the Volscians; why are we afraid to rush in?"   He himself followed the fugitives into the town, and the enemy fled before.him; but when they
saw that he was but one man they turned against him, but Caius held his ground,
for he was strong of hand, and light of foot, and stout of heart, and he drove the
Volscians to the farthest side of the town, and all was clear behind him; so that
the Romans came in after him without any trouble, and took the city. Then all
of some Latin city. And this is the simplest respect, as well as in calling the mother of the
way of accounting for the name Coriolanus, to hero Volumnia, and his wife Virgilia, I have resuppose that he settled at Corioli, and became garded Shakspeare's authority as decisive.
a citizen there; and afterwards, when Corioli  1 Plutarch, Coriolanus, I. 4.
was conquered by the Volscians, joined their  14 Plutarch, Coriolanus, 3.
army in order to prosecute his revenge against  5 Plutarch, Coriolanus, VIII. The story repRome.                                    resents Corioli as a Volscian town, and as taken
12 Zonaras, copying )ion Cassius, and most by the Romans in the consulship of Postumus
of the MSS. of Livy, give the prenomen of Co- Cominius, A. U. C. 261. The authentic monuriolanus as Cneus, and not Caius. Historically ment of these times, the treaty between the Rothe point is of no consequence; but the richest mans and Latins concluded in this very same
poetry in which the story of Coriolanus was ever year, shows that Corioli was then not a Volscian
recorded, Shakspeare's tragedy on that subject, but a Latin town, and one of the thirty states
aas conecrated the name of Caius; and in this which made the alliance with Rome.




ï~~CHAP. XI.]

STORY OF CORIOLANUS.

73

men said, "Caius and none else has won Corioli;" and Cominius the general said,
"Let him be called after the name of the city." So they called him Caius Marcius Coriolanus.16
After this there was a great scarcity of corn, and the commons were much
distressed for want, and the king1 of the Greeks in Sicily sent Coinus offends the comp
ships laden with corn to Rome: so the senate resolved to sell the monos,and isbanished.
corn to the poor commons, lest they should die of hunger. But Caius hated the
commons, and he was angry that they had got tribunes to be their leaders, and
he said, "If they want corn, let them show themselves obedient to the burghers
as their fathers did, and let them give up their tribunes; and then will we let
them have corn to eat, and will take care of them." The commons, when they
heard this, were quite furious, and they would have set upon Caius as he came
out of the senate-house and torn him to pieces, but the tribunes said, "Nay, ye
shall judge him yourselves in your comitia, and we will be his accusers." So
they accused Caius before the commons; and Caius knew th't they would show
him no mercy, therefore he stayed not for the day of his trial," but fled from
Rome, and took refuge among the Volscians. They and Attius He goes to the Vol.
Tullius, their chief, received him kindly, and he lived among them scans:
a banished man.
Attius said to himself, "Caius, who used to fight against us, is now on our
side; we will make war again upon the Romans."       But the Vol- Attis Tllis stirs p
Attius Tullius stirs rp
scians were afraid; so that Attius was forced to practice craftily, war between the Romans and Volsciane.
to make them    do what he wished, whether they would or no. How he ontriveda to
Now the manner of his practice was as follows:"        The great bringthissboot.
games at Rome were finished, but they were going to be celebrated over again
with great pomp and cost, to appease the wrath of Jupiter. For Jupiter had
spoken in a dream to Titus Latinius, a man of the commons, and said, " Go and
bid the consuls to celebrate the games over again with great pomp, for one
danced at the opening of the games'Â~ but now, whom I liked not; and vengeance is coming therefore upon this city." But Titus feared to go to the consuls,
for he thought that every one would laugh at him, and so he did not obey the
god.   A few days after his son fell sick and died; and again the vision appeared
to him in his sleep, and said, "Wilt thou still despise what I tell thee?    Thy
son is dead, but if thou go not quickly, and do my bidding, it shall be yet worse
for thee."  But Titus still lingered, so he was himself stricken with a palsy; and
he could not walk, but they carried him in a litter. Then he delayed no longer,
but said to his kinsmen, "Carry me into the forum, to the consuls."     And they
carried him in his litter, and he told the consuls the bidding of the god, and all
that had befallen himself. When he had finished his story, the consuls remembered how that on the morning of the first day of the games, a burgher had taken
his slave and scourged him in the midst of the circus where the games were to
i0 The story of the taking of Corioli was an at- nology as little as Shakspeare did about that of
tempt to explain the name of Coriolanus, which Rome; and as he makes Titus Lartius talk of
in reality merely showed that Marcius had been Cato the censor, so they made Dionysius the tysettled at Corioli, and had become a citizen of rant contemporary with the battle of Marathon,
that place after his banishment from Rome. and said that it was he who relieved the scarciThe same explanation will serve, perhaps, for ty at Rome in the year 262.
some other Latin surnames, such as Medullinus,  16 Livy, II. 35. Ipse quum die dicta non
SRegillensis, Malventanus, and others, recording adesset, perseveratum in Ira est. Dionysius,
the connection of Roman families at some period whom Plutarch follows, says that the tribunes
or other with the towns from which they took fixed perpetual banishment as the penalty which
their names. See note 11.                the accused should suffer if found guilty; that
17 Plutarch names Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse. he was found guilty by the votes of twelve tribes
Livy merely says that the corn camne from Sici- out of twenty-one, and banished accordingly.
ly; Dionysius calls Gelon " the most distin- Dionysius and Plutarch seem to have forgotten
guished of the tyrants of Sicily at that time," that exile as a punishment was unknown to the
without specifying whether, at the time of the Roman law till a much later period.
famine at Rome, he was tyrant of Gela or of  1' Livy, II. 36.
Syracuse. The old Roman annalists, Licinius  0 Visus Jupiter dicere, "Sibi ludis prnsulta
Macer and Cn. Gellius, cared about Greek chro- torem displicuisse." Livy, II. 86.




ï~~74

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. X1

be held; and the burgher regarded it not, but Jupiter saw it and was wroth: for
it was a holy day, and a day for mirth and gladness, and not for crying and for
torment. So the consuls believed what Titus said, and brought him into the
senate, and he told the story again to the senators. When lo! so soon as he
had ended his story, the palsy left him, and his limbs became strong as before, and he needed no more to be carried in his litter, but walked home on his
feet.
Thus the great games2' were celebrated over again at Rome, and many of the
The Volscians are driv- Volscians went to Rome to see the sight. Then Attius went to
eneat no ee t the  the consuls privately, and said to them: "  great multitude of
cetebratien ef the great  ~si                                 uttd
games.       Volscians are now in Rome. I remember now on a like occasion,
not many years since, the Sabines made a riot in this city, and great mischief
was like to come of it; loth were I that my people should do aught of the
same kind: but it becomes your wisdom rather to hinder evil than to mend it."
When the consuls told this to the senate, the senate was afraid; and it was
thought best to send the criers round the city, to give notice that every Volscian
should be gone from Rome before the setting of the sun. The Volscians were
very angry at this, for they said to one another, "Do these men then hold us to
be so profane and unholy, that our presence is an offence to the blessed gods?"
So they left Rome in haste, and went home towards their own country, full of
indignation at the shame which was put upon them.
Their way home was over the hills of Alba," by the well-head of the water
of Ferentina, where the councils of the Latins had been used to
Atttus meets them, and
excits them o o to meet of old. Attius knew that the Volscians would be driven
war wtth the Remans...wtao.... from Rome, and would pass that way, so he waited there to meet
them. At last they came up in a long train, each as he cbuld go, and Attius
spoke to them, and asked them what was the matter, that they had so suddenly
left Rome. When they told him, he called them to follow him from the road,
down to the grass which was by the side of the stream, and there they gathered
round him, and he made a speech to them, and said, "What is it that these men
have done to you? They have made a show of you at their games before all the
neighboring nations. Ye, and your wives, and your children, were cast out at
the voice of the crier, as though ye were profane and unholy, and as if your presence before the sight of the gods were a sacrilege. Do ye not count them for
your enemies already, seeing if ye had not made such good haste in coming away
ye would have been all dead men ere now?  They have made war upon us: see
to it, if ye be men, that ye make them rue their deed." So the Volscians eagerly
listened to his words, and all their tribes made it a common quarrel, and they
raised a great army, and chose Attius and Caius Marcius, the Roman, to command it.
When this great host took the field, the Romans feared to go out to battle
How Caine and Attius against it. So Caius and Attius attacked the cities of the Latins,
marchedaganstneome. and they first took Circeii," and afterwards Satricum, and Longula, and Polusca, and Corioli; and then they took Lavinium, which was to the
Romans a sacred city, because Eneas was its founder, and because the holy
things of the gods of their fathers were kept there. After this Caius and Attius
took Corbio, and Vitellia, and Trebia, and Lavici, and Pedum; and from Pedum
they went towards Rome, and they encamped by the Cluilian dyke, which was
no more than five miles from the city; and they laid waste the lands of the commons of Rome, but they spared those of the burghers; Caius, for his part, thinking that his quarrel was with the commons only, and that the burghers were his
friends; and Attius, thinking that it would cause the Romans to be jealous of
each other, and so make Rome the easier to be conquered. So the host of the
Volscians lay encamped near Rome.

- Livy, II. 87.

2 Livy, II. 88.

2 Livy, II. 89.




ï~~CHAP. XI.]

STORY OF CORIOLANUS.

75

Within the city, meanwhile, there was a great tumult; the women ran to the
temples of the gods to pray for mercy, the poorer peop e cried The umans ue fo
out in the streets that they would have peace, and that the senate peace, but it is not
should send deputies to Caius and to Attius. So deputies were grated.
sent,t4 five men of the chief of the burghers; but Caius answered them, "We
will give you no peace, till ye restore to the Volscians all the land and all the
cities which ye or your fathers have ever taken from them; and till"5 ye make
them your citizens, and give them all the rights which ye have yourselves, as ye
have done to the Latins." The deputies could not accept such hard conditions,
so they went back to Rome. And when the senate sent them again to ask for
gentler terms, Caius would not suffer them to enter the camp.
After this'6 the senate sent all the priests of the gods, and the augurs, all
clothed in their sacred garments, and bearing in their hands the The priests of the gods
tokens of the gods whom they served. But neither would Caius gcut   heilo ' o
listen to these; so they too went back again to Rome.         hear lhem.
Yet, when the help of man had failed the Romans, the help of the gods delivered them; for among the women who were sitting as suppli- A olady, called
ants in the temple of Jupiter in the Capitol, was Valeria,7 the veri, persuades the
nother and wife o
sister of that Publius Valerius who had been called Poplicola, a ca;in e to go ana sue to
virtuous and noble lady, whom all held in honor. As she was sit- imfor mercy.
ting in the temple as a suppliant before the image of Jupiter, Jupiter seemed to
inspire her with a sudden thought, and she immediately rose, and called upon all
the other noble ladies who were with her to arise also, and she led them to the
house of Volumnia, the mother of Caius. There she found Virgilia, the wife of
Caius, with his mother, and also his little children. Valeria then addressed YVolumnia and Virgilia, and said, "Our coming here to you is our own doing;
neither the senate nor any other mortal man have sent us; but the god in whose
temple we were sitting as suppliants put it into our hearts, that we should come
and ask you to join with us, women with women, without any aid of men, to win
for our country a great deliverance, and for ourselves a name glorious above all
women, even above those Sabine wives in the old time, who stopped the battle
between their husbands and their fathers. Come then with us to the camp of
Caius, and let us pray to him to show us mercy."  Volumnia said, "We will go
with you:" and Virgilia took her young children with her, and they all went to
the camp of the enemy.
It was a sad and solemn sightt" to see this train of.noble ladies, and the very
Volscian soldiers stood in silence as they passed by, and pitied How his wife and
them and honored them. They found Caius sitting on the gen- othe evaled with
him, and how he led
eral's seat in the midst of the camp, and the Volscian chiefs were away his army.
standing round him. When he first saw them he wondered what it could be;
but presently he knew his mother, who was walking at the head of the train;
and then he could not contain himself, but leaped down from his seat, and ran
to meet her, and was going to kiss her. But she stopped him and said,9 "Ere
thou kiss me, let me know whether I am speaking to an enemy or to my son;
whether I stand in thy camp as thy prisoner or as thy mother."  Caius could
not answer her, and then she went on and said, " Must it be, then, that had I
never borne a son, Rome never should have seen the camp of an enemy; that
had I remained childless, I should have died a free woman in a free city?  But
I am too old to bear much longer either thy shame or my misery. Rather look
to thy wife and children, whom if thou persistest thou art dooming to an untimely
death, or a long life of bondage."' Then Virgilia and his children came up to
him and kissed him, and all the noble ladies wept, and bemoaned their own fate
and the fate of their country. At last Caius cried; out, 0 mother, what hast
2 Dionysius, VIII. 22.                27 Plutarch, Coriolan 32, 33.
" Dionysius, VIII. 35. Plutarch, Coriolan. 30.  28 Plutarch, Coriolan. 34.
2 Livy, II. 39. Plutarch, Coriolan. 82.  2 Livy, II. 40.




ï~~76

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XL

thou done to me?" and he wrung her hand vehemently, and said, "Mother, thine
is the victory; a happy victory for thee and for Rome, but shame and ruin to thy
son." Then he fell on her neck and embraced her, and he embraced his wife and
his children, and sent them back to Rome; and led away the army of the Volscians, and never afterwards attacked Rome any more; and he lived on a banished man amongst the Volscians, and when he was very old, and had neither wife
nor children around him, he was wont to say, "That now in old age5 he knew
the full bitterness of banishment." So Caius lived and died amongst the Vol.
scians.
The Romans, as was right, honored Volumnia and Valeria for their deed, and
H  the Roman hon- a temple was built and dedicated to "Woman's Fortune,""3' just
ored the noble ladies on the spot where Caius had yielded to his mother's words; and
for their deed.  the first priestess of the temple was Valeria, into whose heart Jupiter had first put the thought to go to Volumnia, and to call upon her to go out
to the enemy's camp and entreat her son.
Such is the famous story which has rendered the Volscian wars with Rome so
memorable; the wars with the Equians are marked by a name and a story not
less celebrated, those of L. Quinctius Cincinnatus.
There had been peace between the Romans and the Equians: but the.EquiStory of Cincinnat ans and Gracchus Clelius,3' their chief, broke the peace, and
he AEquianbreakthe plundered the lands of the people of Lavici and of the people of
peace with Rome, and
co the complaintof Tusculum. They then pitched their camp on the top of Algidus;
thoRomans.    and the Romans sent deputies to them to complain of the wrong
which they had done. It happened that the tent of Gracchus was pitched under
the shade of a great evergreen oak, and he was sitting in his tent when the deputies came to him.   His answer was full of mockery: "I, for my part," said he,
"am busy with other matters; I cannot hear you; you had better tell your message to the oak yonder."   Immediately one of the deputies answered, "Yea, let
this sacred oak hear, and let all the gods hear likewise, how treacherously you
have broken the peace!    They shall hear it now, and shall soon avenge it; for
you have scorned alike the laws of the gods and of men." Then they went back
to Rome, and the senate resolved upon war: and Lucius Minucius, the consul,
led his legions towards Algidus, to fight with the proud enemy.
But Gracchus was a skilful soldier,33 and he pretended to be afraid of the Romans, and retreated before them, and they followed him, without
ttow the army of the
onl Minucio t fell heeding where they were going.  So they came into a narrow valinto an ambush.  ley, with hills on either side, high, and steep, and bare; and then
Gracchus sent men secretly, who closed up the way by which they had entered
into the valley, so that they could not get back; and the hills34 closed round the
valley in front of them, and on the right and left, and on the top of these hills
Gracchus lay with his army, while the Romans were shut up in the valley below.
In this valley there was neither grass for the horses, nor food for the men; but
8 "Multo miserius seni exilium esse." Fa-  " Dionysius, X. 28.
bins, quoted by Livy, II. 40.            o4 This is just the description of the famous
1 Livy, II. 40. Dionysius, VIII. 55. It is one Furee Caudinae, in which the Romans were
of Niebuhr's most ingenious conjectures that blockaded by C. Pontius. It suits the characthe foundation of this temple, and the fact that ter of the Apennine valleys, but I never saw
Valeria was the first priestess of it, gave occa- any such spots on the Alban hills, where the
sion to the date assigned to the story of Corio- scene of Cincinnatus' victory is laid. It is likely
lanus, and to the introduction of Valeria into enough, however, that Dionysius, or the annalit, as the first suggester of the step which saved ist whom he followed, did actually take their
Rome. Niebuhr observes that Fortuna Mulie- description from that of the Caudine Forks, and
bris had nothing to do with the successful em- that it made no part of the old legend. Livy's
bassy of Volumnia and Valeria, but correspond- account says nothing of any natural disadvaned to Fortuna Virilis; and that both were an- tages of position: he merely says that the Roeiently worshipped; the one as influencing the mans kept within their camp through fear and
fortunes of men, the other those of women. that this encouraged the.Equians to blockade
Vol. II. p. 115. 2d edit.                them.
U Livy, I[I. 25.




ï~~CHAP. XI.]

STORY OF CINCINNATUS.

77

five horsemen had broken out, before the road in the rear of the Romans was
quite closed up, and these rode to Rome, and told the senate of the great danger
of the consul and of the army.
Upon this Quintus Fabius,"5 the warden of the city, sent in haste for Caius
Nautius, the other consul, who was with his army in the country The Romans at Rome
of the Sabines. When he came, they consulted together, and the were toin great alarm.
senate said, "There is only one man who can deliver us; we must make Lucius
Quinctius Master of the people." So Caius, as the manner was, named Lucius
to be Master of the people; and then he hastened back to his army before the
sun was risen.
This Lucius Quinctius let his hair grow,36 and tended it carefully: and was so
famous for his curled and crisped locks that men called him CinThey appoint Lucius
cinnatus, or the "crisp-haired."  He was a frugal man," and did Qontiu to be Mater
not care to be rich; and his land was on the other side of the Ti- orf the preople.
ber, a plot of four jugera, where he dwelt with his wife Racilia, and busied himself in the tilling of his ground. So in the morning early the senate sent deputies to Lucius to tell him that he was chosen to be Master of the people. The
deputies went over the river, and came to his house, and found him in his field
at work without his toga or cloak, and digging with his spade in his ground,
They saluted him and said, "We bring thee a message from the senate, so thou
must put on thy cloak that thou mayest receive it as is fitting." Then he said,
"Hath aught of evil befallen the state?" and he bade his wife to bring his cloak,
and when he had put it on he went out to meet the deputies. Then they said,
"Hail to thee, Lucius Quinctius, the senate declares thee Master of the people,
and calls thee to the city; for the consul and the army in the country of the
AEquians are in great danger."  There was then a boat made ready to carry him
over the Tiber, and when he stepped out of the boat his three sons came to meet
him, and his kinsmen and his friends, and the greater part of the senators. He
was thus led home in great state to his house, and the four-and-twenty lictors,
with their rods and axes, walked before him. As for the multitude, they crowded
round to see him, but they feared his four-and-twenty lictors; for they were a
sign that the power of the Master of the people was as sovereign as that of the
kings of old.
Lucius chose Lucius Tarquitius8 to be Master of the horse, a brave man, and
of a burgher's house; but so poor withal that he had been used
Lucius marches out to
to serve among the foot soldiers instead of among the horse. deliver the consu's
Then the Master of the people and the Master of the horse went army.
together into the Forum, and bade every man to shut up his booth, and stopped
all causes at law, and gave an order that none should look to his own affairs till
the consul and his army were delivered from the enemy. They ordered also that
every man, who was of an age to go out to battle, should be ready in the Field
of Mars before sunset, and should have with him victuals for five days, and
twelve stakes; and the older men dressed the victuals for the soldiers, whilst the
soldiers went about everywhere to get their stakes; and they cut them where
they would, without any hinderance. So the army was ready in the Field of
Mars at the time appointed, and they set forth from the city, and made such
haste, that ere the night was half spent they came to Algidus; and when they
perceived that they were near the enemy, they made a halt.
Then Lucius rode on, and saw39 how the camp of the enemy lay; and he orm Dionysius, X. 23.                  more than distance; and as it had brought the
3 Zonaras, VII. p. 346. Ed. Paris. p. 260. Roman army from Rome to Algidus between
Ed. Venet.                             sunset and midnight, though each soldier had
3 Livy, III. 26.                     to carry his baggage and twelve stakes besides,
SLivy, III. 27.                      so it made Cincinnatus reconnoitre the enemy
S"Quantum nocte prospici poterat" is Livy's as soon as he arrived in their neighborhood,
qualification of the story; but the original le- without considering that on its own showing
gend, in all probability, regarded darkness no his arrival took place at midnight.




ï~~78

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Cry. XI

He conquers the Equi, dered his soldiers to throw down all their baggage into one place,
an..          but to keep each man his arms and his twelve stakes. Then they
set out again in their order of march as they had come from Rome, and they
spread themselves round the camp of the enemy on every side. When this was
done, upon a signal given they raised a great shout, and directly every man began to dig a ditch just where he stood, and to set in his stakes. The shout rang
through the camp of the enemy, and filled them with fear; and it sounded even
to the,camp of the Romans who were shut up in the valley, and the consul's
men said one to another, "Rescue is surely at hand, for that is the shout of Romans." They themselves shouted in answer, and sallied to attack the camp of
the enemy; and they fought so fiercely, that they hindered the enemy from interrupting the work of the Romans without their camp; and this went on all
the night, till when it was morning, the Romans who were without had drawn a
ditch all round the enemy, and had fenced it with their stakes; and now they
left their work, and began to take part in the battle. Then the.JEquians saw
that there was no hope, and they began to ask for mercy. Lucius answered,
"Give me Gracchus and your other chiefs bound, and then I will set two spezrs
upright in the ground, and I will put a third spear across, and you shall give up
your arms, and your cloaks, and shall pass, every man of you, under the spear
bound across as under a yoke, and then you may go away free." This was
done accordingly; Gracchus and the other chiefs were bound, and the AEquians
left their camp to the Romans, with all its spoil, and put off their cloaks, and
passed each man under the yoke, and then went home full of shame.
But Lucius would not suffer40 the consul's army to have any share of the spoil,
nor did he let the consul keep his power, but made him his own under-officer,
and then marched back to Rome. Nor did the consul's soldiers complain; but
they were rather full of thankfulness to Lucius for having rescued them from the
enemy, and they agreed to give him a golden crown; as he returned to Rome,
they shouted after him, and called him their protector and their father.
Great was now the joy in Rome, and the senate decreed that Lucius should
Lucius marches backto enter the city in triumph, in the order in which the army was re.
Rome in triumph,  turning from Algidus, and he rode in his chariot, while Gracchus
and the chiefs of the.,quians were led bound before him; and the standards
were borne before him, and all the soldiers, laden with their spoil, followed behind. And tables were set out at the door of every house, with meat and drink
for the soldiers, and they and the people feasted together, and followed the
chariot of Lucius, with singing and great rejoicings.  Thus the gods took
vengeance up-n Gracchus and the.Equians; and thus Lucius delivered the
consul and his army; and all was done so quickly, that he went out on one
evening, and came home the next day at evening victorious and triumphant.
This famous story is placed by the annalists in the year of Rome 296, thirteen
eneral state of the years after the passing of the Publilian law. In such a warfare
wrsg beeene th opi nas that of the Romans with the.Equians and Volscians, there are
nations at the end of 1
the third centur y of always sufficient alternations of success to furnish the annalists on
Rome.         either side with matter of triumph; and by exaggerating every
victory, and omitting or slightly noticing every defeat, they form a picture such
as national vanity most delights in. But we neither can, nor need we desire to
correct and supply the omissions of the details of the Roman historians: it is
enough to say, that at the close of the third century of Rome, the warfare which
the Romans had to maintain against the Opican nations was generally defensive;
that the.Equians and Volscians had advanced from the line of the Apennines
and established themselves on the Alban hills, in the heart of Latium; that of
the thirty Latin states which had formed the league with Rome in the year 261,
thirteen4' were now either destroyed, or were in the possession of the Opicans;
U Livy, III. 29. -                  Fortona (if it be the same with Ortona), Lavici
41 Carventum, Circeii, Corioli, Corbio, Cora, Norba, Pedluml, Satricum, Setia, Tolina, and




ï~~OCA. XII.]

WARS WITH THE ETRUSCANS.

79

that on the Alban hills themselves, Tusculum alone remained independent; and
that there was no other friendly city to obstruct the irruptions of the enemy into
the territory of Rome. Accordingly, that territory was plundered year after year,
and whatever defeats the plunderers may at times have sustained, yet they were
never deterred from renewing a contest which they found in the main profitable
and glorious. So greatly had the power and dominion of Rome fallen since the
overthrow of the monarchy. We have now to notice her wars with another
enemy, the Etruscans; and to trace on this side also an equal decline in glory
and greatness since the reigns of the later kings.
CHAPTER XII.
WARS WITH THE ETRUSCANS--VEII--LEGEND OF THE SLAUGHTER OF THE
FABII AT THE RIVER CREMERA.
" Our hands alone
Suffice for this;-take ye no thought for it.
While the mole breaks the waves, and bides the tempest,
The ship within rides safe: while on the mountain
The wind is battling with the adventurous pines,
He stirs no leaf in the valley. So your state,
We standing thus in guard upon the border,
Shall feel no ruffling of the rudest blast
That sweeps from Veii."
AFTER the great war of king Porsenna, the Etruscans, for several years, appear to have lived in peace with the Romans; and in the famine Beginning of hotilite
of the year 262, when the enmity of the Volscians would allow with veii.
no supplies of corn to be sent to Rome from the country on the left bank of the
Tiber, the Etruscan cities, we are told,' allowed the Romans to purchase what
they wanted, and the corn thus obtained was the principal support of the people.
But nine years afterwards, in 271, a war broke out, not with the Etruscans generally, but with the people of the neighboring city of Veii. The quarrel is said2
to have arisen out of some plundering inroads made by the Veientian borderers
upon the Roman territory; but it suited the Roman aristocracy at this period to
involve the nation in foreign contests,' in order to prevent the commons from insisting on the due execution of Cassius' agrarian law; and quarrels, which at another time might easily have been settled, were now gladly allowed to end in
open war.
Veii4 lay about ten miles from Rome, between two small streams which meet
a little below the city, and run down into the Tiber, falling into situation and sine of
it nearly opposite to Castel Giubileo, the ancient Fidenie.   Insig- vei.
Velitr. Carventum seems to have been one Cora. Another supposition, as Mr. Bunsen inof the towns of the Alban hills, and Niebuhr forms me, places it on Monte Ariano, the highsuggests that we should read Kopvevravo instead est eastern point of that volcanic range of
of Kopto)avoi in Dionysius, VIII. 19, as the peo- mountains of which Monte Cavo is the most
ple conquered by Coriolanus, for they are placed western point. But nothing is really known
in the neighborhood of Corbia and Pedum; on the question.
whereas the conquest of the real Coriolani is  I Livy, II. 84.
mentioned in another place (VIII. 86), and in  2 Dionysius, VIII. 81, 91.
their proper neighborhood. Sir W. Gell sup-  S Dionysius, VIII. 81. Dion Cassius, Fragm.
poses Carventum to have been at Roca Massi- Vatican, XX.
mi, a high point on the Volscian highlands near  * See Sir W. Gell's Map of the Campagna.




ï~~80

HISTORY OF ROME,

[CHAP. XII

nificant in point of size, these little streams, however, like those of the Campagna
generally, are edged by precipitous rocky cliffs, and thus are capable of affording
a natural defence to a town built on the table-land above and between them.
The space inclosed by the walls of Veii was equal to the extent5 of Rome itself,
so long as the walls of Servius Tullius were the boundary of the city: the citadel
stood on a distinct eminence, divided by one of the little streams from the rest
of the town, and defended by another similar valley on the other side. In the
magnificence of its public and private buildings, Veii is said to have been preferred by the Roman commons 4o Rome; and we know enough of the great
works of the Etruscans to render this not impossible; but the language is too
vague to be insisted on; and the Etruscan Veii was as unknown to the Roman
annalists as to us. On the other hand, Rome had itself been embellished by
Etruscan art, and had been under its kings the seat of a far mightier power
than Veii.
The government of Veii, like that of the other Etruscan cities, was in the hands
of an aristocracy of birth, one or more of whom were elected antsgovernment.  nually by the whole body to command in war and administer justice. There were no free commons; but a large population of serfs or vassals,
who cultivated the lands of the ruling class. In wars of peculiar importance,7
we read from time to time'of the appointment of a king, but his office was for
life only, and was not perpetuated in his family. The hereditary principle prevailed, however, in the priesthoods; none but members of one particular family
could be priests of Juno,' the goddess especially honored at Veii.
The Veientians, like the other Etruscans, fought in the close order9 of the phacharacter of its mienta,. lanx; their arms being the small round shield, and the long pike.
ryforce.      We know not whether they ventured, like the Parthians, to trust
their serfs with arms equal to their own, and to enrol them in the phalanx; but
we may more probably suppose that they employed them only as light-armed
troops; and if this were so, their armies must have encountered the Romans at
a disadvantage, their regular infantry being probably inferior in numbers to the
legions, and their light troops, except for desultory warfare, still more inferior in
quality. To make up for this, they employed the services of mercenaries, who
were generally to be hired from one or other of the states of Etruria, even when
their respective countries refused to take part publicly in the quarrel.
The war between the Romans and Veientians, which began in the year 271,

5 Dionysius compares the size both of Rome
and Veil with that of Athens, II. 54. IV. 13.
Sir W. Gell told me that the traces of the walls
of Veii, which he had clearly made out, quite
justified the comparison of Veii in point of extent
with Rome. And his map shows the same thing.
e Livy, V. 24. Urbem quoque urbi Romn vel
situ vel magnificenti4 publicorum privatorumque tectorum ac locorum preponebant. This
beino no more than an expression of opinion
ascried to the commons, we cannot be sure
that Livy had any authority for it at all, any
more than for the language of his speeches.
But suppose that he found it in some one of
the older annalists, still it can hardly be more
than the expression of that annalist's opinion,
grounded possibly upon some tradition of the
splendor of Veil, but possibly also upon nothing more than the fact that the Roman commons were at one time anxious to remove to
Veil. And if the Roman commons had actually
said that Veil was a finer city than Rome, when
they were extolling its advantages, is such an
assertion to be taken as an historical fact, to
justify us in passing a judgment as to the comparative magnificence of the two cities?
' Livy, V.1. His words, "Tedio annum am
bitionis regem creavere," imply that the government was commonly exercised by one or more
magistrates annually chosen, like the consuls at
Rome. Niebuhr refers to the case of Lars Tolumnius, who had been king of Veil thirtyfour years before the time of which Livy is speaking; and he thinks that Livy is mistaken, in
supposing the appointment of a king in the last
war with Rome to have been any thing unusual.
(Vol. I. p. 128. 2d ed. note 344.) But we read
of no king after Lars Tolumnius till the period
of the last war, nor of any before him in the
earlier wars with Rome. And as the lucumo,
or chief magistrate of a single Etruscan city, was
appointed sometimes chief over the whole confederacy, when any general war broke out; so
the annual lucumo may have been made lucumo
for life in times of danger, if he were a man of
commanding character and ability.
8 Livy, V. 22.
9 Diodorus. Fragm. Vatican. Lib. XXIII.
TvAirvoi xalXais drir ta aayyoaxoivref, for so
we must correct the reading pdlayya paXo"vres,
just as a little below in the same passage we read
eretpai;, i. e. cohortibus, or manipulis, instead
of reepai;, which Mai absurdly renders " uenspidibus."




ï~~OHr. XII.]

LEGEND OF THE FABII.

81

lasted nine years.  It is difficult to say what portion of the events Outline ofthe war from
recorded of it is deserving of credit; nor would the details,0 at any 2i1 to 25so.
rate, be worth repeating now. But it seems to have been carried on with equal
fortune on both sides, and to have been ended by a perfectly equal treaty. The
Romans established themselves on the Cremera, within the Veientian territory,
built a sort of town there, and, after having maintained their post for some time,
to the great annoyance of the enemy, they were at last surprised, and their whole
force slaughtered, and the post abandoned. Then the Veientians, in their turn,
established themselves on the hill Janiculum, within the Roman territory; retaliated, by their plundering excursions across the Tiber, the damage which their
own lands had sustained from the post on the Cremera; held their ground for
more than a year, and then were, in their turn, defeated and obliged to evacuate
their conquest. Two years afterwards, in 280, a peace was concluded between
the two nations, to last for forty years; and, as the Roman historians name no
other stipulations, we may safely believe that the treaty" merely placed matters
on the footing on which they had been before the war; the Romans gave up all
pretensions to the town which they had founded on the Cremera; the Veientians
equally resigned their claim to the settlement which they had made on the hill
Janiculum.
But whatever may be thought of the history of this war, it has been the subject of one memorable legend, the story of the self-devotion of the
Fabii, and of their slaughter by the river Cremera.   The truth of StoryofthoFabi.
domestic events, no less than of foreign, has been, probably, disregarded by this
legend; and what seems a more real account of the origin of the settlement on
the Cremera, has been given in a former chapter.     The story itself, however, I
shall now, according to my usual plan, proceed to offer in its own form.
The Veientians dared not meet the Romans" in the open field, but they troubled
them exceedingly with their incursions to plunder the country. And The Fabian house ofon the other side, the _Equians and the Volseians were making witfers totaehear
war upon the Romans year after year; and while one consul went wholly, upon itself.
to fight with the iEquians and the other with the Volscians, there was no one to
stop the plunderings of the Veientians. So the men of the Fabian house consulted together, and when they were resolved what to do, they all went to the
senate-house. And Kmso Fabius, who was consul for that year, went into the
senate and said, "We of the house of the Fabii take upon us to fight with the Veientians. We ask neither men nor money from the commonwealth, but we will
wage the war with our own bodies, at our own cost." The senate heard him joyfully; and then he went home, and the other men of his house followed him;
and he told them to come to him the next day, each man in his full arms; and
so they departed.
The house of Kaeso was on the Quirinal Hill; and thither all the Fabii came to
him the next day, as he had desired them; and there they stood in
The  Fabii  establish
array in the outer court of his house.  Kmso then put on his vest, themselves on the rivsuch as the Roman generals were used to wear in battle, and came    Crmr
out to the men of his house, and led them forth on their way. As they went, a
20 The Roman accounts of the war may be Porsenna, were at this time recovered. But if
found in Livy, II.42-54, and in Dionysius, VIII. so, the annalist would surely have boasted of
81. 91. IX. 1-36. I imagine both the post on the cessions of territory made by the Veientians,
the Cremera and that on the Janiculum to have even if they had been consistent enough not to
been designed for permanent cities; the one, describe the country recovered as the very same
probably, being as near to Veii as the other was which they had made Porsenna restore out of
to Rome. These were exactly the rtrp  epara generosity more than thirty years before. Is
of the Greeks, when executed on a larger scale there any reason to believe that the Romans adas rival cities, and not mere forts. I may, per- vanced their frontier on the right bank of the
haps, be allowed to refer to my note on Thu- Tiber opposite Rome, beyond the hills which
cydides, I. 142, where the two kinds of iurd- bound the valley of the river, previously to their
xpa are distinguished.                  conquest of Veii?
n Niebuhr supposes that the septem pagi,  2 Livy, II. 48. et seqq.
which the Romans had lost in the war with
6




ï~~82

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XIL

great crowd followed after them and blessed them, and prayed the gods for their
prosperity. They were, in all, three hundred and six men, and they went down
from the Quirinal Hill and passed along by the Capitol, and went out of the city
by the gate Carmentalis, by the right-hand passage of the gate. Then they
came to the Tiber, and went over the bridge, and entered into the country of the
Veientians, and pitched their camp by the river Cremera; for there it was their
purpose to dwell, and to make it a stronghold, from which they might lay waste
the lands of the Veientians, and carry off their cattle. So they built their fortress by the river Cremera, and held it for more than a year; and the Veientians
were greatly distressed, for their cattle and all their goods became the spoil of the
Fabians.
But there was a certain day3 on which the men of the house of the Fabians
The veientian lay an were accustomed to offer sacrifice and to keep festival together to
ambush for them, and the gods of their race, in the seat of their fathers, on the hill Quiki them a.   rinal.  So when the day drew near, the Fabians set out from the
river Cremera, three hundred and six men in all, and went towards Rome; for
they thought that as they were going to sacrifice to their gods, and as it was a
holy time, and a time of peace, no enemy would set upon them. But the Veientians knew of their going, and laid an ambush for them on their way, and followed them with a great army. So when the Fabians came to the place where
the ambush was, behold the enemy attacked them on the right and on the left,
and the army of the Veientians that followed them fell upon them from behind;
and they threw their darts and shot their arrows against the Fabians, without
daring to come within reach of spear or sword, till they slew them every man.
Three hundred and six men of the house of the Fabians were there killed, and
there was not a grown man of the house left alive: one boy only, on account of
his youth, had been left behind in Rome, and he lived and became a man, and
preserved the race of the Fabians; for it was the pleasure of the gods that great
deeds should be done for the Romans by the house of the Fabians in after-times.
'3 This latter part of the story is one of the The devotion of the Fabians to the sacrifices of
versions of it given by Dionysius, which he re- their house on the Quirinal was a part of their
jects as improbable. Of course I am not main- traditional character; a similar story was told
tamining its probability, but I agree with Nie- of C. Fabius Dorso, who broke out from the
buhr in thinking it a far more striking story Capitol while the Gauls were besieging it, and
than that which Dionysius prefers to it, and made his way to the Quirinal Hill to perform the
which has been adopted by Livy and by Ovid. appointed sacrifice of his house.




ï~~CHAPTER XIII.

INTERNAL HISTORY-THE TERENTILIAN LAW-APPOINTMENT OF THE TEN
HIGH COMMISSIONERS TO FRAME A CODE OF WRITTEN LAWS.
A. U. C. 284~-308.
'OAtXapxza lTW plv LvtvAivWv rog 7roAAots p era3cl&Lt, rv a' &XtpXeV o,rX overcr2e p6vov, &AXi Kal
d6jrav d eXopfvr7  i X S  piv of re Avvdpvot KraiL of vIot rpo. vtovrat,  A dvara iv p ydp X y h araUtsiv.-THUCYDIDES, VI. 89.
TrapTrov eioa a XyaOpxa;,r ira az &vrT rarpo siy, Kai a p~ x p  6b v6pos &AAX ' of apxovrs. Kai rTV
vratrpo o a0r7 iv ra; AXtyapXtat,  7rsp 1 rvpavvb i ram povapx(ac, al rept is TIauralac sIri   rEloKPOarTeOIa i vrail AIIoLKpa(at.-ARISTOTLE, P olitic. IV. 5.
NOTHING is more unjust than the vague charge sometimes brought against
Niebuhr, that he has denied the reality of all the early history of Rome.  On the
contrary, he has rescued from the dominion of skepticism much which less profound inquirers had before too hastily givren up to it; he has restored and established far more than he has overthrown. Ferguson finds no sure ground to rest
on till he comes to the second Punic war. In his view, not only the period of
the kings and the first years of the commonwealth, but the whole of two additional centuries,-not only the wars with the.Equians and Volscians, but those
with the Gauls, the Samnites, and even with Pyrrhus,-are involved in considerable uncertainty. The progress of the constitution he is content to trace in the
merest outline: particular events, and still more particular characters, appear to
him to belong to poetry or romance, rather than to history. Whereas Niebuhr
maintains that a true history of Rome, with many details of dates, places, events,
and characters, may be recovered from the beginning of the commonwealth. It
has been greatly corrupted and disguised by ignorant and uncritical writers, but
there exist, he thinks, sufficient materials to enable us, not only to get rid of
these corruptions, but to restore that genuine and original edifice, which they
have so long overgrown and hidden from our view. And accordingly, far from
passing over hastily, like Ferguson, the period from the expulsion of Tarquinius
to the first Punic war, he has devoted to it somewhat more than two large volumes; and from much, that to former writers seemed a hopeless chaos, he has
drawn a living picture of events and institutions, as rich in its coloring, as perfect
in its composition, as it is faithful to the truth of nature.
Were I, indeed, to venture to criticise the work of this great man, I should be
inclined to charge him with having overvalued, rather than undervalued, the possible certainty of the early history of the Roman commonwealth. He may seem,
in some instances, rather to lean too confidently on the authority of the ancient
writers, than to reject it too indiscriminately. But let no man judge him hastily,
till, by long experience in similar researches, he has learnt to estimate sufficiently
the instinctive power of discerning truth, which even ordinary minds acquire by
constant practice. In Niebuhr, practice, combined with the natural acuteness of
his mind, brought this power to a perfection which has never been surpassed.
It is not caprice, but a most sure instinct, which has led him to seize on some
particular passage of a careless and ill-informed, writer, and to perceive in it the
marks of most important truth; while, on other occasions, he has set aside the
statements of this same writer, with no deference to his authority whatever. To
say that his instinct is not absolutely infallible, is only to say that he was a man;
but he who follows him most carefully, and thinks over the subject of his re



ï~~84

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XII]

searches most deeply, will find the feeling of respect for his judgment continually
increasing, and will be more unwilling to believe what Niebuhr doubted, or to
doubt what he believed.
I have said thus much as a preface to the ensuing chapter, in which I am to
trace the internal history of Rome, from the passing of the Publilian law to the
appointment of the decemvirs. The detail itself will show how little Niebuhr has
deserved to be charged with overthrowing the Roman history; while, on the
other hand, if I have followed him even on ground on which, had he not pronounced it to be firm, I might myself have feared to venture, I have done it, not
in blind or servile imitation, but in the reasonable confidence inspired by experience. For many years I had doubted and disputed Niebuhr's views on several
points of importance, but having had reason at last to be convinced that they
were right, I feel for him now a deference the more unhesitating, as it was not
hastily given, nor without inquiry.
Immediately after the passing of the Publilian law,' the consuls took the field
A. U. c. 2ss. A. c. against the.Equians and Volscians.  It was now the period when
469. Campaign of Ap- those two nations were pressing most dangerously upon Latium,
P)ius Claudius against
he aquians and vo- not only overrunning the territory both of the Latins and Romans..an.         with their plundering incursions, but taking or destroying the
cities of the Latin confederacy. There was no choice, therefore, but to oppose
them; and thus the hated Appius Claudius, as well as his colleague, T. Quinctius, led out an army from the city. But the mutual suspicion and hatred between him and the commons was so great that they could not act together. He
was tyrannical, and his soldiers became discontented and disobedient. In this
temper they met the Volscians and were beaten; and Appius, finding it hopeless to continue the campaign, began to retreat towards Rome. On his retreat
he was again attacked and again beaten; the soldiers, it is said, throwing away
their arms and flying at the first onset. Thus doubly embittered by the shame
of his defeats, and having obtained some color for his vengeance, Appius, as soon
as he had rallied his army on ground out of the reach of the enemy, proceeded
to indulge his old feelings of hatred to the commons. By the aid of the Latin
and Hernican troops who were present in the army, and, above all, of the Roman
burghers, who formed the best armed and best trained part of his own forces,
he was enabled to seize and execute every centurion whose century had fled, and
every standard-bearer who had lost his standard, and then to put to death one
out of every ten men of the whole multitude of legionary soldiers.
The maintenance of military discipline, by whatever degree of severity it was
Appius is brought to effected, was regarded by the Romans, not as a crime, but as a
trial.  Different  ac- d
c.f  s... ac- sacred duty; nor would even the commons have complained of
counts of his aubsequent fate.   Appius for simply punishing with rigor his cowardly or mutinous
soldiers. But when new consuls were come into office, L. Valerius and T..AEmilA. U. c. 248s. A. C. ius,2 and both showed themselves inclined to carry into effect the
468.          agrarian law of Sp. Cassius, while Appius still opposed it, and
was most forward in defeating the measure, then two of the tribunes, M. Duilius
and C. Sicinius,' brought him to trial before the commons as the perpetual enemy of their order; accusing him of giving evil counsels to the senate, of having
laid violent hands on the sacred person of a tribune in the disputes about the
Publilian law, and lastly, of having brought loss and shame on the commonwealth, by his ill conduct in his late expedition against the Volscians. His
bloody executions were not charged as a crime against him; but every friend or
relation of his victims would feel, that he who had dealt such severe justice to
1 Livy, II. 58, 59. Dionysius, IX. 50.  the consuls at this period began their year on
2 Livy, II. 61. Dionysius, IX. 51-54.  the first of August (Livy, III. 6); when the
SThese were two of the tribunes elected tribunes began theirs, before the decemvirate
when the Publilian law was passed. The trib- is uncertain. See Niebuhr, Vol. II. p. 227, ant
unes and consuls came into office, it should note 492, 2d edit.
e remembered, at different times of the year;




ï~~CHAr. XIII.]

PERIOD OF PESTILENCE.

85

others, could claim no mitigation of justice towards himself; and Appius felt
this also, and neither expected mercy from the commons, nor would yield to ask
it. A most extraordinary difference prevails, however, in the accounts of his
subsequent fate. The common story says that he died in prison before his trial,
implying that he killed himself to escape his sentence; but, according to the Fasti
Capitolini,4 it was this same Appius who, twenty years afterwards, became decemvir; and we must suppose, therefore, that he now fled from Rome, and lived
for some years in exile at Regillus, till circumstances enabled him to return, and
to take part in public affairs once more.
The two following years were marked' by continued contests about the agrarian law of Cassius, which still led to no result.  The fortune of A. U. C. 285. A. C.
war, however, gave some relief to the necessities of the poorer per. Antia by.a d its
ort taken by the l~ocommons: for, in the year 285, the port6 of Antium was taken, mans.
and a quantity of merchandise was found there, which was all given up to the
soldiers; and the year following Antium itself fell into the hands of the Romans;
and on this occasion, also, the soldiers derived some profit from their conquest.
In the year 287, Ti.' Emilius, one of the consuls, supported the demand of
the tribunes for the execution of the agrarian law; and we are A. v. c. s286. A. c.
told that the senate,7 in order to pacify the commons by a partial 466.
compliance, proposed to send a colony to Antium, and to allow the commons, as
well as the burghers, to enrol themselves amongst the colonists.     But as the
colony was to consist equally of Romans,' Latins, and Hernicans, and would be
placed in a position of great insecurity, being, in fact, no other than a garrison,
which would have at once to keep down the old population of the city within,
and to defend itself against enemies without, the relief thus offered to the commons was neither very considerable in its amount, nor in its nature very desirable.
The next year began a period of distress and suffering so severe, and arising
from such various causes, that political disputes were of necessity severe visitations o
suspended, and for four years no mention is made of any demands pestilence.
for the agrarian law, or of any other proceeding of the tribunes. The middle of
the fifth century before the Christian era was one of those periods in the history
of mankind which, from causes to us unknown, have been marked by the ravages
of pestilence; when a disease of unusual virulence has, in a manner, travelled up
and down over the habitable world during the space of twenty, thirty, or even
fifty years; returning often to the same place after a certain interval; pausing
sometimes in its fury, and appearing to sleep, but again breaking out on some
point or other within its range, till, at the end of its appointed period, it disappears altogether. Rome was first visited by one of these pestilences, as has
been already mentioned, in the year 282, when it caused a very great mortality;
it now returned again in 288,9 and crippled the operations of the Roman army
against the iEquians. Whether it continued in the following year A. U. C. 289. A. C.
is uncertain, but the.Equians plundered the Roman territory with 466.
great success; and although the Roman annalists pretend that, towards the end
of the year, the consul, Q. Fabius, cut off the main body of the plunderers, and
then in turn ravaged the lands of the enemy, yet it is manifest that the campaign was on the whole unfavorable to the Romans.      So it was the next year
SIt had been long known that the Fasti    Livy calls this place Ceno; the Antiates, it
called Appius the decemvir, " Ap. F. M. N." seems, already had begun the piracies, of which
" Appii Filius, Marci Nepos;" whereas the Demetrius Poliorcetes complained long aftercommon story makes him the grandson, as well wards to the Romans; and the merchandise
as the son of an Appius. But one of the re- taken by the Romans was partly, it is said, obcently discovered fragments of the Fasti calls tained in this manner, probably from the Carthe decemvir, under the year 802, " Appius thaginians. The situation of Ceno is unknown:
Claudius, Ap. F. M. N. Crassin. Regill. Sabi- Strabo speaks of Antium itself as being withnus, II.," clearly showing that by calling the out a harbor, as standing high upon cliffs.
consulship of 802 his second consulship, the  ' Livy, III. 1.
author of the Fasti considered him to be the  8 Dionysius, IX. 59.
same man who had been consul in 283.     '  Livy, III. 2.
6 Livy, II. 68-65. Dionysius, IX. 56-58.




ï~~HISTORY OF ROME.

[CnuP. XIII

also: the united forces of the Romans, Latins, and Hernicans, could not prevent
the total ravaging of the Roman territory; and the crowding1" of the fugitives
from the country into the city was a cause or an aggravation of the return of the
pestilence, which broke out again in the autumn, soon after the appointment of
the consuls for the year 291, with unparalleled fury. During the whole of this
fatal year, the Romans were dying by thousands within the city, while the.Equians and Volscians were ravaging the whole country without opposition, and defeated with great loss the Latins and Hiernicans, who vainly attempted to defend
A.. 46.    the territory of their allies and their own.  At last the pestilence
A.c..       abated, and the new consuls, in the autumn of 292," took the field,
and made head against the enemy with some effect._ Immediately on this first
gleam of better times, the political grievances of the commons began again to excite attention and to claim redress.
We are told that one of the tribunes'2 again brought forward the question of
First proposal of tho the agrarian law; but that the commons themselves refused to
T.rentn law.  entertain it, and resolved to put it cff till a more favorable opportunity. This is ascribed by Dionysius to the zeal which all orders felt to take
vengeance on their foreign enemies; but he forgets that another measure, no
less obnoxious to the burghers, was brought forward in this year, and readily
receiired by the commons: and the better explanation is, that the leaders of the
commons began to see that they must vary their course of proceeding; that to
contend for the agrarian law under the actual constitution, was expecting fresh
and pure water from a defiled spring; the real evil lay deeper, and the commons
must obtain equal rights and equal power with the burghers, before they could
hope to carry such measures as most concerned their welfare. Accordingly,
Caius Terentilius3 iHarsa, one of the tribunes, proposed a law for a complete reform of the existing state of things. Its purport was, that4 ten commissioners
should be chosen, five by the commons and five by the burghers, and that those
so chosen should draw up a constitution, which should define all points of constitutional, civil, and criminal law; and should thus determine, on just and fixed
principles, all the political, social, and civil relations of all orders of the Roman
people.
Now, as a popular cry of reform has never originated in the love of abstract
A    rgrievances ofthe justice, or in the mere desire of establishing a perfect form of gov-.o.ons.        ernment, but has been always provoked by actual grievances, and
has looked especially for some definite and particular relief, so the Roman commons, in supporting the Terentilian law, were moved by certain practical evils,
which lay so deep in the existing state of things, that nothing else than a total
reform of the constitution could remove them. These were, the extreme separation and unequal rights of the burghers and the commons, the arbitrary powers
of the consuls, and the uncertainty and variety of the law; evils which affected
every part of men's daily life; and the first of them, in particular, was a direct
obstacle to that execution of Cassius' agrarian law, on which the actual subsist20 Livy, III. 6.                         Terentilian law, 3dKca 6 pa J0 AeOat f vyypaia6
11 Livy, III. 8.                        ab7roxpdropa-KaO'  rt lOpterae r6,s oLK,4eral.
12 Dionysius, IX. 69. The name of the trib- We are so accustomed to distinguish between a
une is corrupt, xlrov Trov. Gelenius propo- constitution and a code of laws, that we have nc
ses to read TLrioV..                     one word which will express both, or convey a
13 Livy, III. 9. Niebuhr writes the tribune's full idea of the wide range of the commissionname "Terentilius," according to some of the er's powers; which embraced at once the work
best MSS. of Livy. Dionysius calls him 1 Te- of the French constituent assembly, and that of
rentius."                                 Napoleon when he drew up his code. But this
1 Livy speaks only of five; Dionysius of ten: comprehensiveness belonged to the character of
Niebuhr reconciles the two statements in the the ancient lawgfvers; a far higher term than
manner given in the text.                 legislators, although etymologically the same;
These " high commissioners," " Decemviri they provided for the whole life of their citizens
legibus scribendis," were like the Greek voyoOi- in all its relations, social, civil, political, moral,
rat, or, in the language of Thucydides (VIII. and religious.
67), which exactly expresses the object of the




ï~~CHAP. XIII.]

TIDE TERENTILIAN LAW.

87

ence of the poorer commons after the late times of misery and ruin might be
said to depend.
Society has almost always begun in inequality, and its tendency is towards
equality. This is a sure progress; but the inequality of its first Their original poliotical
stage is neither unnatural nor unjust; it is only the error of pre- lndiioei.atsuirserving instead of improving which has led to injustice; the folly cmstances.
of thinking that men's institutions can be perpetual when every thing else in the
world is continually changing. When the conquered Latins were first brought
to Rome by those who were then the only Roman citizens, when they were allowed to retain their personal liberty, to enjoy landed property, and to become so
far a part of the Roman people, it was not required that they should at once
pass from the condition of foreigners to that of perfect citizens; the condition of
commons was a fit state of transition from the one rank to the other. But after
years had passed away, and both they and their original conquerors were, in
fact, become one people; above all, when this truth had been already practically
acknowledged by the constitution of Servius Tullius, to continue the old distinctions was but provoking a renewal of the old hostility: if the burghers and the
commons were still to be like two nations, the one sovereign and the other subject, the commons must retain the natural right of asserting their independence
on the first opportunity, of wholly dissolving their connection with those who refused to carry it out to its full completion. That their desire was for complete
union, rather than for independence, arose, over and above all other particular
causes, from that innate fondness for remaining as we are, which nothing but the
most intolerable misery can wholly eradicate.
The burghers resolved to resist the Terentilian law, but they wished, apparently, as in the case of the Publilian laws, to prevent its being passed Means adopted by the
by the commons in their tribes, rather than to throw it out in their burghers to oppooo the
own assembly of the curimae or in the senate. Accordingly, they p ct of Kas
again proceeded by an organized system of violence; the younger   nctius.
burghers were accustomed to have their brotherhoods or clubs, like the young
men of the aristocratical party in Athens; the members of these clubs were ready
to dare any thing for the support of their order, and being far more practised in
martial exercises than the commons, were superior in activity, if not in actual
strength, and, by acting in a body, repeatedly interrupted all business, and drove
their antagonists from the Forum. At the head of these systematic rioters was
Keso Quinctius, I the son of the famous L. Quinctius Cincinnatus; and he made
himself so conspicuous, that A. Virginius, one of the tribunes, impeached him
before the assemby of the tribes, and named a day on which he was to appear to
answer to the charge.
This is the fifth instance of impeachment by the tribunes, which we have met
with in the course of fifteen years, besides the famous case of Co- of t toian w,.
riolanus. The right in the present case was grounded on the Icil- whihhis impeachment
ian law, brought forward by a tribune, Sp. Icilius, which I have was grounded.
not noticed before, because the time at which it passed is doubted. Dionysius,
who alone mentions it, places6 it as early as the year 262, in the year after the
first appointment of the tribunes; while Niebuhr thinks that it could not have
been earlier than the year 284, and that it was one of the consequences of the
success of the Publilian laws. It established the important point, that if any
burgher interrupted a tribune when speaking to the commons in their own assembly, the tribune might impeach him before the commons, and might require him
to give sureties to such an amount as the accuser should think proper; if he refused to give security, he was to be put to death and his property confiscated;
if he demurred to the amount of the sum required, this question also was to be
tried by the commons. The great object in this law was to assert the jurisdic
Is Livy, III. 11. Dionysius, X. 4, 5.

11 Dionysius, VII. 17.




ï~~88

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XIII

tion of the commons over a burgher; hence the severity of the punishment if the
accused refused to give the required security; he was then to be put to death as
an open enemy; but if he complied, and appeared to answer to the charge, the
ordinary sentence for a mere interruption of the business of the assembly of the
tribes, would probably be no more than a fine; and this seems to have caused
the confusion of Dionysius' statement, for he represents the sureties as required,
not for the accused person's appearance at his trial, but for his payment of such
a fine as the tribunes might impose, as if the sentence could, in no case, exceed
a fine. Whereas the case of Appius Claudius, as well as that of Kmeso, proved
the contrary; and of Kreso, Livy says11 expressly that the tribune impeached him
for a capital offence, before the alleged charge of murder was brought against
him. In fact, where there is no fixed criminal law, awarding certain punishments
for certain offences, the relation of judge implies a power of deciding not only as
to the guilt or innocence of the prisoner, but also as to the degree of his guilt,
and the nature of the punishment to be inflicted. And much more would this
be the case when the judgment was exercised, not by an individual magistrate,
but by the sovereign society itself.
According to the Icilian law, the tribune called upon K eso Quinctius to give
Keeoo goes into exile sureties for his appearance, and the amount of the security required
before his trial.  was heavy; he was to find ten sureties,'8 at three thousand ases
each. But in the mean time a witness, M. Volscius Fictor, who had Tzeen tribune some years before, came forward to charge Keso with another and a totally
distinct crime.  "During the time of the plague," he said, "he and his brother,
a man advanced in years, and not completely recovered from an attack of the
pestilence, had fallen in with Keso and a party of his club in all the license of
riot in the Suburra. An affray had followed, and his brother had been knocked
down by Kreso: the old man had been carried home, and died, as he thought,
from the injury; but the consuls had every year refused to listen to his complaint, and try the offender." Outrages of this sort on the part of the young
aristocracy were common even at Athens;19 in aristocratical states they must have
been far more frequent; and in all ordinary cases there is a sympathy with youth
and birth, even amongst the people themselves, which is against any severe dealing with such excesses. But Keeso's offence was gross, and seemed to belong to
his general character; the commons were indignant to the highest degree at this
new crime, and could scarcely be prevented from tearing the offender to pieces.
Even the tribune thought that no money security was sufficient when the charge
was so serious; the body of the accused must be kept safe in prison, that he
might abide the sentence of the law. But some of the other tribunes were prevailed on by the powerful friends of the criminal to extend to him their protection; they forbade the attachment of his person. Being thus left at large, he
withdrew from justice, and fled across the Tiber into Etruria before his trial came
on.Â~  His relations, by whose influence justice had been thus defrauded, paid the
poor compensation of their forfeited bail; and even here the punishment would
not fall on the guilty, for when a burgher was fined, his clients were bound to
contribute to discharge it for him.
Keso's flight provoked his associates to dare the last extremities.  From mere
Conspiraoy to effect is rioters they became conspirators; and they played their game
return.       deeply.  Still continuing their riots whenever the assembly of the
tribes met, but taking care that no one of their body should be especially conspicucus, they, on all other occasions,' endeavored to make themselves popular: they
-ould speak civilly to the commons, would talk with them, and ask them to their
1" A. Virginius Kesoni capitis diem dicit." non. See, too, the stories told in Plutarch of
111. 11.                               the manifold excesses of Alcibiades.
1e Livy, III. 13.                      20 Livy, III. 13.
13 See the well-known speech of Demosthenes  21 Livy, III. 14.
ainst Midias, and also the speech against Co



ï~~CHAP. XIII.]

KIESO QUINCTIUS.

89

houses, well knowing how readily the poor and the humble are won by a hlittle
attention and liberality on the part of the rich and noble. Meanwhile, a darker
plot was in agitation: Keso held frequent communication with them; he had
joined himself to a band of exiles and runaway slaves from various quarters, such
as abounded in Italy then no less than in the middle ages: with this aid he would
surprise the Capitol by night, his associates would rise and massacre the tribunes
and the most obnoxious of the commons, and thus the old ascendency of the
burghers would be restored, such as it had been before the fatal concessions made
at the Sacred Hill.
Such was the information which the tribunes, according to Dionysius," laid before the senate, soon after Kieso's flight from Rome. From what A party of exiles and
A party of exiles and
annalist he copied this statement does not appear; but Livy, who slaves surprise th Capitol by night; but it is
has followed some author far more partial to the Quinctian family, reo ered tmnext day,
e nand the party who had
makes no mention of it, although it is really essential to the right seized it are cut to
understanding of his own subsequent narrative. For in the next pies.
year, according to the account of both Livy and Dionysius,l the Capitol was surprised by night by a body of slaves and exiles, and the leader of the party made
it his first demand that all Roman exiles should be restored to their country.
The burghers had great difficulty in persuading the c6mmons to take up arms;
till at last the consul, P. Valerius, prevailed with them, and relying on his word
that he would not only allow the tribunes to hold their assembly for the consideration of the Terentilian law, but would do his best to induce the senate and the
curime to give their consent to it, the commons followed him to the assault of the
Capitol. He himself was killed in the onset; but the Capitol was carried, and
all its defenders either slain on the spot, or afterwards executed.
The leader of this desperate band is said to have been a Sabine, Appius Herdonius; and in the story of the actual attempt, the name of Kaeso Ks's share in te enKaeso's share in the enis not mentioned.  But we hear, in general terms,24 of Roman ex- terprise set openly aciles, whom it was the especial object of the enterprise to restore to.owledged.
their country; and we may be sure that Kmeso was one of them. Appius Herdonius was, probably, a Sabine adventurer in circumstances like his own, whom
he persuaded to aid him in his attempt. Had we the real history of these times,
we should find, in all likelihood, that the truth ia the stories of Kmso and Coriolanus has been exactly inverted; that the share of the Roman exile in the surprise of the Capitol has been as unduly suppressed as that of the Roman exile in
the great Volscian war lhas been unduly magnified; that Kieso's treason has been
transferred to Appius Herdonius, while the glory of the Volscian leader, Attius
Tullius, has been bestowed on Coriolanus.
The burghers, as a body, would certainly be opposed, both from patriotic and
selfish motives, to the attempt of Kaeso; an exile forcing his return L.Qiinetiue, fthe ter
by the swords of other exiles, and seizing the citadel, was likely to ere Kntilian olpp sehe
yerenyilan law vehoset himself up as a tyrant alike over the burghers and the com- mently.
mons; and even his own father, L. Quinctius, would have been the first to resist
him. But when he had fallen, and this danger was at an end, other feelings returned; and L. Quinctius would then hate the commons with-a deeper hatred,
as he would ascribe to them the miserable fate of his son; Kaeso's guilt, no less
than his misfortune, would appear the consequence of their persecution. So when
he was elected consul in the room of P. Valerius, he seemed to set no bounds to
his thirst for vengeance. The promise by which Valerius had prevailed on the
commons to follow him to the recovery of the Capitol was utterly disregarded;
L. Quinctius"m openly set the tribunes at defiance, told them that they should
never pass their law while he was consul, and declared that he would instantly
lead forth the legions into the field against the zEquians and Volscians.

' Dionysius, X. 10, 11.
SLivy, III. 15. Dionysius, X. 14-16.

24 See chap. XI. note 11.
25 Livy, 111. 19.




ï~~90

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XIIt

The tribunes"6 represented that they would not allow him to enlist any as soldiers: but Quinctius replied, that he needed no enlistment; "the
His violent mensures.
men who took up arms under P. Valerius swore to assemble at the
consul's bidding, and not to disband without his orders. The consul never dis.
banded them; and I, the consul," he said, "command you to meet me in arms
A. U. c. 294. A. c. to-morrow at the lake Regillus."  But more was said to be de458.          signed than a simple postponement of the Terentilian law: the
augurs were to attend,27 in order to inaugurate the ground where the soldier were
to meet, and thus convert it into a lawful place of assembly; then the army, in its
centuries, would be called upon to repeal all the laws which had been passed at
Rome under the influence of the tribunes; and none would dare to oppose the
consul's will, for, beyond the distance of one mile from the city, the tribunes'
protection would be of no avail, nor did there exist any right of appeal. More
than all, Quinctius repeatedly declared that, when his year of office was expired,
he would name a dictator, that the tribunes might be awed by the power of a
magistrate from whom there lay no appeal, even within the walls of Rome.
The Roman annalists who recorded these events26 loved to believe that, in spite
He is prevailed upon to of all their provocations, the commons so respected the sacredness
abandon the.  of an oath,/that they would have kept the letter of it to their own
hurt, even when its spirit in no way bound them to obedience. They say that the
tribunes and the commons felt that they could not resist as a matter of right;
that they appealed9 to the mercy of the senate, and that the senate only prevailed
with the consuls to abandon their purpose of taking the field, on condition that
the tribunes would promise not to bring forward the question of the law again
during that year. It may be, however, that the senate knew how far they could
safely tempt the patience of the tribunes; threats might be held out, in order to
claim a merit in abandoning them; but an actual attempt to march the legions
out of the city, with the avowed purpose of making them the helpless instruments
in the destruction of their own liberties, would be too bold a venture; at the last
excess of insolent tyranny, Nemesis would surely awake to vengeance.
At any rate, it appeared that neither the tribunes nor the commons were disA. U.C. 295.A.C.457. posed to let the Terentilian law be forgotten; for when the elecThe law is delayed by tions came on, the same tribunes who had already been in office for
foreign war.  two years were re-elected for a third year, and again began to
bring forward the disputed question. But again they gave way to the pressure
of foreign war; for the danger from the.zEquians and Yolscians was imminent:
the former had surprised the citadel of Tusculum; the latter had expelled the
Roman colony from Antium, and recovered that important city. After a series
of operations, which lasted for several months, the.&Equians were dislodged from
Tusculum, but Antium still remained in the possession of the Volscians.
Thus the Terentilian law was again delayed:" but, in the mean time, the burghers,
Cargegin.Vo-who retained a lively resentment for the fate of Kaeso, were trying
ius r false witness to establish a charge of false witness against M. Volscius, by whose
in the trial ofK.  testimony, as to his brother's murder, the event of Kaeso's trial had
been chiefly decided.  The two questores parricidii, or chief criminal judges,
proposed to impeach Volscius before the curim; but the tribunes refused to allow
the trial to come on till the question of the law had been first decided. Thus the
year passed away: but the tribunes were again, for the fourth time, reelected.
In the following year is placed the story already related of the dictatorship of
A. U. C. 296. A. C. L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, and his deliverance of the consul and his
4..          army, when they were blockaded by the.tEquians.  The continued
20 Livy, III. 20.                    aptas faciebat, sed suos potius mores ad ea ae' Livy, III. 20.                     commodabat.
2 Livy, III. 20. Nondum he', qus nune te-  2 Livy, III. 21.
net smculum, negligentia Deum venerat: nec in-  'o Livy, III. 21-23.
terpretando sibi quisque jusjurandum et leges  9 Livy, III. 24.




ï~~CHAP. XIII.]  NUMBER OF TRIBUNES INCREASED TO TEN.

91

absence32 of the legions, which kept the field nearly the whole year, afforded the
burghers a pretence for opposing the introduction of the law; but    itatri  o
Dictatorship  of  L.
L. Quinctius availed himself of his dictatorial power to hold the Quinetius.  volscius
comitia for the trial of Volscius, in defiance of the tribunes; and goes into exile.
the accused, feeling his condemnation to be certain, left Rome, and availed himself of the interchange of citizenship between the Romans and Latins, to become
a citizen of Lanuvium.   The tribunes were again re-elected for a fifth time.
The year 29733 was marked by the same dangers from the.AEquians; and the
Sabines are said, in this and in the former year, to have joined A. U. c. 297. A. c.
them, and to have carried alarm and devastation into a new part 455. b    oeast ein thi
number of the tribof the Roman territory, that which lay between the Tiber and the     es.
Anio.   Thus the law made no progress: but the tribunes obtained an important
point, that their number should henceforth be doubled.    Ten tribunes were from
this time forward annually elected; two from each of the five classes.
There can be no doubt that the annals of this period, as we now have them in
Livy and Dioiysius, present a very incomplete picture of these The annals have not
dissensions.  The original source of the details must have been the egien full pictreof
memorials of the several great families; each successive version of times.
these, as men's notions of their early history became more and more romantic,
would omit whatever seemed inconsistent with the supposed purity and nobleness of the times of their forefathers; and acts of bloody vengeance, which the
actors themselves, and their immediate descendants, regarded with pride rather
than compunction, as Sulla gloried in his proscriptions and recorded them on his
monument, were carefully suppressed by historians of a later age. The burghers
of the third and fourth centuries thought it no dishonor that their own daggers,4
or those of their faithful clients, should have punished with death the insolence
and turbulence of the most obstinate of the commons; they would glory in
breaking up the assemblies of their adversaries by main force, and in treating them,
on other occasions, with all possible scorn and contumely; ejecting them from
their houses"5 with a strong hand, insulting them and their families in their
nightly revels, or in open day; abusing them in the streets, or besetting their
doors36 with armed slaves, and carrying off their wives and daughters.37 Their
own houses, built mostly on the hills of Rome, which were so many separate
fortresses, and always, by their style of building, secure at once from public notice and from attack, favored the perpetration of all acts of violence.   Others,
besides insolvent debtors, might be shut up in their dungeons; and if hatred or
fear prompted them to consign their victims to a yet surer keeping, the dungeon
might readily become a grave,33 and who would dare to search for those whom it
contained, whether alive or dead?
One act in particular, in which its authors doubtless gloried as in a signal example of public justice, has been so concealed by the later annal-    cre st about the
Obscure story about the
ists, that from the faint and confused notices of it which alone re- burnig of neeon o
main to us, we can neither discover its date, nor its cause, nor any traitors.
* Livy, III. 29.       3 Livy, IPI. 30.  wealth, we may judge of that shown to the
34 Zonaras, VII. 17, who, as we now find, commons at an earlier period.
norrowed his statement from Dion Cassius.   7 The famous story of Virginia cannot have
Dion's words are, of  rarpÂ~bat <avsp~g ph oi been a solitary instance. Virginia was the
rdvv, 7rXiv 3paJ wv, rktOctdlovreFs 7va, avrirpar- daughter of a centurion, and betrothed to no
rov, )dOpa l evXvoi rov Opanvrdrowv '6venov. less a man than L. Icilius, the famous proposer
Fragm. Vatic. XXII.                       of the law, "de Aventino publicando."  If
3 This is implied in the "forcible occupa- such an outrage could be ventured against a
tion" noticed in the law, "de Aventino publi- woman of such birth, and so connected, we
cando."                                   may conceive what those of humbler condition
-1 Such outrages must be alluded to in the were exposed to.
speech ascribed to L. Quinctius, Livy, III. 19.  3 The body of a murdered man was discov" Si quis ex plebe domum suam obsessam a fa- ered to have been buried in the house of P.
milia armata nunciaret, ferendum auxilium pu- Sestius, a burgher, in the first year of the detaretis." The conduct of Verres at Lampsa- cemvirate. Livy, III. 83. The discovery of
eus illustrates this; from the treatment of the one such case implies that there were many
provincials in the later times of the common- others which were not discovered.




ï~~92

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XIII

of its particulars. We only know, that at some time or other during the latter
half of the third century of Rome, nine eminent men,"9 who advocated the cause
of the commons, were burned alive in the Circus, such being the old punishment
of the worst traitors. It appears, however, from the fragment of Festus, which
undoubtedly relates to this event, that some of the victims in this execution were
of patrician houses; and there is an obscure and corrupt passage of Dion Cassius in the Vatican fragments, which seems to indicate that some of the burghers
did take part with the commons, whether from a sense of justice or from personal ambition.
The year 298, to return to our annals, was marked, on the part of the tribA. U. c. 29s. A. c. unes, by an important measure. First of all,4t to prevent their in454. Lw ofLi i...creased number from being a source of weakness, by making diffor  allotting  out the
Aventine to the.on- ferences amongst themselves more likely, they bound themselves
mons.         to each other by solemn oaths, that no tribune should oppose the
decisions of the majority of his colleagues, nor act without their consent. Then
Lucius Icilius, one of their number, brought forward his famous law for allotting

S 'Evvia ror oitapxot rvpi D row "obov p36 -n-av. Dion Cassius, Frag. Vatic. XXII., and
copied by Zonaras, VII. 17. A confused vestige of the same story maybe found in Valerius
Maximus (VI. 3, 2); and the mutilated passage in Festus, beginning, in the common editions, with "Nauti consulatu," must clearly
refer to it. Niebuhr's restoration and explanation of this last fragment may be found in his
note 265 to the 2d volume of his History, p.
144, 2d edition. Both are highly ingenious,
and that the fragment began with the word
" novem," and not with "nauti," seems certain; inasmuch as the article before it begins
with the word " novalis," and that which fol-,
lows it begins with "novendiales."   All the
words now to be found in the MS. of Festus,
half of the page having been accidentally destroyed by fire, are the following, and ranged
in the following order as to lines:
T. Sicini Volsci
inissent adversus
co combusti feruntur
ne quae est proxime cirpide albo constratus.
Opiter Verginius
Lvinus, Postumus, Collius Tolerinus, P. Veonius Atratinus, Vertius Scaevola, Sex. FuWho can profess to fill up such a fragment with
certainty? But I observe that Mutius Scnvola
belonged to a house which, so far as we know,
was never patrician; and the preceding name,
of which only the first syllable remains, Ver-,
may also have denoted a plebeian, as we meet
with a Virginius amongst the tribunes as early
as the year 293. (Livy, III. 11.) But as all the
others are patrician names, how can they have
been tribunes; or how can there have been
nine tribunes earlier than the year 297; or how
can we find a place for such an event between
297 and the appointment of the decemviri;
after which time it becomes wholly inconceivable? The words "adversarii" and "adversus
eum," seem to me the most unlikely parts of
Niebuhr's conjectural addition. The criminals
would hardly have been described simply as
the adversaries of T. Sicinius, nor their crimne
called a conspiracy against him. The story in
Valerius Maximus represents one tribune as
being a principal agent in the execution of his

nine colleagues. We can thus explain the position of the name of Sicinius, if we read, " novem college T. Sicinii Volsci," and " cum conjurationem" (or " consilia") " inissent adversus Remp."   But what are we to call the office
in which these ten men were colleagues together? Can it really have been the tribuneship? and are we to take Cicero's statement,
in the fragments of his speech for Cornelius,
that the number of tribunes was increased from
two to ten in the very year after the first institution of the office? and is it possible that the
patricians named in Festus' Fragments were
the very persons whom Dion Cassius had in
his mind, when he said that "many of the
highest patricians renounced their nobility from
being ambitious of the great power of the office,
and became tribunes?" If this were so, T.
Sicinius Volscus would be a member of the
house of the plebeian Sicinii, and not the patrician who was consul in the year 267. The
time of the execution I should place about the
same time as the death of Cassius; and it is
not incredible that even the people in their
centuries may have believed that accusation of
a conspiracy against the common liberty which
was brought against Cassius, and may have
sentenced nine of the tribunes to death as his
accomplices, especially if one of their own colleagues, and a genuine plebeian, had denounced
them as being really enemies to liberty, under
the mask of opposing the aristocracy. And
such a circumstance as the alleged treason of
nine out of ten of the tribunes would have afforded a good pretence for again reducing their
number to two or five, from which it was again
finally raised to ten in the year 297. It must
be remembered, that the whole period between
the first institution of the tribuneship and the
death of Cassius is one of the greatest obscurity, and that the remaining accounts are full
of variations. Sempronius Atratinus is mentioned by Dyonisius as speaking in favor of the
appointment of a commission of ten men to
carry into effect the proposed agrarian law of
Cassius, at least in a modified form; this was
in the year 268. (Dionysius, VIII, 74.) I have
sometimes thought whether the nine men may
not have been members of this commission,
and accused by their tenth colleague, T. Sicinins, the patrician, of abusing their powers to
favor the tyranny of Cassius.
o40 Dionysius, X. 31.




ï~~CHAP. XIII.]

LAW DE AVENTINO PUBLICANDO.

93

the whole of the Aventine Hill to the commons forever, to be their exclusive
quarter and stronghold. This hill was not, as we have seen, a part of the original city, nor was it even yet included within the pomaerium, or religious boundary, although it was now within the walls; much of it was public or demesne
land, having neither been divided out among the original citizens, the burghers,
nor having in later times been assigned in portions to any of the commons. The
ground, which was thus still public, was occupied, according to custom, by individual burghers; some had built on it, but parts of it were still in their natural
state, and overgrown with wood. Yet this hill was the principal quarter in
which the commons lived, and large parts of it had doubtless been assigned to
them  in the time of the kings, as the freeholds of those to whom they were
granted. It appears that encroachments were made on these freeholds by the
burghers; that the landmarks, which, according to Roman usage, always distinguished private property from common, were from time to time forcibly or
fraudulently removed; the ground was then claimed as public, and, as such, occupied only by burghers; and in this way the ejectment of the commons, from
what they considered as their own hill, seemed likely to be accomplished. Again,
the Aventine is one of the steepest and strongest of the hills of Rome; if wholly
in the hands of the commons, it would give them a stronghold of their own, such
as the burghers enjoyed in the other hills; and this, min such stormy times, when
the dissensions between the orders might at any instant break out into open war,
was a consideration of the highest importance. Such were the reasons which
induced the tribunes to suspend for a time the question of the Terentilian law,
and to endeavor to obtain at once for their order the secure and exclusive property of the Aventine.
A new course41 was also adopted in the conduct of this measure. Instead of
bringing it forward first before the commons, where its consider- ew moe o proceed.
New mode of proceedÂ~
ation might be indefinitely delayed by the violent interruptions of og topr o r eass
the burghers, L. Icilius called upon the consuls to bring it in the Ougoftoe law.
first instance before the senate, and he claimed himself to spcak as counsel in its
behalf. This was asserting not merely the right of petitioning, but the still
higher right, that the petition should not be laid on the table, but that counsel
should be heard in defence of it, and its prayer immediately taken into consideration. A story is told that the consuls' lictor43 insolently beat away the tribunes'
officer who was going to carry to them his message; that immediately Icilius
and his colleagues seized the lictor, and dragged him off with their own hands,
intending to throw him from the rock for his treason against the sacred laws.
They spared his life only at the intercession of some of the oldest of the senators,
but they insisted that the consuls should comply with the demands of Icilius;
and accordingly the senate was summoned, Icilius laid before them what may be
called his petition of right, and they proceeded to vote whether they should accept or reject it.43
The majority voted in its favor, moved, it is said, by the hope that this concession would be accepted by the commons instead of the execution of the agrarian law. Then the measure thus passed by the To law is paed.
senate was submitted by the consuls to the comitia of centuries, which, as representing the whole nation, might supersede the necessity of bringing it separately before the curiae and the tribes. Introduced in a manner by the government, and supported by the influence of many of the burghers, as well as by the
strong feeling of the commons, the bill became a law: its importance, moreover,
led to its being confirmed with unusual solemnities; the pontifices and augurs
attended; sacrifices were performed, and solemn oaths were taken to observe it;
and, as a further security, it was engraved on a pillar of brass, and then set up
in the temple of Diana on the Aventine, where it remained till the time of Dionysius.
41 Dionysius, X. 31.      48 Dionysius, X. 31.      4" Dionysius, X. 382




ï~~94

HISTORY OF ROME.

L[CAP. XIII

The provisions of the law were, "that so much" of the Aventine Hill as was
t poson,  public or demesne property, should be allotted out to the coma roviion. mons, to be their freehold forever. That all occupiers of this
land should relinquish their occupation of it; that those who had occupied it,
forcibly or fraudulently,45 should have no compensation, but that other occupiers
should be repaid for the money which they might have laid out in building upon
it, at a fair estimate, to be fixed by arbitration." Probably also, as Niebuhr
thinks, there was a clause forbidding any burgher to purchase or inherit property
on the hill, that it might be kept exclusively for the commons. It is mentioned
that the commons began instantly to take possession of their grant, and the space
not sufficing to give each man a separate plot of ground, an allotment was given
to two, three, or more persons together, who then built upon it a house, with as
many flats or stories46 as their number required, each man having one floor for
himself and family as his freehold. The work of building sufficiently employed
the commons for the rest of the year; the Terentilian law was allowed to rest;
and an unusual rainy season, which was very fatal to the crops,47 may have helped
to suspend the usual hostilities with the iEquians and Volscians.
The same tribunes were re-elected for the year following, and the Terentilian
Fresh disputes about law was now again brought forward, but still, as formerly, before
he Terent  lian law.  the assembly of the tribes; its rejection by the senate being supposed to be certain, if it were proposed there in the first instance. The consuls48 headed the burghers in their opposition, and in their attempts to interrupt
the assembly of the commons by violence; the tribunes, in return, brought some
of the offenders to trial for a breach of the sacred laws, and, not wishing to press
for the severest punishment, enforced, according to Dionysius, only the confiscation of the criminal's property to Ceres, whose temple was under the special
control of the ediles of the commons, and was the treasury of their order. But
the burghers, it is said, advanced money out of their own treasury to buy the
confiscated estates from those who had purchased them, and then gave them
back to their original owners.
The consuls of the year 300, Sp. Tarpeius and A. Aternius, appear to have
been moderate men; and not only were the two consuls of the preceding year

4 Dionysius, X. 82.
45 In Dionysius' Greek version, f3sslajivoi
(or with the codex Vaticanus 3ardpsvoL), ),cA os6 Xafdvr s: in the original language "vi
aut clam," as in the well-known form of the
prator's interdict, " eum fundum quem nec vi,
nec clam, nec precario alter ab altero possidetis,
ita possideatis."' See Festus in "Possessio."
4Dionysius, X. 82. Houses thus divided
amongst several proprietors, each being the
owner of a single floor, were the  vvoLKtat of the
Greeks; and these were the "insuln" of which
we hear at Rome, and which are distinguished
by Tacitus from "domus," the houses of a single proprietor, just as Thucydides speaks of the
rich Corcyrteans setting on fire ra oiia ca rds
vvoLKta, III. 4. Compare Tacitus, Annal. XV.
41, 43. The original sense of theword. "insula," as given by Festus, "que non junguntur
communibus parietibus cum vicinis, circuituque publico aut privato cinguntur," seems to
show that the insula was ordinarily built like
our colleges, or like the inns of court in London, a complete building in itself, and so large
as to occupy the whole space from one street to
the next which ran parallel to it.
'' Livy, III. 81. Annona propter aquarum
intemperiem laboratum est. Such notices of
the weather and seasons come from the oldest
and simplest annals, whether of the pontifices
or of private families, and may safely be looked
upon as authentic.

4 Dionysius, X. 883-42.  The events of this
year are given by Dionysius at great length, in
fifteen chapters; in Livy they do not occupy as
many lines. The story of L. Siccius, under a
somewhat different form, is given by the former
under this year; although in its common version it occurs again in his history in its usual
place under the decemviri. Whoever was the
writer from whom Dionysius copied, he must
have been one who had no wish to disguise the
injustice of the burghers, but rather, perhaps,
to exaggerate it; for they never appear in a
more odious light than in the transactions of
this year. One statement, however, is curious;
that the houses most violent against the commons, and most formidable from the strength of
their brotherhoods or societies, hra.pla, were the
Postumii, Sempronii, and Clcelii. The former
of these was an unpopular house, as may be
seen from the story of the severity of L. Postu
mius Tubertus to his son (Livy, IV. 29), and of
the murder of M. Postumius by his soldiers
(Livy, IV. 49). The Sempronii also appear as
a family of importance during the next fifty
years; but the Cloelii are very little distinguished either in the early or in the later Roman history, only four members of this house occurring
in the Fasti, and none of them being personally
remarkable. Their coins, however, are numerous.




ï~~CHAP. XIII.]

APPOINTMENT OF TEN COMMISSIONERS

95

accused before the commons by the tribunes, and fined, without The ternian law, "do
any opposition on the part of the burghers; but the new consuls mults sacramento."
themselves brought forward a law, which was intended probably to meet some
of the objects of the Terentilian law, by limiting the arbitrary jurisdiction of the
patrician magistrates. The Aternian law," de multee sacramento, fixed the maximum of the fines, which the consuls could impose for a contempt of their authority, at two sheep and thirty oxen; nor could this whole fine be imposed at
once,t" but the magistrate was to begin with one sheep, and if the offender continued obstinate, he might the next day fine him a second sheep, and the third
day he might raise the penalty to the value of an ox, and thus go on, day by
day, till he had reached the utmost extent allowed by the law.     It would appear also by the use of the term sacramentum,t' which was applied to money
deposited in the judge's hands by two contending parties, to be forfeited or recovered, according to the issue of the suit, that this fine was not absolute, but
might be recovered by the party who paid it, either on his subsequent submission, or on his appeal to the judgment of his peers, whether burghers or commons, and on their deciding in his favor.
But with regard to the Terentilian law itself, the tribunes could make no
progress.  The burghers absolutely refused to allow     the com- Three commoisoionera
mons any share in the proposed revision of the constitution; but are sent to Greece.
they consented to send three persons beyond the seatt into Greece, to collect
such notices of the laws and constitutions of the Greek states as might be serviceable to the Romans.     These commissioners were absent for a whole year;
and in this year the pestilence53 again broke out at Rome, and car- A. U. c. 30. A. c.
ried off so many of the citizens, amongst the rest four out of the 451.
ten tribunes, that there was a necessary cessation of political disputes.  And as
the pestilence spread also amongst the neighboring nations,4 they were in no
condition to take advantage of the distressed state of the Romans.
In the next year the pestilencett left Rome free; and on the return of the
commissioners from Greece, the disputes again began.      After a
A. U. c. itt. A. C.
long contention, the commons conceded the great point at issue; 42. It tis resolved to
appoint ten men to reand it was agreed that the revision of the laws and constitution v.oe thetw sand conshould be committed to a body of ten men, all of the order of the stitution.
burghers, who should supersede all other patrician magistrates, and each administer the government day by day in succession, as during an interregnum. Two
of these were the consuls of the new year, who had been just A. U. c. 303. A. c.
elected, Appius Claudius and T. Genucius; the warden of the 44 -city and the two questores parricidii, as Niebuhr thinks, were three more; and
the remaining five were chosen by the centuries."
Such was the end of a contest which had lasted for ten years; and all its
circumstances, as well as its final issue, show the inherent strength concinsn of the srog.
of an aristocracy in possession of the government, and under what gle about the Terentilmanifold disadvantages a popular party ordinarily contends against anlaw.
it. Nothing less than some extraordinary excitement can ever set on a level two
parties so unequal; wealth, power, knowledge, leisure, organization, the influence of birth, of rank, and of benefits, the love of quiet, the dread of exertion
and of personal sacrifices, the instinctive clinging to what is old and familiar, and
the indifference to abstract principles so characteristic of common minds in every
49 Cicero de Republica, II. 35. The reading  5' See Varro, Ling. Lat. V. 180, and Festun
of the consul's name, as given in this passage in voce.
of Cicero, Aternius, enables us to account for  8 Livy, III. 31.
and to correct the corrupt reading in Dionysius, 's Livy, III. 32.
Tcp ppos. We find it also correctly given in one  4 Dionysius, X. 53.
of the recently discovered fragments of the  Â~ Dionysius, X. 54. Livy, III. 82.
Fasti Capitolini.                          a Vol. II. p. 350, 2d ed.
S See Varro, de Ling. Latina, V. 177, and
Niebuhr, Vol. II. p. 341, 2d ed.




ï~~96

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XIV

rank of life; all these causes render the triumph of a dominant aristocracy sure,
unless some intolerable outrage, or some rare combination of favorable circumstances, exasperate or encourage the people to extraordinary efforts, and so give
them a temporary superiority. Otherwise the aristocracy may yield what they
will, and retain what they will; if they are really good and wise, and give freely
all that justice and reason require, then the lasting greatness and happiness of a
country are best secured; if they do much less than this, yielding something to
the growing light of truth, but not frankly and fully following it, great good is
still done, and great improvements effected; but in the evil which is retained,
there are nursed the seeds of destruction, which falls at last upon them and on
their country. The irritation of having reasonable demands refused, provokes
men to require what is unreasonable; suspicion and jealousy are fostered beyond
remedy; and these passions, outliving the causes which excited them, render at
last even the most complete concessions thankless; arid when experience has
done its work with the aristocracy, and they are disposed to deal justly with
their old adversaries, they are met, in their turn, with a spirit of insolence and
injustice, and a fresh train of evils is the consequence.  So true is it, that nations,
like individuals, have their time of trial; and if this be wasted or misused, their
future course is inevitably evil; and the efforts of some few good and wise citizens, like the occasional struggles of conscience in the mind of a single man when
he has sinned beyond repentance, are powerless to avert their judgment.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE FIRST DECEMVIRS, AND THE LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES.
"The laws of a nation form the most instructive portion of its history."-GmBoN, Chap. XLIV.
THE appointment of a commission invested with such extraordinary powers as,ppoinmnofth -those committed to the decemvirs, implies of itself a suspension of
e. r. Suspensionof all such authorities as could in any degree impede or obstruct its
al other magistrcies. operations.  It was natural, therefore, that the tribunate' should
be suspended as well as the patrician magistracies; besides, the appointment of
the decemvirs was, even in its present form, a triumph for the commons, and they
would be glad to show their full confidence in the magistrates whom they had so
much desired. Again, the tribunes had been needed to protect the commons
against the tyranny of the consuls; bit now that there were no consuls, why
should there be tribunes?    And who could dread oppression from men specially
appointed to promote the interests of freedom and justice? Yet, to show that
1 This is Dionysius' statement in the most ex- a question whether the tribuneship was proppress terms (X. 56), ad finem. Livy's language erly called magistratus or no: and, at any rate,
appears to me to admit of a doubt; for he says, it would not in these times be called "magiswhen speaking of the wish of the commons to tratus populi," but only "plebis:" further, Livy
have decemvirs elected for another year, " Jam expressly adds, that the " sacrate leges" were
plebs ne tribunicium quidem auxilium, ceden- not to be abolished. Niebuhr believes that the
tibus in vicem appellationi [codd. 'appellatione'  tribuneship was not given up till the second dedecemviris querebat." (III. 834. ad finem.) And  cemvirate. I think, on the whole, that Livy
although, when mentioning the appointment of meant to agree with Dionysius; and the statethe first decemvirs, he had said, "Placet creari ment does not appear to me to possess any indecemviros-et ne quis eo anno alius magistra- ternal improbability.
tus esset" (III. 82), yet it was sometimes made




ï~~CHAP. XIV.]

THE LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES.

97

the tribuneship was not to be permanently surrendered, the sacred laws were
specially exempted from the decemvirs' power of revision, as was also that other
law, scarcely less dear to the commons, or less important, which had secured to
them the property of the Aventine.
With the ground thus clear before them, and possessing that full confidence
and cheerful expectation of the people, which is a government's The decemvirs begin
great encouragement, the ten proceeded to their work. They had their legislation.
before them the unwritten laws and customs of their own country, and the information, partly, we may suppose, in writing, which the commissioners had brought
back from Greece. In this there would be much which, to a Roman, would require explanation: but the ten had with them an Ionian sophist,' Hermodorus of
Ephesus, who rendered such important services in explaining the institutions of
his countrymen, above all of the Athenians, the great glory of the Ionian race,
that a statue was erected to his honor in the comitium.
The result of these labors, after a few months, was submitted to the examination of the people.3  Ten tables were published, and set up in a The, omplete ten to
conspicuous place for all to read them. Every man was then in- euasm.
vited to make known to the ten such corrections as he might think needed; these
were considered, and adopted as far as the ten approved of them: and the ten
tables, thus amended, were then laid before the senate, the centuries, and the curiem,
and received the sanction of both orders of the nation. The laws were then engraved on tablets of brass,4 and the tablets were set up in the comitium, that all men
might know and observe them.
It cannot be doubted that the ten tables were a complete work, and intended
to be so by their authors. All the circumstances of their enactOnlyfragmenls of them
ment show this; it seems shown also by their number, which had have been preserved to
reference to that of the ten commissioners, as if each commissioner u"
had contributed an equal portion of their joint work. It is clear, also, that they
satisfied the expectations of the people, and were drawn up in a spirit of fairness
and wisdom; for whatever the Romans found fault with in the laws of the twelve
tables, was contained in the two last of them; and the laws, as a whole, are
spoken of with high admiration, and remained for centuries as the foundation of
all the Roman law. Unhappily, we ourselves know little of them beyond this
general character. Some fragments5 of them have been preserved by ancient
writers; but these are far too scanty to allow us to judge either of the substance
or the order of the whole code.
Stills we may fitly avail ourselves of the occasion offered by this great period

2 Pomponius, de origine juris, Â~ 4, in the Digest or Pandects, 1 Tit. ii. Strabo, XIV. 1, Â~ 25,
p. 642. Hermodorus was the friend of Heraclitus, the philosopher, who reproached the Ephesians for having banished him from mere jealousy of his superior merit. See the story in
Strabo, as already quoted, and in Cicero, Tusculan. Disputat. V. 86. Diogenes Laertius says
that Heraclitus flourished in the sixty-ninth
Olympiad, but Syncellus makes him contemporary with Anaxagoras, the elder Zenon, and
Parmenides, which would render it very possible for his friend Hermodorus to have visited Rome in the time of the decemvirs. Strabo expressly identifies the Hermodorus of whom
Heraclitus spoke, with the man of that name
who helped the decemvirs in drawing up their
laws. And the fact of his having been honored
with a statue in the comitium (Pliny, Hist. Nat.
XXXIV. 11) would seem to prove that the story
of his having helped the decemvirs was not
without foundation.
3 Livy, III. 34.
4 So Dionysius, or IaaLsaAkal Axapdfavrices
svros. X. 57. Livy's simple expression "tabu7

lm" would lead one to suppose that they were
written on wood.
5 The authentic remains of the twelve tables
are given by Haubold in his "Institutionum
Juris Romani privati Lineamenta," as republished after his death by Dr. Otto, Leipzig,
1826. They are given also by Dirksen, with an
elaborate criticism as to the text and the sources
of each fragment. "Ubersicht der bisherigcn
Versuche zur Kritik und Herstellung des Textes der Zwolf-Tafel-Fragmente." Leipzig, 1824.
The earlier collections of them contain clauses
ascribed to the twelve tables on insufficient authority.
s I am well aware of the difficulty of writing
on legal details without a professional knowledge of the subject. But history must embrace
the subject-matter of every profession; and as
no man can be properly qualified to write on all,
the necessity of the case must excuse the presumption. It will be proper here to mention
the works from which the present chapter has
been chiefly compiled. 1st. The Institutes of
Gains. An epitome of the three first books of
this great work had been long known, but the




ï~~98

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XIV

State of the Romanlaw in Roman legislation, to give something of a view of the Roman
Sits eamielt known law as it was settled by the twelve tables, or as it existed in the
form.         oldest form in which it is now possible to trace it. And I shall
adopt that division of constitutional law on the one hand, and civil law on the
other, which Livy had in his mind when he called the twelve tables "fons omnis
publici, privatique juris."
To begin, then, with "Jus privatum," or the civil law of Rome. This, accordJs Privatum. divided ing to the Roman lawyers, related either to persons, or to things,
i.no the... owTe, or to actions, in the legal sense of the term. Let us first examine
sees, tI. Law of Things, o  oat te     sne         tr.        a       xmn
and III. LawofActions. some of the principal points in the law as it regarded persons.
I. In later times the lawyers had occasion to notice three descriptions of per-. Lawoersons. r sons: those born free, those who had been made free, and slaves.
1. Law of Persons. Persons born free, persons The distinctions of burghers and commons, patricians and plebenmade free, and slaves.
aderee.  av. inns, had long since vanished; and all free-born Roman citizens
were legally regarded as equal. On the other hand, the condition of slaves admits of little variation so long as they remain slaves; and thus, with regard to
these, the lapse of centuries produced little change. But the freedmen of a later
age appear to represent the clients of the period of the twelve tables.
That the relation of the freedman to his former master very nearly resembled
The freedmen of alater that of the client to his lord, might be conjectured from this, that
age reembe the li- when a slave obtained his freedom, his former master, "dominus,"
ents of the period of the
twelve tables.  became his "patronus," the very same name which expressed his
relation to his clients. Previously to the decemvirate, this class of persons voted
indeed in the comitia of centuries, which comprehended the whole Roman people,
but they did not belong to any tribe, and therefore had no votes in the separate
comitia of the commons. The decemvirs7 procured their enrolment in the tribes,
and thus added greatly to the influence of the aistocracy over the popular assemblies; for the tie between a patron and his clients or freedmen seems to have been
a very kindly one, and much stronger, as yet, than any sense of the duty of advancing the cause of the great mass of the nation. Indeed, the freedman was
held to belong so much to his patron, that if he died intestate, and without direct

whole work, in its genuine state, was first discovered by Niebuhr in 1816, in a palimpsest, or
rewritten manuscript, of some of the works of
S. Jerome, in the Chapter Library at Verona.
I have used the second edition, published by
Gsehen, at Berlin, in 1824; and I have derived
great assistance from Gdschen's continued references to parallel passages in the other extant
works of the Roman lawyers. 2d. The fragment
of Ulpian from a MS. in the Vatican, published
by Hugo in his "Jus Civile Antejustinianeum."
Berlin, 1815.  The fragments of Ulpian more
recently discovered and published by Mai, I have
not seen. 3d. I have read the Institutes of Justinian, and referred continually to the Digest or
Pandects; but I cannot pretend to have read
through the Digest, or to be deeply acquainted
with its contents. 4th. Hugo's Geschichte des
Rdmischen Rechts. 9th edit. Berlin, 1824. 5th.
Haubold's Institutionumn juris Romani lineaments, and Dirksen's work on the Twelve Tables, noticed in a preceding note; as also Haubold's edition of the well-known work of Heineccius, "Antiquitt. Romanar. jurisprudentiam
illustrantium syntagma." 6th. Savigny, "Recht
des Besitzes," 5thedition; and some articles by
the same great writer in the "Zeitschrift fur
geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft."  In point
of excellence, I could not, I suppose, have consulted higher authorities than these; but I am
perfectly conscious of the insufficiency of a few
months' study, even of the best writers, on a
nubject so vast as the Roman law. The other

works which I have consulted will be noticed in
their several places.
" The Fragments of Ulpian discovered and
published by Mai" are not correctly described,
as I had not seen the book when this note was
written. I have only been able to procure it
since the completion of the present volume, and
I find that it contains the remains of several
treatises by an unknown lawyer, on various
legal subjects; these treatises consisting, for the
most part, of quotations from the works of the
most eminent lawyers, arranged in order, as in
the Pandects. Amongst the rest there are, naturally, citations from Ulpian, and some of these
were not known to us before Mai's discovery;
others had been already preserved in the Pandects. The manuscript in which these treatises were found was a palimpsest, now in the
Vatican library, and marked in the catalogue
VMDCCCLXVI. It was brought to Rome from
the library of the monastery at Bob.?, near Placentia, and these treatises were first published
from it by Mai in 1823: they have been since
reprinted at Bonn, in 1883, under the superintendence of Bethmann Hollweg; and I know
them only in this German edition. They do not
give us any additional information as to the laws
of the Twelve Tables.
7 On this point see Niebuhr, Vol. II. p. 318.
Eng. Transl. It is admitted also by Haubold, in
his Tabuln Chronologicee, as one of the institutions of the deceminvirs.




ï~~CHAP. XIV.]

THE LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES.

99

heirs,8 his patron inherited all his property; a law which applied also, as we cannot doubt, though perhaps with some qualification, to the client.
Looking at the domestic relations of free citizens, we find that the absolute
power of a father over his children was in some slight degree power of a frather over
qualified by the twelve tables; inasmuch as they enadted," that if hischildren.
a father had sold his son three times, he should have no further control over
him. Formerly, it appears, the independence of a son during his father's lifetime had been regarded as monstrous and impossible; he never could become
sui juris.  The father might transfer, his right to another by selling his son; but
if his new master set him   free, the father's right revived, and the son became
again in potestate.  But by the new law, the father's right became terminable;
and if, after he had thrice sold his son, the last purchaser gave him his freedom,
then the son no longer reverted to his father's power, but remained his own master.  Still, as if to show the peculiar sacredness of the father's power, he could
not, by any one act of his own, make his son independent; he could not give
him his liberty like a slave, but was obliged, if he wished to emancipate him, to
go through the form of thrice selling him; and it was only when, according to
the common practice, the son, after the third sale, was resold to his father, that
then, the fatherly power being extinct, he could give him his freedom by a direct act of manumission. It should be remembered, also, that an emancipated
son lost his relationship to his father, and could no longer inherit from him; and
further, that by having been sold, and so passed into the state of slavery, he incurred0 that legal degradation which the Romans called diminutio capitis,
and consequently, remained liable, during the remainder of his life, to certain peculiar disqualifications.
As the father of a family enjoyed absolute power over his children in his lifetime, so was he equally absolute in his choice of a guardian for His power of disposing
them; and in his disposal of his property after his death."      He of Ihis property by will.
might bequeath his whole fortune to any one child, to the exclusion of the rest,
or to an absolute stranger, to the exclusion of them all. In this respect the
twelve tables gave, probably, a legal sanction to a power which was become common in practice, but, strictly speaking, was as yet only a matter of indulgence,
not of right. Hitherto, the will of every citizen had been read before the comitin,'2 whether of the curime or of the centuries; that the former in the case of a
8 Gaius, Institut. III. Â~ 40. A man's direct virilis sexus personas;" such as his father's
heirs, " sui heredes," wer'e, according to the Ro- brother, or brother's son, or the son of an unman law, his children '  in potestate," whether cle by the father's side.  These inherited in
male or female, by birth, or by adoption; his preference to the cognati, or relations derived
son's children; his son's son's children; his "per foeminei sexus personas;" and thus an
wife in manu; and his daughter-in-law. See emancipated son could not be heir or guardian
Gaius, Institut. III. Â~ 2. For the application of to his nephew on his brother's side, by virtue
this law to clients, see Nieuport, Ritt. Romanor. of the jus agnationis, as he had lost that right
Sect. I. ch. IV. Â~ 3, and the defence of his state- by having gone through the state of mancipatio
ment in Reiz's preface to the 5th edit. of Nieu- during the process of his release from his faport's work. Niebuhr also is of the same opin- ther's authority.
ion. Hist. Rom. Vol. I. p. 320, Eng. Transl.  1 Uti legassit super pecunia tutelive sum rei,
The qualification alluded to is supposed by Reiz ita jus esto. Fragm. duodec. Tabb. 13, apud
to have consisted in this, that a client's agnati Haubold. See Gaius, Institut. II. Â~ 224.
would have inherited before his patron, whereas,12 Testamentorum autem genera initio duo
a freedman could have no agnati, his natural re- fuerunt; nam aut.calatis comitiis faciebant, qua
lationships in his state of slavery being reckoned  comitia his in anno testamentis faciendis desti
as nothing.                                nata erant, autin procinctu, id est cum belt
9 Si pater filium ter venum duit, filius a piatre causa ad pugnam ibant: procinctus est enm
liber esto. Fragm. duodec. Tabb. 12, apucl expeditus et ar iatus exercitus. Gaius, InstiHaubold, Institut. jur. Rom. lineamenta.   tut. II. Â~ 101. Ulpian, Fragm. XX. 2. " Ca10 Minima capitis diminutio accidit in his qui lata comitia" are defined by Labeo to be those,
mancipio dantur, quique ex mancipatione man- " quae pro collegio pontificum  habentur at
amittuntur; adeo quidem ut quotiens quisque regis aut flaminum inaugurandorum causl."
mancipetur ant manumittatur, totiens 'capite " lisdem comitiis," says Gellius, by whom the
diminuatur. Gaius, Institut. I. Â~ 162. The passage from Labeo has been preserved, "et,
disqualifications incurred by a diminutio capi- sacrorum detestatio et testamenta fieri soletis included a forfeiture of the jus agnationis. bant." Noct. Att. XV. 27, Â~ 1, 3. And Leabeo'
A man's agnati are his relations derived " per tells us that these calata comitia were either




ï~~100

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XIV

burgher, the latter in the case of a plebeian, might confirm or reject it. The
confirmation was generally, as we may suppose, become almost a matter of
course; still it is evident that it might have been refused.  But from  this time
forward it became a mere formality; the right of the father to dispose of his
property as he chose was fully acknowledged; and it was conferred on him with
such full sovereignty, that it was only when he died intestate that the next of
kin could take the management of his inheritance out of the hands of his sons,
if they were squandering it extravagantly; no degree of waste on the part of a
son could justify the interference of his relations,"3 if he had succeeded by virtue
of his father's will. The principle of this distinction is plain: when the father
of a family had waived his right of bequeathing his property, it seemed, in some
measure, to revert to the community, as a member of which, he or his ancestor
had originally received it. This community was the gens in the last resort, and
more immediately the family of which he was the representative. As then his
property would go to the male representatives of his family in default of his own
direct heirs, so they had an interest in preserving it unimpaired, and were allowed
to enforce it when the son's title to his inheritance rested, like theirs, only on the
general award of the law.    But where the father had disposed of his property
by will, then the individual right of ownership passed in full sovereignty to his
children, and no one might interfere with their management of what was wholly
their own.   The later law did away with this distinction; and the preetor was
accustomed to deprive an extravagant son of the administration of his inheritance, even when he had succeeded to it by his father's will. And this is natural, for as society advances in true civilization, its supremacy over all individual
rights of property becomes more fully recognized; and it is understood that we
are but stewards of our possessions with regard to the commonwealth of which
we are members, as well as with respect to God.
We shall not be surprised to find that the usages of a rude people paid but
Law with respe to little respect to women.  A man could acquire a right over a wowomen: 1i, as to mar- man by her having lived with him for a year; exactly as a year's
rioge          possession gave him a legal title to a slave, or any other article of
movable property.     Here again the twelve tables so far interfered,4 as to give
the power to the woman of barring this prescription, by absenting herself from
her husband during three nights in each year.    By so doing, she avoided passing
under her husband's power, "in. manum viri;" and could not, therefore, like a
wife in the fullest sense, inherit from  him  as a daughter.  Still the connection
was recognized as a lawful marriage,' "connubium;" and the children accordingly followed their father's condition, and were subject to his power, which was
the case only with such children as were born in "connubium."
Again, the old Roman law, confirmed in this instance also by the twelve ta2, as to their being al- bles, obliged all women, at all times of their lives, and under all
ways under guard-circumstances,6 to be under guardianship.  If a father died inahip.         testate, his daughters immediately became the wards of their
" euriata" or "centuriata;" so that we may scription, "usus," or by coemptio, because
safely conclude that the will of a patrician was then they lost their control over her property,
read at the former, that of a plebeian at the and their right of inheriting from her (see
latter. See Niebuhr, Vol. II. p. 33886, Eng. Cicero pro Flacco, 34); but only her father's
Trans.                                   refusal of consent hindered her from forming a
1. A prietore constituitur curator-ingenuis connubium, if her connection was with a RIoqmu ex testamento parentis hieredes facti male man citizen, and one not related to her in any
dissipant bona: his enim ex lege (scil. XII. prohibited degree. See Ulpian, Fragm. V. 2-7.
Tabularum) curator dari non poterat. Ulpian,  '5 Gaius, I. Â~ 144. The vestal virgins were
Fragm. XII. 8.                            alone excepted by the twelve tables, " in hono14 Gaius, Institut. I. Â~ 111.           rem sacerdotii." Afterwards, by the later law,
15 The formalities of a marriage, according to a woman obtained the same privilege by acthe Roman law, seem only to have affected th%  quiring the "jus trium liberorum" which did
wife's property, and her power of inheriting not, however, always imply that sie had really
from her husband, not the legitimacy of the borne three children, but that by the emperor's
children. A woman's guardians might prevent favor she had acquired the right granted by law
aer from passing in manum vri either by pre- to one who had actually been a mother.




ï~~CuaP. XIV.]

THE LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES.

101

brothers, or of their nearest male relations on their father's side;17 nor could
they, without their guardian's sanction, contract any obligation,8 or alienate
their land, or make a will. If a woman married, she became, in law, her husband's daughter; he could appoint her guardians by his will, or, if he died intestate, her nearest male relations succeeded by law to the office; so that it was
possible, in despite of the laws of nature, that a mother might be under the
guardianship of her own son. By these institutions, the apparent liberality of
the law, which enabled a man's daughters to inherit on an equal footing with his
sons, was in great measure rendered ineffectual."  A  daughter might, indeed,
claim an equal share with her brother of her father's land; but as she could
neither alienate it during her lifetime, nor bequeath it by will without his consent, and as he was her legal heir, there was little probability of its passing out
of the family. All this was greatly modified by the later law; but there were
always found persons who regretted the change, and upheld the old system,
with all its selfishness and injustice, as favorable to a wholesome severity of
manners, and a proper check upon the weakness or caprice of a woman's judgment.
II. If from persons we now turn to property, or, according to the language
of the law, to things, our curiosity as to the provisions of the. LawofThing. gmtwelve tables, and the state of things which they recognized, can edge of t o.w of o rl
Yet hereare ew  oint of  oreproperty, as throwing
be but imperfectly gratified. Yet there are few points of m    ore gt o the history of
importance in the history of a nation: the law of property, of real everyopeople.
property especially, and a knowledge of all the circumstances of its tenure and
divisions, would throw light upon more than the physical condition of a people;
it would furnish the key to some of the main principles prevalent in their society. For instance, the feudal notion that property in land confers jurisdiction,
and the derivation of property, either from the owner's own sword, or from the
gift of the stronger chief whose sword he had aided, not from the regular assignment of society, has most deeply affected the political and social state of the
nations of modern Europe. At Rome, as elsewhere among the free commonwealths of the ancient world, property was derived from political rights, rather
than political rights from property; and the division and assignation of lands to
the individual members of the state by the deliberate act of the whole community, was familiarly recogmnized" as the manner in which such property was most

17 Quibus testamento quidem tutor datus non
sit, iis ex lege XII. agnati sunt tutores. Gains,
I. Â~ 155.
18 A woman's agnati, by the old law, were
her tutores legitimi. And it was a well-known
rule of law that she could make no valid will
without their consent. Gaius, II. Â~ 118. The
whole right of her agnati to become her guardians was done away by the emperor Claudius.
(Gaius, I. Â~ 171.) But her father, and, if she
were a freed woman, her patronus, still retained
the same power; and even in the time of the
Antonines, her will was good for nothing if it
had not their sanction.
tO See Hugo, Geschichte des R dmischen
Rechts, p. 209.
o20 This is one of those general statements
which I think the reader of ancient history will
readily admit, although it is not possible to
bring any particular passage of an ancient writer as the authority for it. Nor is it to be denied, that conquest, and the lapse of years, introduced the greatest inequalities of property,
quite as great as those subsisting in modern
Europe. But the notion of an equal division
of the land of a country amongst its citizens,
which in modern Europe is so without example
that it is looked upon as one of the wildest of
impossible fancies, seems, in the ancient world,

to have been rather the rulein theory, and, in
the earliest recorded settlement of a people, to
have been often actually carried into practice.
The division of Canaan amongst the Israelites
is a well-known example. Let any one compare this with the utterly capricious manner in
which the Norman chiefs, from duke William
downwards, appropriated    to themselves, or
granted away to their followers, the lands of
England. Again, a similar equal division is
said to have existed at one time in Egypt (Herodotus, II. 109); and even after the period of
the distress, noticed in Genesis, had brought
most of the property into the hands of the
kings, yet still we find the principle of regular
division recognized; for even in the last years
of the Egyptian monarchy, the class of landed
proprietors who received their land as an hereditary fief, on the tenure of military service,
enjoyed each man an equal portion. (Herodotus, II. 164, et seqq.) In all the Greek colonies
there was the same system; each citizen had
his K) pog or portion, and in many states these
were not allowed to be alienated. (Aristotle,
Politic. VI. 4.) Thus the well-known division
of Laconia, ascribed to Lycurgus, was nothing
unprecedented: the remarkable feature in it
was, that it was a return to the principle of
regular assignation, after a long departure from




ï~~102

ISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XIV

regularly acquired. This act conveyed the property of the land so granted in
complete sovereignty; no seignorial rights were reserved on it;: all on the soiL
and under it, was alike made over to the proprietor; and, as he was the absolute owner of it in his lifetime, so he could dispose of it to whom he would after
his death. But he must leave it as unfettered as he had himself enjoyed it:
he could not control the rights of his successor by depriving him of his power
of disposing of it in his turn according to his pleasure; for this seemed an unjust encroachment on the power of posterity, and an unnatural usurpation on
the part of any single generation. And a man's civil rights and duties were derived, not from his possession of property, but from his being a citizen of that
society from whose law his property itself had come to him.  He was bound to
defend his country, not as the holder of lands, but as a member of the commonwealth; as a master, he had power over his slaves; as a father, over his children; as a magistrate, over his fellow-citizens; as a free-born citizen he had a
voice in public affairs; but as a proprietor of land he enjoyed only the direct
benefits of property, and no power or privilege, whether social or political.
Yet the sword had won no small portion of the actual territory of Rome, no
All property in land at less than of the feudal kingdoms of a later period. The sword
Rome woo derived o   won it for the state, but not for individuals.. Slaves, cattle, money,
ginally from the grant
of the state.,  clothing, and all articles of movable property, might be won by
individuals for themselves; and the law21 acknowledged this as a natural method
of acquiring wealth; but whatever land2 was conquered belonged immediately to
the commonwealth. It could be converted into private property only by purchase or by assignation; and assignation always proceeded on regular principles,
and awarded equal portions of land to every man. But the mass of the conquered territory was left as the demesne of the state; and it was out of land similarly, reserved to the kings in the conquests of the German barbarians that fiefs
were first created. This system was prevented among the Romans, by the general law, strengthened apparently by the sanctions of religion: the law which
prescribed to all grants of land made out of the state demesne the one form of
common and equal assignation. The land then was not granted away, its property remained in the state; it was sometimes left as a common pasture, sometimes

it; it was the bringing back of an old state to
a new beginning, as it were, of its social existence. I think, then, it may be stated, as one
of the characteristic points.of the ancient world,
that landed property was not merely sanctioned
and maintained by law, but had originally been
derived from it; and that even where the people as a body had gained their country by the
sword, yet their individual citizens received
their separate portioi neither from their own
sword, nor from the capricious bounty'of their
chiefs, but from the deliberate act of society,
which proceeded, on regular principles, to allot
a portion of its common property to each of its
members. With respect to the statement at
the end of this paragraph, that land conferred
no political power, it may be objected that
power was connected with landed property,
inasmuch as the commons, it is said, were liable to be removed from their tribe by the censors, if they followed' any other calling but
agriculture. But thi4 and other such regulations went on the principle, that it was desirable that a citizen should live'by agriculture
rather than by trade; a principle very generally admitted in. the ancient world, but founded
on considerations of what was supposed to be
for the moral good of the commuhity; and
very different from the notion that he who had
land ought to have jurisdiction and power.
Besides, it was only a ground of censorian in
terference, if a citizen having had land, neglected it and followed any other calling; it
certainly did not follow that every citizen received a grant of land, much less that his possession of land beforehand qualified him    to
become a citizen.
21 Gaius, II. Â~ 69. Qum ex hostibus capiuntur, naturali ratione nostra flunt; and in Justinian's Institutes this is expressly extended to
slaves; "adeo quidem, ut et liberi homines in
servitutem nostram 'deducantur." II. 1, Â~I17.
IDe rerum divisiones, &c.
2 Gaius, II. Â~ 7. In provinciali solo dominium populi Romani est, vel Casaris; nos autemn
possessionem tantum et usum fructum habere
videmur. Accordingly no land, in provinciali
solo, could be sold by mancipatio, because it
was not res mancipii. "Provinciale solum"
was opposed to " Italicum solum," and expressed the condition of land which remained still
in the state of a conquest, and had not been incorporated with the territory, " ager," of the
conquerors. But, as is well known, all the land
in the provinces in the imperial times was not
" provinciale solum;" particular spots enjoyed
the privileges of " Italicum solum," and this
was the famous jus Italim which was so completely misunderstood by all writers on the Roman law and constitution before Savigny. Ho
first showed that it was a privilege attached to
land, not, as had been supposed, to persons.




ï~~CHAP. XIV.]

THE LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES.

103

farmed, sometimes occupied by individuals, in the same manner and under the
same circumstances as in later times it was granted in fiefs, but with this essential difference, that this occupation was an irregular, and as far as regarded the
state, a wholly precarious tenure. The occupiers possessed large tracts of land,
and derived as much profit from them as if they had been their property; but
they were only tenants at will, and there was nothing to give to these permitted
rather than authorized possessions, the dignity and political importance which
were attached to the great fiefs of modern Europe.
This occupation of the public land could by no length of prescription be converted into private property; lapse of time could never bar the Property acquired by
rights of the commonwealth; and therefore the "possessions" of prescription.
the Roman patricians in early times, within a few miles of Rome, were on the
same footing with all land in the provinces afterwards: in neither case could prescription or usucapio23 confer a legal title on the possessor, because in both instances the property of the soil lay in the state. But with respect to the lands
of private persons, the early Roman law24 allowed possession to become property
after a lapse of only two years, provided that the possession had not been obtained in the first instance25 either by force or fraud.  The object of this enactment was supposed to have been the speedy settlement of all questions of ownership;26 one year's possession gave a right of property in a slave, or any other
movable, and twice that time was thought sufficient for the owner of the land to
establish his right against the occupier in a territory so small as that of Rome,
unless through his own neglect. Probably, also, it was judged expedient to prevent the risk of any lands lying long uncultivated, by regarding land thus neglected as returned, in a manner, to a state of nature, and open to the first occupant.   Another reasoni would sometimes operate strongly; the duty of keeping
up the religious rites attached to particular places, which would fall into disuse
during the absence of an owner.    This feeling was so powerful in the case of the
religious rites of particular families," that if the heir neglected to enter upon his
inheritance, another person might step in and take possession, and after the lapse
of a single year, he acquired a legal title to the estate.  But it cannot be doubted
that the effect of this encouragement given to possession was favorable to the
burghers, or patricians as we must now begin to call them, at the expense of the
commons. The twelve tables8 utterly denied the right of possession to a foreigner; against such a one the owner's title remained good forever.    And although
the commons were no longer regarded as altogether foreigners, yet they were
still excluded from the right of occupying the public land; and we may be certain that they could neither take possession of the inheritance of a patrician, nor
of any portion of his land on which there was any temple or altar; for it would
have been a direct profanation, had a stranger ventured to perform the religious
rites peculiar to his family and race. Besides, in point of fact, the patricians'
lands were far less likely to be left open to occupation. A plebeian, whose land
2 Provincialia priedia usucapionem non reci- quirec the possession of anly thing bona fide,
piunt. Gains, II. Â~ 46. It need not be repeated yet he could not acquire the property of it by
that the provinciale solum of Gains' time, of prescription or usucapio, if it had been originwhich the property was vested only in the Ro- ally'obtainecd by force or fraud; " si quis rem
man people or the emperor, while individuals furtivam ant vi possessam possideat."  Gains,
could only have the occupation and usufruct of II. Â~ 45.
it, was exactly in the condition of the ager pub-  20 No rerum dominia diutius in incerto eslicus of the time of the XII. tables. Afterwards sent. Gaius, II. Â~ 44.
the distinction between provinciale and Itali-  2 Gaius, II. Â~ 53, 55. Voluerunt veteres macum solum was done away by Justinian, and turius hereditates adiri ut essent qui sacra fausucapio was admitted alike in each; but it cerent, quorum illis temporibus summa obsercould be completed not in two years, but, ac- vatio fuit.
cording to various circumstances, in ten, twenty,  26 "Adversus hostem  uterna auctoritas.'
or thirty. See Justinian's Code, VII. Tit. 81. Fragm. XII. Tabular. 19, apud Haubold. "AucDe usucapione transformandi.             toritas" is the right of claiming our own prop24 Gains, II. Â~ 42. Ulpian, Fragm. XIX. Â~ 8. erty, to prevent another from acquiring it by
25 Si modo eas bona fide acceperimus. Gains, prescription.
II. Â~ 43. But even if the actual possessor ac



ï~~104

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP XIV

had been laid waste by the enemy, whose house had been burnt, and his song
killed or swept off by the plague, might often be actually unable to cultivate his
property again, and might leave it in despair, to be possessed by the first person
who chose to occupy it. Or if he were detained prisoner for debt in some patrician's prison, the same result might happen; his wife and children might seek
protection with some relation or friend, and their home might thus be abandoned.
And supposing justice to have been fairly administered, yet the delays of legal
business, or the want of friends to undertake the cause, or the fear of provoking
a powerful enemy, might often hinder the owner from making good his claim
within two years, and so the property might be lost forever.
As the Roman law attached no political power to landed property, so neither
Distnetions as to vari- did it make a distinction between it and all other kinds of property,
Res    p rapcp    as to the formalities required in conveying it to another. Yet
mani. p"    there was a distinction recognized; some things might be conveyed
by bare delivery, a title to others could only be given by selling them with certain solemn formalities, known by the names of mancipatio and in jure cessio.
This latter class9 included not only land and houses, but also slaves, and all tame
animals of draught or burden, and all these were classed under one common
name, as res mancipii or mancipi; every other article of property was nec mancipii. The formality of mancipatio was one of the peculiar rights of Roman citizens;0 no magistrate's presence was required, nor was there need of any written
instrument: but five Roman citizens of an adult age were to be present as witnesses, and a sixth, called the weigher, or scalesman, was to produce a pair of
scales to weigh the copper, which was, at this time, the only money in circulation. Then the purchaser laid his hand upon the thing which he was buying,
and said, "This thing I declare to be mine according to the law of the Quirites;
and I have bought it with this money duly weighed in these scales." In later
times, when this form was still preserved, only slaves and animals were required
to be literally seized by the purchaser; land might be disposed of at a distance."
But in the days of the decemviri, we cannot doubt that every sale of land by
mancipatio was transacted on the spot, and that the purchaser laid his hand upon
the house or ground which he was buying, no less than on the slave or the ox.
The form called" in jure cessio" took place before a magistrate:u the purchaser
claimed, "vindicavit," the purchase as his property; the seller, when asked by
the magistrate if he disputed the claim, answered "that he did not;" and then
the magistrate awarded the article in question to the purchaser or claimant.
These transactions, by word of mouth only, without writing, were especially sane
Mancipi res sunt predia in Italico soloitem jura prudcliorum rusticorum, velut via, iter,
actus, aqunductus; item servi et quadrupedes
qun dorso collove domantur, velut boves, muli,
equi, asini. Cetern res nee mancipi sunt. Ulpian, Fragm. XIX. 1. It has been doubted
whether this distinction was as old as the
Twelve Tables (see Hugo, Geschichte des
Rom. Rechts, p. 425); but it is, at any rate, recognized by the Cincian law, passed in the year,550 (see Hugo, p. 821), and was, in all probability, coeval with the earliest state of the Roman law, except as far as regards the jura priediorum; for these, being res incorporales, could
not pass by actual bodily seizure, and mancipatio no doubt always in its original meaning implied this. It may be conjectured that mancipatio was at first a matter of usage amongst the
plebeian landowners, a method of effecting a
purchase in the country before a man's immediate neighbors, without the necessity of his
going up to Rome and transacting the business
before a magistrate. If the law of the Twelve
Tables gave a legal sanction to this mode of

conveyance, and thus gratified the commons by
recognizing their custom as law, we can understand why there should have been afterwards
a sort of pride felt in the exercise of this right
of mancipatio, and why it should have been
kept as one of the peculiar rights of Roman
citizens. And if it were originally the mode of
conveyance practised by the plebeian landowners, we can account for its being restricted to
land, and to what constituted the most valuable part of the live stock of land, slaves, horses,
mules, asses, and oxen. In particular, we can
thus understand why ships were res nec mancipii, because foreign commerce was wholly unknown to the agricultural commons, and ships
were neither bought nor sold amongst them.
I may observe that in the MS. published by
Mai, entitled "De donationibus, adlegem Cinciam," we have the true form "res mancipii,"
instead of " mancipi." See Hugo, p. 321, and
Niebuhr, Vol. I. p. 447. Note 1044.
so Gaius, I. Â~ 119.
31 Gaius, I. Â~ 121.
2 Gaius, II. Â~ 24. Ulpian, Fragm. X1X. 9.




ï~~CHA. XIV.]

THE LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES.

105

tioned by the twelve tables, which declared, that in buying and selling, "even
as the tongue had spoken, so should be the law."3
The principle of the law of descent was that of qualified male succession without primogeniture?4   All children who had not been emanci- Law ofaucceosion
pated"5 inherited their father's estate in equal portions, without
distinction of sex or eldership. A man's wife, if she had fully come under his
power (in manum convenerat), inherited as a daughter; and his son's children,
if the son were dead, or had been emancipated,36 succeeded to that son's share,
and divided it equally amongst them; even the children of his son's son inherited on the same condition, if their father had ceased to be in his grandfather's
power,, either by death or by emancipation; but daughters' children, as belonging to another family, had no right of succession. All these were called a man's
own heirs, "sui heredes;" and in default of these, his agnati,y or relations by
the father's side, succeeded; the nearer excluding the more remote, and those in
the same degree of relationship receiving equal shares.  In default of agnati,3 a
man's inheritance went to the members of his gens.
III. The last division of the Roman private law relates to actions.  "Legis
actio" signifies, "the course of proceeding which the law prescribes m. Law -.aion.
to a man, in order to settle a dispute with his neighbor, or to ob- Five orsotf actons.
tain the redress of an injury."  It stands opposed to all those acts of superstition or violence, by which the ignorance or passion of man has sought to obtain
the same end; to the lot or the ordeal on the one hand, to the dagger of the
assassin or the sword of the duellist on the other. But a proceeding at law, according to the notion of the decemvirs, was bound to follow the law to the very
letter; nothing was understood of construction or of deductions, insomuch
that he who brought an action against, another for cutting down his vineso
was held to have lost his cause, because the twelve tables forbade only
the cutting down of fruit trees generally, without any particular mention of
vines. The modes of action were five:40 1: Sacramento; 2. Per judicis postu
" Quum    nexum   faciet mancipiumque, uti
lingua nuncupassit ita jus esto. Fragm. XII.
Tabular. 17, apud Haubold. See Dirksen, p.
897-406.
4 I call it "qualified male succession," because although a man's daughters inherited
along with his sons, yet his daughters' sons
were altogether excluded, and his daughters,
being under their brothers' guardianship, could
not dispose of or devise their inheritance without their consent. By the Athenian law the
sons alone inherited, but they were obliged to
portion out their sisters, and public opinion
would not allow this to be done niggardly.
5 Gaius, III. Â~ 2.
" The reason of this restriction was, that if
the son were in his father's power, he was himself his father's heir, and his children were, of
course, excluded; if he had lost his succession,
either by death or by emancipation, then his
children succeeded to his share as his representatives.
7 Gaius, III. Â~ 9, 10. By the law of the XII.
tables, all relations by the father's side, whether male or female, were alike included under
the title of agnati; but afterwards the meaning
of the term was more limited, and female relations were excluded beyond the degree of a
sister. A man's mother, if she had passed "in
manum mariti," acquired the rights of a daughter, as regarded her husband, and thus was
considered in the light of a sister to her son.
See Justinian, Institutes, III. Tit. 2, Â~ 3.
Gaius, III. Â~ 17. It is provoking that the
part of Gaius' work, in which he had defined
who were a man's "gentiles," is wholly illegible

in the MS. It was to be found in his first book,
between the 164th and 165th sections of the
present division. There is no more difficult
question in Roman law than to ascertain when
and to wvhat extent the plebeians acquired " jura
gentilitatis." The whole institution of the
gentes seems to have been essentially patrician; and it was the boast of the patricians,
" se solos gentem habere," Livy, X. 8. Who,
then, in the succession to the property of an
intestate plebeian, stood in a position analogous
to that of the members of his gens in the Â~uccession to the property of a patrician? For the
noblest of the plebeian families, the Cecilii, for
instance, or the Decii, could have had no connection with any patrician gens such as subsisted between the plebeian and patrician Claudii,
so that it does not appear who would have succeeded to the property of an intestate Cncilius,
in default of sui hnredes and agnati. Was it,
as in the Athenian law, that cognati, a term
which included relations by the mother's side
as well as by the father's, were capable of inheriting? And if no relations at all were to be
found, had the tribe any claim to the succession,
or was the property considered to be wholly
without an heir, and thus capable of being acquired by a stranger by occupation, possessio,
and two years' prescription, usucapio? In this
case there would be a possibility of'the property
of a plebeian being acquired by a patrician,
whereas, so long as there existed a single member of his gens, the property of a patrician coul
never be without a patrician heir.
S Gaius, IV. Â~ 11.
4o Gaius, IV. Â~ 12.




ï~~106

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XIV

lationem; 3. Per condictionem; 4. Per manus injectionem; 5. Per pignoris
captionem.
1. The first41 of these was the most generally adopted where no other specific
lst Action: sacramen- action was prescribed by law. The contending parties each staked
to.            a certain sum  of money, "sacramentum," on the issue of their
suit, five hundred ases, if the value of the disputed property amounted to one
thousand ases or more; and fifty, if it fell below that sum.   Only if the suit
related to the establishing of the freedom of any one claimed as a slave,42 the sacramentum was fixed at the lower sum of fifty ases, lest his friends might be
deterred from asserting his liberty, by the greatness of the sum they would have
to forfeit if they failed in proving it.  For the party who lost his cause forfeited
his stake besides, and it went not to the other party, but to the state.  Accordingly, the magistrate having named a judge to try the cause, the parties appeared
before him, and first briefly stated to him the nature of their respective claims.
Then the object in dispute, if it were any thing capable of moving or being
moved, was brought into court also, and the plaintiff, holding a rod or wand in
one hand,43 and laying hold of the object which he claimed with the other, asserted that it belonged to him according to the law of the Quirites, and then
laid his rod upon it. The defendant did the same, and asserted his own right to
it in the same form  of words.  Then the judge bade them    both to loose their
hold, and this being done, the plaintiff turned to the defendant, and said, "Wilt
thou tell me wherefore thou hast claimedthis thing as thine?"   The other answered, "I have fulfilled what right requires, even as I have made my claim."
Then the plaintiff rejoined, "Since thou hast made thy claim wrongfully, I defy
thee at law; and I stake five hundred ases on the issue."     To which the defendant replied, "In like manner, and with a like stake, do I also defy thee."
Then the judge awarded possession of the object in dispute to one or other of
the parties till the cause should be decided, and called upon him to give security
to his adversary, "litis et vindiciarum," that is, that he would make good to him
both the thing itself, "litem," and the benefit arising from his temporary possession of it, "vindicias," if the cause were finally decided against him.  Both parties also gave security to the judge that their stake, or sacramentum, should be
duly paid.  But if the dispute related to the personal freedom of any man, whether he were to be adjudged to be a slave or a freeman, the twelve tables expressly
ordered that the vindicize, or temporary possession,44 should be awarded in favor
of freedom, that the man should remain at liberty, till it were proved that he
was lawfully a slave. I have given all these details, partly from their affording
so curious an illustration of the legal proceedings of the fourth century of Rome,
partly from the light which they throw on the famous story of Virginia, presently
to be related, and partly also from their novelty; our whole knowledge of the old
actions at law being derived from the Institutes of Gaius, which in their entire
and original form were first discovered by Niebuhr at Verona, in the year 1816.
2. 3. The account of the second and third modes of action has been lost out
2d and 3d Actions: of the MS. of Gaius, so that we can neither fully understand their
dPer  cndioatto-hw              dfeedaohr                         a
ond judie   poatto- nature, nor how they differed from  one another. So far as we
oem.           can judge, the latter, actio per condictionem, appears to have
been a sort of serving a notice on the adversary, calling on him to appear at the
end of thirty days, to submit his cause to the judge. The former, per postula41 Gaius, IV. Â~ 13-17.                  4 " Festucam tenebat." This was apparent42 In the case of a slave's liberty, it was not ly a rod or wand, as Gaius says afterwards,
necessary that the person who brought the "Festuca auterm utebantur quasi hastse loco,
question to issue should have any connection signo quodam justi dominii," Â~ 16. It cannot,
with the slave, or any personal interest for him: therefore, signify the wisp of straw or chaff,
it was the duty, or rather the privilege, of ev- which Plutarch says was thrown on a slaves
ery man to save a freeman from the perpetual when he received his liberty. Sc-a Facciolati in
loss of his liberty. " In his qu asserantur in Festuca.
libertatem, quivis lege agere potest." Livy,  " Vindicin secundum libertatem. See Livy,
1I. 45.                                 III. 44, 45.




ï~~CHAr. XIV.]

THE LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES.

107

tionem judicis, was an application to the magistrate that he would name a judge
to try the matter in dispute.
4. The summary process, per manus injectionem, was allowed by the twelve
tables45 as a method of enforcing the fulfilment of the judge's sen- 4th Action: Per m.
tence.  If the defendant, after having lost his cause, and having nusinjectionem.
been sentenced to pay a certain sum to the plaintiff, had neglected to do so, the
plaintiff might lay actual hands on him, and unless he could find a vindex, or defender, to plead his cause for him, he being himself not allowed to do it, he was
dragged to the plaintiff's house, and there kept in chains till he had paid all that
was due from him.
5. Lastly, the action per pignoris captionem46 was a rude method of distress,
in which a man was allowed, in certain cases, to compel his adver- 5th Action: Per pig.
sary to pay him what he owed him by carrying off articles of his no ri ceaptonproperty as a pledge. In some instances it rested solely on old unwritten custom, such as that which allowed the soldier,41 if his pay were withheld, to distrain in this manner upon the goods of the officer whose business it was to give
it him.  The twelve tables allowed it in cases connected with religious worship;
as, for instance, it was permitted against him who had bought a sheep or an ox
for sacrifice, and had not paid for it; or against him who had not paid for the
hire of a beast, which the owner had let for the very purpose of getting money
to enable him to offer a sacrifice himself. In the first case, there was an impiety
in a man's offering to the gods that which was not his own; in the second, the
gods themselves were defrauded of their sacrifice, inasmuch as their worshipper
was deprived of the means to offer it.
I have purposely postponed my notice of one part of the law, that which relates to obligations, because it affords an easy transition to another Law o ono.
branch of the subject, the criminal law of the twelve tables; inasmuch as several offences, which we regard as crimes, or public wrongs, were
by the Romans classed under the head of private wrongs, and the compensation
which the offender was bound to make to the injured party, followed from one
species of civil obligation, technically called obligationes ex delicto.
Over and above our general duties to our fellow-citizens, we put ourselves
often, by our own voluntary act, under certain new and specific Obligttons ex contr.
obligations towards them, either from    some particular engage- toanoaex deto.
ment contracted with them, or from our having done them some wrong.        In the
first case, there arises an obligation to fulfil our agreement; in the second, an
obligation to repair our injustice. Hence the Roman law45 divided all legal obligations into those arising from engagement, ex contractu, and those arising from
a wrong committed, ex delicto.
I. It will not be necessary to go minutely into the subdivisions of the former
of these two classes of obligations.  To the head of obligationes. Oblgotone x on.
re contracte belonged the law of debtor and creditor: the mere tractu. Dobts, interest
fact of having borrowed money49 constituted the obligation to pay o money.
it, without any promise to that effect, verbal or written,50 on the part of the borrower. But as the remarkable provisions of the law of the twelve tables, with
regard to debtors, have been already noticed, it will not be needful to state them
4 Gaius, IV. Â~ 21-25.                  tuum," when the thing, whatever it be, is given
46 Gains IV. Â~ 26-29. With regard to the to another for his use, with the understanding
orthography of the word, the text of Gains va- that he shall return to us hereafter not that very
ries, exhibiting in one passage the form " cap- same thing, but one of the same nature and
tionem," Â~ 12, and in another that of " capio- quality. " Commodatum" expressed that which
neno," Â~ 26. If the expression be made one is lent to another, with the understanding that
single word, the form would be pignoriseaplo. the very same thing shall be restoredto us again.
See Cato, as quoted by Gellius, Noct. Att.  o The English law considers an obligatio re
VII. 10.                                  contracta as an impliecd contract; such a con4 Gaius, IV. Â~ 27.                      tract " as reason and justice dictate, and which,
48 Gaius, III.Â~ 88.                     therefore, the law presumes that every man un' Or any thing else which can be weighed, dertakes to perform." Blackstone, Comment,
counted, or measured. This was called " mu- Book II. c. 30, Â~ IX.




ï~~108

HISTORY OF ROME.

[liiAP. XIV

again. One part, however, of the engagements of debtors, their being bound to
pay the interest as well as the principal of their debt, belonged to obligations of
another class, those contracted by direct words of covenant; for whereas the
payment of the principal was an obligation re contracta, the payment of interest
was a matter of distinct stipulation between the contracting parties.51   Yet although this may seem to be as much a matter of voluntary bargain as any dealing between man and man, still the contracting parties meet often on so unequal
a footing, and the weaker is so little in a condition either to gain more favorable
terms, or to do without the aid of which they are the price, that legislators have
generally interfered either to prohibit such engagements altogether, or at any
rate to prevent the stronger party from making an exorbitant use of his advantages; they have either made all interest of money illegal, or have fixed a naximum to its amount. Accordingly, the decemvirs, while they enforced the payment of debts with such fearful severity, thought themselves bound to save the
debtor, if possible, from the burden of an extravagant interest; they forbade any
thing higher than unciarium foenus,52 an expression which has been variously interpreted as meaning, in our language, either one per cent., or cent. per cent.
but which, according to Niebuhr," signifies a yearly interest of one-twelfth, or
eight and one-third per cent.; and this, being calculated for the old cyclic year
of ten months, would give ten per cent. for the common year of twelve months,
which was in ordinary use in the time of the decemvirs. This, according to our
notions, is sufficiently high; yet the common rate of interest at Athens, at this
time, was twelve per cent.;54 and Niebuhr observes, that from this period forward for sixty years, till the distress which followed the Gaulish invasion, we
hear no more of the misery of insolvent debtors.
A third class of obligations,"5 ex contractu, contained all promises or covenants
Obigatione.ariin from expressed in a certain form  of words; and here the Roman law
the forcecertain pe- acknowledged such only to be legally binding as were concluded
collar words or forms.
S... o..... in the form of question and answer.   The party with whom     the
covenant was made asked him who made it, "Dost thou engage to do so and
so?"  And he answered, " I do engage."      It is a curious circumstance, that as
the Romans had a peculiar form of sale, mancipatio, which none but Roman citizens might use, so also they had one peculiar word to express an engagement,
which was binding only on Roman citizens, and lost its force even on them if
translated into another language.   This favorite word was spondeo.56   A Roman
might make a binding covenant with a foreigner in any language which both
parties understood; if it were drawn up in Latin, the words promitto, dabo, faciam, or any others to the like effect, retained their natural and reasonable force,
and constituted an agreement recognized 'by law; but if he used the word
spondeo, or its supposed equivalent, in any other language, the engagement was
null and void. This, undoubtedly, is to be referred to the religious origin of
b1 Gibbon, Vol. VIII. chap. xliv. p. 85, 8vo. Athens we have rdtcg  rrpero, r6o  Kd0gro &c.
ed. 1807, considers the payment of interest to to express respectively "Interest of a third and
follow from an obligation ex consensu, and to of a sixth part of the sum borrowed." And as
come under the general head of letting and hir- the Greek expressions denote the interest for a
ing, locatio and conduetio, inasmuch as interest year, although interest was, in fact, paid every
may be considered as the hire paid for the tem- month, so the unciarium fenus, in like manporary use of money. The view given in the ner, may mean interest of a twelfth part, or
text is that of Heineccius, III. 15, Â~ 6, and of eight and one third per cent. per annum, alHugo, Geschichte des Rom. Rechts, p. 230, though a part of it was at Rome also paid
Ed. 9.                                    monthly.
2 Tacitus, Annal. VI. 16. "Duodecim tabu-  3 See his chapter "O fiber den Unzialzinsfuss,"'
lis sanctum, ne quis unciario fmenore amplius in the third volume of his history, p. 61.
exerceret."  Now, the uncia being the well-  " See B6ckh, " Staatshaushaltung der Atheknown twelfth part of the Roman as, or pound, ner," Vol. I. p. 143. In Demosthenes' time,
and the heavy copper coinage of the old times twelve per cent. at Athens was considered low.
being still the standard at Rome, unciariumnn foe-  66 " Obligationes verbis contract."  Gaius,
nus would be a very natural expression for "in- III. 92.
terest of an ounce in the pound," that is, of a  " Gains, III. Â~ 93.
twelfth part of the sum borrowed. Thus, at




ï~~Cam. XIV.]

THE LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES.

109

the term; it is clearly connected with edirvSw, and denoted, probably, an oath
taken with the sanction of certain peculiar rites, such as a stranger could not
witness without profanation. We may be sure that spondeo was a word as peculiar to the patricians originally as it was afterwards to the united Roman people
of patricians and commoners: there was a time when it could have been no
more used in a covenant with a plebeian, than it was afterwards allowed to be
addressed to a Greek or an Egyptian.
II. The second division of obligations' included those which arise from oui
having wronged our neighbor, the obligation of making good, or II. Obligationes ex doe
making reparation for, the injury which we have done. We may lioto.L  o  oeeftaand
injure either the person, &r the property, or, thirdly, the feelings law of libel.
and character of another. 1. Injuries57 to the person were divided by the twelve
tables into three classes. a. If a limb or any member were irreparably injured,
the law ordered retaliation, "eye for eye, tooth for tooth," unless the injured
party chose to accept of any other satisfaction. j. If a bone were broken or
crushed, the offender was to pay three hundred ases. 7. And all other bodily
injuries were compensated by the payment of twenty-five ases. The poverty of
the times, says Gaius, made these money penalties seem sufficiently heavy; but
twenty-five ases could never have been a very heavy penalty to the majority of
the patricians; and such a law was well calculated to encourage the outrages
which Keso and his associates and imitators were in the habit of committing
against the poorer citizens. 2. Injuries58 against property, on the other hand,
were visited severely. A thief in the night59 might be lawfully slain; or by day,60
if he defended himself with a weapon. If a thief was caught in the fact, he was
to be scourged and given over,6" addicebatur, to the man whom he had robbed;
and the lawyers doubted whether he was only to be kept in chains by the injured
party till he had made restitution, probably fourfold, or whether he was to be
his slave forever. Theft not caught in the fact was punished with twofold restitution."2 If a man wanted to search a neighbor's house for stolen goods, he was
to search naked,63 with only a girdle round his loins, and holding a large dish or
platter upon his head with both his hands; and if he found his goods, then the
thief was to be punished as one caught in the fact. 3. But in no provision of
the twelve tables does the aristocratical spirit of their authors appear more manifest than in the extreme severity with which they visited attacks upon character,
and in the large extent of their definition of a punishable libel. They declared
it an offence for which64 a man should be visited with one of their heaviest

* Gaius, III. Â~ 223.
s Gaius, III. Â~ 189.
59 " Sei nox furtum factum esit, sei im occisit
joure caisus esto."  Fragm. XII. Tabular. Â~ 10,
apucd Haubold.
6o Gaius, ad edictum provinciale, quoted in
the Digest, XLVII. De furtis, 1. 54, Â~ 2.
61 Gaius, III, Â~ 189.
62 Gaius, III, Â~ 190.
63 Gaius, III. 192, 193. The notion of this
strange law was, that the man who searched,
by being naked, and having his hands occupied, could not conceal any thing about him,
which he might leave secretly in his neighbor's
house, and then charge him with theft. It is
curious that this extraordinary custom seems to
have existed also at Athens. See the following
passage from the Clouds of Aristophanes, v.
197, ed. Dindorf.
EzKPATEE.-"I8 vvv, KardOoV 0oadroov.
zTPEPIAAHE. lin c d ri;.
IKP. ob, dWa 7yvtVof ic  cltvat voIl Brat.
ITPEr. aXX' obi vpwpdarco ywy' dlpopat.
'4There have been various opinions as to the

precise penalty awarded to libels in the twelve
tables. The foundation of our knowledge on
this subject, is the passage quoted by Augustine (de Civit. Dei, II. 9), from the fourth book
of Cicero's treatise, De Republic. " Duodecim
tabule cum perpaucas res capite sanxissent, in
his hane quoque sanciendam putaverunt, si
quis occentavisset, sive carmen condidisset,
quod infamiam faceret flagitiumve alteri." And
Augustine in another place, II. 12, referring to
this passage, expresses what he supposed to be
its meaning in his own words thus: " Capite
plectendum sancientes tale carmen condere si
quis auderet."  Augustine, living in an age
when capital punishments, in our sense of the
term, were common, understands Cicero's words
as signifying the "punishment of death."  But
in Cicero's time, when the punishment of death
was, so far as Roman citizens were concerned,
unknown to the law, the expressions, capite
sancire, and res capitalis, generally, as is well
known, have a milder meaning, and caput refers to the civil rather than to the natural life of
a citizen. Thus Gaius says expressly, " Poena
manifesti furti ex lege XII. tabularum capitalis
erat," III. Â~ 189. And then he goes on, ".Yam




ï~~110

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XI V

punishments, involving a diminutio capitis, if he publicly uttered in word or
writing any thing that tended to bring disgrace upon his neighbor. Cicero refers to this law, as proving the existence of something of a literature in the times
of the decemvirs; and he contrasts it with the license enjoyed by the comic
poets at Athens. No doubt satirical songs are sufficiently ancient, and these
were the literature which the decemvirs dreaded; the coarse jests which were
uttered in the Fescennine verses, and which were allowed, as at a kind of Saturnalia, to the soldiers who followed their general in his triumph. But the effect
of this law was to make the ancient poetry of Rome merely laudatory; and afterwards, when prose compositions began, they caugh4t the same infection. If
the poet N evius could be persecuted by the powerful family of the Metelli, and
obliged to leave Rome for no severer satire than his famous line, "Fato Rome
fiunt Metelli consules," we may readily understand how little an humble writer, in
recording the actions of a great patrician house, would dare to speak of them
truly. And hence it has happened that the falsehood of the Roman annals is
so deeply rooted, and that there is scarcely an eminent person in the Roman
history who is spoken of otherwise than in terms of respect. It may be said
that the license of Athenian comedy spared neither the innocence of Nicias, nor
the pure and heroic virtue of Pericles. But has history, therefore, done justice
to their merit? And how different is the value of praise when given, on the
one hand, by the free pens of the great historians of Greece, and on the other,
by that uniform adulation which saw, even in Marius and Sulla, more matter for
admiration than for abhorrence!
All the offences hitherto enumerated were considered as private rather than
Penal law,    public wrongs; and if they were in any case pinished capitally,
S   it was rather that the law allowed the injured party to take into
his own hands the extremest measure of vengeance, than that the criminal suffered
death in consequence of the deliberate sentence of the judge. But some offences
were regarded as crimes, or public wrongs in the strictest sense; they were tried,
either by the people in the comitia of centuries, or by judges, like the quMstores parricidii, specially appointed by the people. Of this sort were parricide,6"

liber verberatus addicebatur ei cui furtum fecerat." On the other hand, not to insist on Horace's line, " Vertere modum formidine fustis,"
Cornutus, the scholiast on Persius, says expressly, "Lege XII. tabularum  cautum   est, ut
fastibus feriret-ur, qul publice invehebatur,"
&c. Yet still there is another question, for the
military punishment of the fustuarium was notoriously often fatal; and it may be, that the
expression " fusti ferire," included even a beating to death. Thus we read of Egnatius Metellus, " qui uxorem fuste percussam interemit,"
Valer. Max. VI. 3, Â~ 9, where the words fuste
percussam are, I think, meant to describe the
manner of the death, rather than a punishment
inflicted previously to the capital one. And
yet fustigatio, in the estimate of the later law,
was a milder punishment than flagellatio; and
the Digest calls it " fustigationis admonitio."See Heineccius, IV. 18, Â~ 7.
If we look to the later law, in order to learn
what was then the punishment of libel, we
shall find that, according to Ulpian (Digest. De
injur. et famosis libellis, 1. 5,Â~ 9), the libeller
was to be intestabilis, that is, he could neither
give evidence in a court of justice, nor make a
will. And in the somewhat vague language of
the Thepdosian Code, IX. 84, Â~ 10, libellers are
to dread "ultorem   suis cervicibus gladium."
But "famosi libelli," in the Theodosian Code,
means, perhaps, something different from the
libellous carmina of the XII. tables.
On the whole, it is certain that the punish
ment of a libeller involved in it a diminutio capitis, and was thus, in the Roman sense of the
term, capital. It may be, also, that the sentence " ut fuste ferietur," not being limited with
the careful humanity of the Jewish law, was,
when executed with severity, fatal; and that a
man who had thus died under his punishment
was considered as jure cnsus. It might thus
be truly said, that libels were punished'capitally, in the later sense of the term, if the punishmerit might, in fact, be made to amount to a
sentence of death, at the discretion of those
who inflicted it. But the law meant only, that
the libeller should be beaten, and incur also a
diminutio capitis; and this was sufficiently severe, when we find that the most grievous bodily injuries, although visited by punishment in
kind, yet did not involve any forfeiture of civil
rights.
6a Every one knows the famous punishment
of the parricide, that he should be scourged,
then sewn up in a sack, in company with a dog,
a viper, and a monkey, and thrown into the
sea. But it is not certain that this was 'a law
of the twelve tables. Cicero mentions only the
sewing up of the parricide in a sack, and throwing himn into the river. And he merely says,
" Majores nostri supplicium in parricidas singulare excogitaverunt," pro Roscio Amerino,
25. It may have been a traditional punishment, older than even the twelve tables. So,
aogain, nothing is known of the law of the
twelve tables respecting murder. Pliny only




ï~~CHAr. XIV.]

THE LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES.

111

and probably all murder, arson, false witness,"1 injuring a neighbor's corn
by night,8 witchcraft,69 and treason.Â~ The punishment for these crimes was
death, either by beheading, hanging, throwing the criminal from the Tarpeian
rock, or in some cases by burning alive. This last mode of execution was
adjudged by the twelve tables to the crime of arson: but a memorial has been
preserved by the lawyers, confirmatory of the story already mentioned of the
execution of the nine adversaries of the consul T. Sicinius, that there was a time
when burning alive was the punishment of enemies and deserters."  The "enemies" here meant could not have been merely foreigners taken in war, for their
punishment could have found no place in the civil or domestic law of Rome;
they must rather have been those Roman traitors who, according to a form preserved till the latest period of the commonwealth, were solemnly declared to be
enemies of their country.
When we read of capital punishments denounced by the Roman law, and yet
hear of the worst criminals remaining at liberty till the very end Law of bail
of their trial, and being allowed to escape their sentence by going
into voluntary banishment, we are inclined to ask whether the law meant to
threaten merely, and never to strike an offender. Niebuhr has explained.this
seeming contradiction with his usual sagacity; it will be enough to say here,
that although the Roman law, like the old law of England, did not refuse bail
for a man accused of treason or felony," yet it was by no means a matter of
course that it should be granted; and ordinary criminals, at least in these early
times, were, in the regular course of things, committed to prison to abide their
trial, nearly with as much certainty as in England.
And now we come to the constitutional law of the twelve tables, a subject
almost of greater interest than the common law, but one involved  onstionaaw.
in much greater obscurity. Four or five enactments alone have
been preserved to us: 1. That there should be an appeal to the people71 from
the sentence of every magistrate. 2. That all capital trials'4 should be conducted before the comitia of the centuries. 3. That privilegia,7'5 or acts of pain and
penalties against an individual, should be unlawful. 4. That the last decision6
of the people should supersede all former decisions on the same subject. 5. That
the debtor whose person and property were pledged to his creditor, nexus," and

says that the turning cattle into a neighbor's
corn by night was punished by the twelve tables more severely than murder; insomuch as
the offender was hanged up as devoted to Ceres, and so put to death. Histor. Natur. XVIII.
8. Of course murder was punished, and probably with death; but the criminal was beheaded, we may suppose, and this would be
considered as a less punishment than hanging.
66 Gaius, IV. ad Leg. XII. tabularum apud
Digest. XLVII. Tit. IX. Â~ 9. De incendio,
ruing, naufragio.
67 Aulus Gellius, XX. 1.
68 Pliny, Hist. Natur. XVIII. 3.
69 Pliny, Hist. Natur. XXVIII. 2.
7Â~ Digest. XLVIII. Tit. VI. Â~ 2. Ad Legem Juliam Majestatis.
71 Digest. XLVIII. Tit. XIX. De pcenis,
1. 8, Â~ 2. Hostes autem item transfuga ea pcen afficiuntur, ut vivi exurantur. Godeflroy
remarks that we never read of enemies so punished, and some have proposed to read " hostes, i. e. transfugsa," as if deserters alone were
intended. I believe that the common reading
is right, but that it relates, as I have observed,
to the Romans, who were declared enemies of
their country. That a foreign enemy, however, might be sometimes so treated, is not impossible, as is shown by the story of Cyrus'
treatment of Croesus.
72 "By the ancient common law all felonies

were bailable."  Blackstone, Vol. IV. p. 298.
The statute law has greatly restricted this power, so far, at least, as justices of the peace are
concerned; for "the court of King's bench
may bail for any crime whatsoever, be it treason, murder, or any other offence."    Blackstone, IV. p. 299. This last doctrine, however,
was contested by Junius, in his famous letter
to Lord Mansfield, in which      he contends,
agreeably to the notion of the Greek and Roman law, that no power could bail a thief taken
with the manner, that is, with the thing stolen
upon him. In cases of crimes committed by
p ersons of high birth, like Kso Quinctius, the
being allowed to offer bail was a means of
evading justice; and so it was found to be in
England, before parliament interfered to amend
the common law. But humble and ordinary
criminals would not equally be allowed to profit
by it.
7 Cicero, de Republica, II. 31.
7 Cicero, de Legibus, III. 19.
7 Cicero, de Legibus, III. 19.
76 Livy, VII. 17; IX. 34.
7 See Festus in "Sanates."-Bet it is right
to say that the sentence has been conjecturally
restored by Scaliger, all the words actually remaining in the MS. being these, which I have
printed in the Roman character:
in xii nexo solutoque
forti sanatique idemjus eto.




ï~~112

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XIV

he who remained the free master of both, solutus, should be equal in the sight
of the law; that is, that the nexus should not be considered to be infamis. And
the same legal equality is given, also, to the fortis and the sanas;7 terms which
were merely guessed at in the Augustan age, and which it is hopeless to attempt
to understand now. A sixth enactment is expressly ascribed to the last two
tables, which Cicero described as full of unequal laws,"9 namely, that between
the burghers and the commons there should be no legal marriages; if a burgher
married the daughter of a plebeian, his children followed their mother's condition, and were not subject to their father, nor could inherit from him if he died
intestate.
With no further knowledge than of these mere fragments, we can judge but
The  constitutional little of the tenor of the whole law; but yet, if we had the entire
changes effected by the text of the twelve tables before us, we should probably find in
decemvirs were proba.
bly not contained nthe them" no direct mention of the great constitutional changes which
twelve tables.  the decemvirs are, with reason, supposed to have effected. Their
code of laws was the expression of their legislative, rather than of their constituent power; it contained the rules hereafter to be observed by the Roman people, but would not notice those previous organic changes by which the very
composition, so to speak, of the people itself, was so greatly altered.
These changes were wrought by virtue of that particular branch of their sovereign power, which was afterwards perpetuated in the censorship. When we

The words in Italics, which complete the lines,
were supplied by Sealiger. It has already been
mentioned, Chap. XIII. note 39, that the only
existing MS. of Festus has suffered from a fire,
by which half of many of the pages has been
burnt away vertically from top to bottom, so
that every line is left mutilated.
7 Our whole knowledge of this enactment is
derived from the mutilated article in Festus,
on the word " Sanates."  The epitome of Paulus gives a foolish etymology, and says that the
Sanates were people dwelling above and below
Rome, who first revolted, but soon afterwards
returned to their duty, and were called " Sanates:"  "quasi sanatA mente."      And   the
"Fortes," according to Paulus, were "boni
qui nunquam defecerant a populo Romano."
This is all improbable enough; but Niebuhr
says that the terms sanas and fortis must probably be understood either of bondmen and freemen, or of those who had hitherto been vassals
in the ancient colonial towns, and the colonists.
It is impossible, in the present state of our
knowledge, to give any thing more certain on
the subject.
78 Cicero, de Republiec, II. 87.
en The twelve tables were extant dclown to the
latest age of Roman literature, and their contents were familiarly known. Had they contained, therefore, many regulations of a constituent cast, such, for instance, as related to
the powers of the several orders in the state,
to the enrolment of the burghers and their
clients in the tribes, the Roman writers could
not possibly have showed such great ignorance
of the early state of their constitution, as they
have done actually. On one point, however,
on which the twelve tables appear to have
spoken expressly, the practice and the law in
after times may seem to have been at variance.
I allude to the famous provision, "De capite
civis nisi per maximum comitiatum ne ferunto," a provision which appears to make the
2enturies the sole criminal court, and to require
that every ordinary felon should be tried before
them; which we know was not the case, and
would have been, in fact, absurd and impossi
ble. But, in the first place, the institution of
the judices selecti, in later times, was intended
to be a sort of representation of the whole people for judicial purposes; so that a condemnation by these judges was final, and could not
be appealed against, like the sentence of a
magistrate (Cicero, Philipp. I. c. 9). And,
again, there was taken out of the jurisdiction
of the centuries all those cases of flagrant and
evident guilt, which, according to the Roman
notions, needed no trial at all. The difference
in the penalty affixed to the crimes of furtum
manifestum and nec manifestum, is very remarkable: in the former case, the thief was
scourged and given over, addictus, to the party
whom   he had injured; in the latter case he
had only to restore twofold. So the man who
attacked his neighbor in satirical songs, the
murderer caught "red hand," the incendiary
detected in setting fire to his neighbor's house
or corn, would, like the fur manifestus, be hurried off at once to condign punishment, and all
trial would be held unnecessary. And the
same summary justice would be dealt to the
false witness and to the rioter. It is probable,
also, that the magistrates, using that large discretion which the practice of Rome gave them,
would punish summarily crimes as to which
the guilt of the accused was perfectly clear,
even though he might not have been caught in
the fact. When it is further remembered, that
slaves and strangers were wholly subject to the
magistrates' jurisdiction, and that there are
states of society in which crimes of a serious
description are extremely rare, it may be conceived that the criminal business of the centuries would not be very engrossing.
However, if M. Manlius was, as Niebuhr
thinks, tried and condemned by the comitia of
curie, and not by the centuries, it would have
been a direct violation of the law of the twelve
tables. But the story of Manlius, as we shall
see hereafter, is too uncertain to be argued
upon; and it will not, perhaps, be found necessary to suppose that he was really sentenced
by the curie.




ï~~OCHr. XIV.]

POWERS OF THE DECEMVIRATE.

113

find the censor Q. Maximustt annihilating at once the political influ- They were effected by
ence of a great portion of the people, by confining all freedmen to virtue of their censorian
four tribes only; when we read of another censor, M. Livius,82 dis- power.
franchising the whole Roman people, with the exception of one single tribe, an
exercise of power so extravagant indeed as to destroy itself, yet still, so far as
appears, perfectly legal, we can scarcely understand how any liberty could be consistent with such an extraordinary prerogative vested in the magistrate. But if
common censors in ordinary times possessed such authority, much more would it
be enjoyed by the decemviri. They therefore altered the organization of the Roman
people at their discretion; the clients of the burghers, and even the burghers themselves, were enrolled in the tribes; and the list of citizens was probably increased
by the addition of a great number of freedmen, and of the inhabitants of the
oldest Roman colonies, mostly the remains of the times of the monarchy. But
whether it was at this time that the comitia of centuries assumed that form in which
alone they existed in the historical period of Rome, whether the tribes were now
introduced to vote on the Field of Mars as well as in the Forum, is a question not
to be answered. We may be more sure that whilst the patricians were admitted
into the tribes of the commons, they still retained their own comitia of curia, and
their power of confirming the election of every magistrate by conferring on him
the imperium, and of voting upon every law which had been passed by the tribes
or centuries.
But Niebuhr has further conjectured that the decemvirs were intended to be a
perpetual magistracy, like the archons at Athens in their original conjectures-ie
constitution; that the powers afterwards divided amongst the mili- as tothe permanency eof
tary tribunes, the censors, and the qumestores parricidii, were to be the decemvirate.
united in a college of ten officers, chosen half from the patricians, and half from
the plebeians, and to remain in office for five years. And as the plebeians were
thus admitted to an equal share in the government, the tribunitian power, intended
specially to protect them from the oppression of the government, was no longer
needed, and therefore, as Niebuhr supposes, the tribuneship was not to exist in
the future constitution.
Niebuhr's conjectures in Roman history are almost like a divination, and must
never be passed over without notice. But as the decemvirate, whether intended
to be temporary or perpetual, was soon overthrown, it does not seem necessary to
enter further into the question; and the common story appears to me to contain
in it nothing improbable. Its details, dcoubtless, are traditional, and are full of
the variations of traditional accounts; still they are not like the mere poetical, stories of Cincinnatus or Coriolanus, and therefore I shall proceed to give the account
of the second decemvirate, of the tyranny of Appius and the death of Virginia,
not as giving full credit to every circumstance, but as considering it, to use the
language of Thucydides, as being in the main sufficiently deserving of belief.

ex Livy, IX. 46.

M Livy, XXIX. 87




ï~~CHAPTER XV.
THE SECOND DECEMVIRATE-STORY OF VIRGINIA-REVOLUTION OF 805.
MdXcrra da(3elcSat d roes i  pisecat voiovras, 3 auroeis,  hv fl3ddesvL ruyxdvowvy1 alWeaws
yap aurv EXovesv o aa & rvs4 b d sxpoVvre.-ARISTOTLE, Politics, V. 11.
THE first decemvirs, according to the general tradition' of the Roman annalists,
Dremvirs are elected governed uprightly and well, and their laws of the ten tables
for a second year. Ap- were just and good.  All parties were so well pleased, that it was
pius Claudis. resolved to continue the same government at least for another
year; the more so as some of the decemvirs declared that their work was not yet
comr plete, and that two tables still required to be added. And now the most
emitent of the patricians,2 L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, T. Quinctius Capitoline s, and
C. Claudius, became candidates for the decemvirate; but the commons had little
reason to place confidence in any of them, and might well be afraid to trust unlimited power in their hands.  Appius Claudius, on the contrary, had been tried,
and had been found seemingly trustworthy: he and his colleagues had used their
power moderately, and had done their duty as lawgivers impartially; and such
men were more to be trusted than the well-known supporters of the old ascendency of the burghers. Appius availed himself of this feeling, and exerted himself strenuously to procure his re-election. But his colleagues, now becoming
jealous of him, contrived' that he should himself preside at the comitia for the
election of the new decemvirs; it being considered one of the duties of the officer who presided at, or, in Roman language, who held the comitia, to prevent
the re-election of the same man to the same office two successive years, by refusing to receive votes in his favor if offered: and most of all would he be expected to prevent it, when the man to be re-elected was himself. But the people might remember, that within the last few years they had owed to the repeated
re-election of the same tribunes some of their greatest privileges; and that then,
as now, the patricians had earnestly endeavored to prevent it. They therefore
elected Appius Claudius to the decemvirate for the second time, and, passing
over all his former colleagues, and all the high aristocratical candidates, they
elected with him four patricians, and, as Niebuhr thinks, five plebeians. The patricians' were M. Cornelius Maluginensis, whose brother had been consul nine
years before; M. Sergius, of whom nothing is known; L. Minucius, who had been
consul in the year 296, and Q. Fabius Vibulanus, who had been already thrice
consul, in 287, 289, and 295. Keeso Duilius, Sp. Oppius Cornicen, and Q. Poetelius, are expressly said by Dionysius to have been plebeians; and we know of
none but plebeian families of the first and last of these names, nor, with one single exception,5 of the second.  The remaining two decemvirs were T. Antonius
Merenda, and M. Rabuleius, and these we should judge from their names to have
SLivy, III. 33, 34.                    the Poetelii, Antonii, and 1Rabuleii; and the paLivy, III. 85.                         trician branches of these families may have beLivy, III. 35.                        come extinct long before the time when their
Livy, III. 85. Dionysius, X. 58.      names became famous in history. Livy seems
A vestal virgin of the name of Oppia is men- to have regardecd the decemviri as all patricians;
tioned in the annals of the year 271 (Livy, II. and if their names had presented a manifest
42), and she must have been a patrician. Nor proof of the contrary, he surely must have been
is it improbable that there was, in the times of aware of it, the more so as the plebeian Duilius
the decemviri, a patrician as well as a plebeian acts an important part in his narrative of this
family of Duilii, just as there were patrician and very period.
plebeian Sicinil. And the same may be said of




ï~~CAP. XV.]

THE SECOND DECEMVIRATE.

115

been plebeians also; but Dionysius distinguishes them from the three preceding
them, and classes them with three of the patrician decemvirs, merely as men of
no great personal distinction.
Experience has shown that even popular leaders, when intrusted with absolute
power, have often abused it to the purposes of their own tyranny,
yet these have commonly remained so far true to their old principles Te tyranny.
as zealously to abate the mischiefs of aristocracy; and thus they have done scarcely
less good in destroying what was evil, than evil in withholding what was good. But
to give absolute power to an aristocratical leader is an evil altogether unmixed.
An aristocracy is so essentially the strongest part of society, that a despot is
always tempted to court its favor; and if he is bound to it by old connections,
and has always fought in its cause, this tendency becomes irresistible. So it was
with Appius: the instant that he had secured his election, he reconciled himself
with his old party,6 and labored to convince the patricians that not their own
favorite candidates, the Quinctii, or his own kinsman, C. Claudius, could have
served their cause more effectually than himself. Accordingly the decemvirate
rested entirely on the support of the patricians. The associations or clubs,7 Kaeso's old accomplices, were the tools and sharers of the tyranny   even the better
patricians forgave the excesses8 of their party for joy at its restored ascendency;
the consulship, instead of being controlled, as the commons had fondly hoped,
by fresh restraints, was released even from those which had formerly held it;
instead of two consuls, there were now ten, and these no longer shackled by the
Valerian law, nor kept in check by the tribuneship, but absolute, with more than
the old kingly sovereignty.   Now, indeed, said the patricians, the expulsion of
the Tarquins was a real gain; hitherto it had been purchased by some painful
condescensions to the plebeians, and the growing importance of those half aliens
had impaired the majesty of what was truly Rome.        But this was at an end;
and by a just judgment upon their insolence, the very revolution which they had
desired was become their chastisement; and the decemvirate, which had been
designed to level all the rights of the patricians, was become the instrument of
restoring to them their lawful ascendency.
The decemvirate seems, indeed, to have exhibited the perfect model of an aristocratical royalty,9 vested not in one person, but in several; held They add two tablesi to
not for life, but for a single year, and therefore not confined to one complee the.code of
single family of the aristocracy, but fairly shared by the whole the twelvetbl.
order. Towards the commons, however, the decemvirs were, in all respects, ten
kings. Each was attended by his twelve lictors, who carried not the rods only,
but the axe,'0 the well-known symbol of sovereignty. The colleges of ordinary
magistrates were restrained by the general maxim      of Roman law, "melior est
conditio prohibentis," which gave to each member of the college a negative upon
the act of his colleagues. But the decemvirs bound themselves by oath" each
to respect his colleagues' majesty; what one decemvir did, none of the rest might
do. Then followed all the ordinary outrages of the ancient aristocracies and tyrannies; insult, oppression, plunder, and blood; and, worst of all, the license of
the patrician youth was let loose without restraint upon the wives and daughters
of the plebeians.m  Meanwhile the legislation of the decemvirs was to complete
6 Livy III. 36. Aliquandin equatus inter om-  'Decem regum species erat. Livy, III. 36.
nes terror fuit; paullatimn totus vertere in ple-  o0 Cum fascibus secures illigatas prnferebant.
bemn cepit. Abstinebatur a patribus, in lhu- Livy, III. 06.
miliores libidinose crudeliterque consulebatur.  '1 Intercessionem  consensu sustulerant, is
SPatriciis juvenibus sepserant latera, corum  Livy's expression, III. 36. Dionysius adds,
caterve tribunalia obsedclerant. Livy, III. 87. g Kca redvrets ardjjrra r5 urAOC,, X. 59. These
'Erapeday cv bcaerot avvyou, ~nrtXey6evot rob sOpac v- oaths resembled those which were sometimes
rdrovn rGv vVew  Ka vietyv abro"s rtrrvJitordrovse. taken by the ruling members of the Greek oliDionysius, X. 60.                         garchies: Ka r i p   iKaK6vove opaal, a f3ovAe6v
8 Primores Patrum-nec probare qune fierent, I rt cI Exo KaK6V. Aristotle, Pohtica, YV. 9.
et credere hand indignis accidere; avide rusen-  12 Dionysius, XI. 2.
do ad libertatem in selvitutem elapsos juvare
nolle. Iivy, III. 37.




ï~~116

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr XV

the triumph of their party. The two tables which they added to the former ten
are described by Cicero as containing "unequal laws;" the prohibition of marriages between the patricians and plebeians is expressly said to have been amongst
the number. Not that we can suppose that such marriages had been hitherta
legal, that is to say, they were not connubia: and therefore if a patrician, as I
have said, married the daughter of a plebeian, his children became plebeians. Still
they were common in fact; and as the object of the first appointment of the decemvirs was, in part, to unite the two orders into one people, so it was expected
that they would henceforth be made legal. It was therefore like the loss of an
actual right, when the decemvirs, instead of legalizing these marriages, enacted
a positive law to denounce them, as if they intended for the future actually to
prohibit them altogether.
So passed the second year of the decemvirate.       But as it drew near to its
They resolve to retain close, the decemvirs showed no purpose of resigning their offices,
their power a fter the or of appointing successors.  Whether it was really a usurpaend of the year.  tion, or whether they had been elected for more than a single
year,'3 may be doubtful; but it is conceivable that even in the former case the
great body of the patricians, however personally disappointed, should have supported the decemvirs as upholding the ascendency of their order, rather.than incur the danger of reviving the power of the plebeians.  At any rate, the government of the decemvirs seemed firmly established; and the outrages of themselves
and their party became continually more and' more intolerable, so that numbers
of the people are said to have fled from Rome,"4 and sought a refuge amongst
their allies, the Latins and Hernicans.
In this state of things, the foreign enemies of Rome proved again her best
The Saes  friends. Since the year 297 external wars seem to have been sus-.ne invade the Rom  pended, partly, perhaps, from  the wasting effects of the great
territory.,    plague on the neighboring nations, partly because the Romans
themselves were engrossed with their own affairs at home. But now we hear of
an invasion both from the Sabines and the JEquians; the former assembled their
forces at Eretum,5 and from thence ravaged the lands along the left bank of
the Tiber:the latter encamped as usual on Algidus, and plundered the territory of Tusculum which lay immediately below them. Then the decemvirs called
together the senate, which, hitherto, it is said, they had on no occasion thought
proper to consult. The high aristocratical party, headed by the Quinctii" and
C. Claudius, showed symptoms of discontent with the decemvirs for still retaining their power; L. Valerius Potitus and M. Horatius Barbatus17 were celebrated
by posterity for following a more decided course, and upholding the general liberty of the Roman people. But the majority of the senate supported the decemvirs, and the citizens were called upon to enlist against the common enemy."
One army, commanded by three of the decemvirs, was led out to oppose the Sabines at Eretum; another marched towards Algidus to protect the Tusculans;
Appius Claudius, with one of his colleagues, Sp. Oppius, remained in Rome to
provide for the safety of the city.
8 NiNeouhr considers it as certain that the de- a magistrate of his office, " abrogare magistracemvirs were appointed for a longer period than turn," was accounted a most violent measure;
a year. Vol. II. p. 828. Eng. Transl. Other- it was to be resigned, and not wrested from him
wise, he says, they would not have been re- by any other power. The senate ejected Cinna
quired to resign their power, but interreges from the consulship; but Paterculus remarks
would, immediately on the expiration of their on the act that " hmoc injuria homine quam exoffice, have stepped into their place. This, emplo dignior fuit." They were not disposed
however, does not seem to follow. In peace- to proceed to such an extremity against the deable times, Appius Claudius the Blind held his cemvirs.
censorship beyond the legal term of eighteen  14 Dionysius, XIL 2.
months, in defiance of the Emilian law, and it  ' Dionysius, XI. 3. Livy, III. 88.
does not appear that the tribunes, or any other 16 Dionysius, XI. 15.
power, could actually turn him out of his office;  17 Livy, III. 89.
he was only threatened with imprisonment if  s1 Livy, III. 41.
he did not resign.' Livy, IX. 84. To deprive




ï~~CHAP. XV.]

STORY OF VIRGINIA.

117

Both armies, however, were unsuccessful; and both, after having been beaten
by the enemy, fled, the one to Tusculum, the other to the neigh- Thoe R oman armies are
borhood of Fidene,19 within the Roman territory. Here they re- beaten.
mained, or here, at least, the story leaves them, till the tidings of the last outrage
of the decemvirs' tyranny aroused them, and showed them plainly that the worst
enemies of their country were within the walls of Rome.
Appius ClaudiustÂ~ had stayed behind from the war to take care of the city.
He saw a beautiful maiden named Virginia, the daughter of L. story of Virginia.
Virginius,21 who was now serving as a centurion in the army sent Clasdi s, tclieotofApplus  Claudius, claims
against the AEquians; and her father had betrothed her to L. Icil- Virginia as his slave.
ius, who had been tribune some time since, and had carried the famous law
for assigning out the Aventine to the commons.      One day as the maiden,
attended by her nurse, was going to the Forum to school (for the schools
were then kept in booths or stalls round the market-place), Marcus Claudius, a
client of Appius, laid hands on her, and claimed her as his slave. Her nurse
cried out for help, and a crowd gathered round her, and when they heard who
was her father, and to whom she was betrothed, they were the more earnest t,
defend her from wrong.   But M. Claudius said that he meant no violence, he
would try his right at law, and he summoned the maiden before the judgmentseat of Appius. So they went before the decemvir, and then Claudius said that
the maiden's real mother had been his slave; and that the wife of Virginius, having no children, had gotten this child from its mother, and had presented it to
Virginius as her own. This he would prove to Virginius himself as soon as he
should return to Rome; meanwhile it was just and reasonable that the master
should, in the interval, keep possession of his slave. The friends of the maiden
answered, that her father was now absent in the commonwealth's service; they
would send him word, and within two days he would be in Rome.       "Let the
cause," they said, "wait only so long. The law declares expressly, that in all
cases like this, every one shall be considered free till he be proved a slave.
Therefore the maiden ought to be left with her friends till the day of trial. Put
not her fair fame in peril by giving up a free-born maiden into the hands of a
man whom she knows not." But Appius said, "Truly, I know the law of which
you speak, and I hold it just and good, for it was I myself who enacted it. But
this maiden" cannot in any case be free; she belongs either to her father or to
her master. Now as her father is not here, who but her master can have any
title to her?  Wherefore let M. Claudius keep her till L. Virginius come, and let
him give sureties that he will bring her forth before my judgment-seat when the
cause shall be tried between them."  But then there came forward the maiden's
uncle, P. Numitorius, and Icilius, to whom she was betrothed; and they spoke
so loudly against the sentence, that the multitude began to be roused, and Appius feared a tumult. So he said, that for the sake of L. Virginius, and of the
rights of fathers over their children, he would let the cause wait till the next
day; "but then," he said, "if Virginius does not appear, I tell Icilius and his
fellows, that I will support the laws which I have made, and their violence shall
not prevail over justice." Thus the. maiden was saved for the time, and her
friends sent off in haste to her father, to bid him come with all speed to Rome:
and they gave security to Claudius that she should appear before Appius the
next day, and then they took her home in safety.
The messenger3 reached the camp that same evening, and Virginius obtained
leave of absence on the instant, and set out for Rome at the first Virginius comes to
watch of the night.  Appius had sent off also to his colleagues, Rome fromthe army.
praying them not to let Virginius go: but his message came too late.
" Livy, III. 42.                       2 In ea que in patris manu sit, nemirem esse
2o Livy, III. 44, et seqq.            alium cui clominus possessione cedat. Livy,
21 Cicero calls him Decimus Virginius. De III. 45.
Republica, II. 37.                       ' Livy, III. 46.




ï~~118

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XV

Early in the morning Virginius,4 in mean attire, like a suppliant, led his daugho
ter down to the Forum; and some Roman matrons, and a great
Judgment of Appius,.awarding p.session of company of friends, went with him. He appealed to all the peoVirginia  to  her  pretended aster.Virn- ple for their aid; "for this," said he, "is not my cause only, but
ius kills his daughter. the cause of all."  So also spoke Icilius; and the mothers who
followed Virginius stood and wept, and their tears moved the people even more
than his words. But Appius heeded nothing but his own wicked passion; and
before Claudius had done speaking, without suffering Virginius to reply, he hastened to give the sentence. That sentence adjuged the maiden to be considered
as a slave till she should be proved to be free-born; and awarded the possession
of her in the mean while to her master Claudius. Men could scarcely believe
that they heard aright, when this monstrous defiance of all law, natural and civil,
Was uttered by the very man who had himself enacted the contrary. But when
Claudius went to lay hold on the maiden, then the women who stood around her
wept aloud, and her friends gathered round her, and kept him off; and Virginius threatened the decemvir, that he would not tamely endure so great a wrong.
Appius, however, had brought down a band of armed patricians with him; and,
strong in their support, he ordered his lictors to make the crowd give way.
Then the maiden was left alone before his judgment-seat, till her father, seeing
there was no other remedy, prayed to Appius that he might speak but one word
with her nurse in the maiden's hearing, and might learn whether she were really
his child or no. "If I am indeed not her father, I shall bear her loss the lighter."
Leave was given him, and he drew them both aside with him to a spot called
afterwards the "new booths," for tradition kept the place in memory, and there
he snatched a knife from a butcher, and said, "This is the only way, my child,
to keep thee free," and plunged it in his daughter's heart. Then turning to Applus, "On thee, and on thy head," he cried, "be the curse of this blood!"  In
vain did Appius call out to seize him: he forced his way through the multitude,
and still holding the bloody knife in his hand, he made for the gates, and hastened
out of the city, and rode to the camp by Tusculum.
The rest may be told more briefly. Iciliust5 and Numitorius held up the maidm in e city  en's body to the people, and bade them see the bloody work of
Tumult in the city; the
ecemvir are driven the decemvir's passion. A tumult arose, and the people gathered
orn the Form.  in such strength, that the patrician friends of their cause, L. Valerius and M. Horatius, thought that the time for action was come, and put themselves at the head of the multitude. Appius and his lictors, and his patrician
satellites, were overborne by force, and Appius, fearing for his life, covered his
face with his robe, and fled into a house that was hard by. In vain did his colleague, Oppius, hasten to the Forum to support him; he found the people already triumphant, and had nothing else to do but to call together the senate.
The senators met, with little feeling for the decemvirs, but with an extreme dread
of a new secession of the commons, and a restoration of the sacred laws, and of
the hated tribuneship.
The secession, however, could not be prevented. Virginius" had arrived at
the camp, followed by a multitude of citizens in their ordinary
The army of Algidus
marches is Roe and dress. His bloody knife, the blood on his own face and body,
occupies the Asentine.....e pm Ao. and the strange sight of so many unarmed citizens in the midst of
the camp, instantly drew a crowd about him: he told his story, and called on
his fellow-soldiers to avenge him. One common feeling possessed them all:
they called to arms, pulled up their standards, and began to march to Rome.
The authority of the decemvirs was wholly at an end; the army entered the
city; as they passed along the streets, they called upon the commons to assert
their liberties and create their tribunes; they then ascended the Aventine, and
there, in their own proper home and city, they established themselves in arms.

21 Livy, III. 47, et segq.

25Li y, III. 48, 49.

26 Livy, III. 50.




ï~~CHAP. XV.]         RESTORATION OF THE TRIBUNESHIP.                     119
When deputies from the senate were sent to ask them what they wanted, the
soldiers shouted that they would give no answer to any one but to L. Valerius
and M. Horatius. Meanwhile, Virginius persuaded them to elect ten tribunes to
act as their leaders; and accordingly ten were created, who took the name of
tribunes of the soldiers, but designed to change it, ere long, for that of tribunes
of the commons.
The army near Fidene was also in motion."  Icilius and Numitorius had excited it by going to the camp, and spreading the story of the mis- The army fromFridenas
erable fate of Virginia. The soldiers rose, put aside the decemvirs joins it.
who commanded them, and were ready to follow Icilius. He advised them to
create ten tribunes, as had been done by the other army; and this having been
effected, they marched to Rome, and joined their brethren on the Aventine.
The twenty tribunes then deputed two of their number to act for the rest, and
waited a while for the message of the senate.
Delays, however, were interposed by the jealousy of the patricians. Had the
senate chosen, it might, no doubt, in the fulness of its power, have Both armies, followed
deposed the decemvirs, ewhether their term of office was expired Pthretired tothe Saor no; as, long afterwards, it declared all the laws of M. Drusus cred Hilt.
to be null and void, and by its mere decree took away from L. Cinna his consulship, and caused another to be appointed in his room. But the patricians were
unwilling to violate the majesty of the imperium merely to give a triumph to the
plebeians; and the decemvirs, encouraged by this feeling, refused themselves to
resign. The commons, however, were thoroughly in earnest; and finding that
nothing was done to satisfy them, they quitted the Aventine," on the suggestion
of M. Duilius, not, however, we may presume, without leaving it guarded by a
sufficient garrison, marched in military array through the city, passed out of it
by the Colline gate, and established themselves once more on the Sacred Hill.
Men, women, and children, all of the plebeians who could find any means to follow them, left Rome also and joined their countrymen. Again the dissolution
of the Roman nation was threatened; again the patricians, their clients, and
their slaves, were on the point of becoming the whole Roman people.
Then the patricians yielded, and the decemvirs agreed to resign.29 Valerius
and Horatius went to the Sacred Hill, and listened to the demands
The decemvirs resign,
of the commons. These were, the restoration of the tribuneship ad thecmo nsre-.
and of the right of appeal, together with a full indemnity for the turn to Rome.
authors and instigators of the secession. All this the deputies acknowledged
should have been granted even without the asking; but there was one demand
of a fiercer sort. "These decemvirs," said Icilius in the name of the commons,
"are public enemies, and we will have them die the death of such. Give them
up to us, that they may be burnt with fire." The friends of the commons had
met this fate within the memory of men still living, and certainly not for greater
crimes; but a people, if violent, is seldom  unrelenting; twenty-four hours
brought the Athenians to repent of their cruel decree against the Mytileneans;
and a few words from Valerius and Horatius, men whom they could fully trust,
made the Roman commons forego their thirst for sudden and extraordinary
vengeance. The demand for the blood of the decemvirs was withdrawn: so
the senate acceded to all that was required: the decemvirs solemnly resigned
their power, and the commons returned to Rome. They occupied the Aventine
as before,80 and thither the pontifex maximus was sent by the senate to hold the
comitia for the election of the tribunes; but they occupied more than the Aventine; they required some security that the terms of the peace should be duly
kept with them; and accordingly now, as in the disputes about the Publilian law,
they were allowed also to take possession of the Capitol.8"
27 Livy, III. 51.                   so Livy, III. 54.
' Livy, III. 52.                     81 Cicero pro Cornelio, I. Fragment.
* Livy, III. 52, 53.




ï~~120

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XV

In the comitia on the Aventine ten tribunes of the commons were elected,
Election of tribunes and amongst whom were Virginius, Icilius, Numitorius, C. Sicinius, a
of consuls.    descendant of one of the original tribunes created on the Sacred
Hill, and M. Duilius. Then the commons were assembled on the spot afterwards
called the Flaminian Meadows," outside of the Porta Carmentalis, and just be.
low the Capitol; and there L. Icilius proposed to them the solemn ratification
of the indemnity for the secession already agreed to by the senate. The consent
of the commons was necessary to give it the force of a law; and so, in like manner, Duilius proposed to the commons that they should accept another measure,
already sanctioned by the patricians, the election of two supreme magistrates in
the place of the decemvirs, with the right of appeal from their sentence. It is
remarkable that now, for the first time, these magistrates were called consuls,3
their old title, up to this period, having been praetors or captains-general. Consul signifies merely "colleague," one who acts with others; it does not necessarily imply that he should be one of two only, and, therefore, the name is not
equivalent to duumvir.   And its indefiniteness seems to confirm  Niebuhr's opinion, that the exact number of these supreme magistrates was not yet fully agreed
upon, and that the appointment of two only, in the present instance, was merely
a provisional imitation of the old pretorship, till the future form of the constitution should be finally settled. Thus, as the commons had recovered their tribunes, so the patricians had again their two magistrates with the imperium of the
former pretors, limited, as that of the praetors had been, by the right of appeal;
but the final adjustment of the relations of the two orders to each other was
reserved for after discussion. Be that as it may, the form of the old government was once again restored, and two patrician magistrates Were elected with
supreme power; but an important change was established, that these two were
both freely chosen by the centuries, whereas one had hitherto been appointed
by the burghers in their curia, and had only been appointed by the centuries
afterwards
The re Alt of the election sufficiently showed that it was a free one. The
new magistrates, the first two consuls, properly speaking, of Roman history, were
L. Valerius and M. Horatius; and the executive government, for the first time
since the days of Brutus and Poplicola, was wholly in the hands of men devoted
to the rights of their country rather than to the ascendency of their order.
82 Livy, III. 64.                     and colonies of a later period, whose office was
' Zonaras, VII. 19. It may be observed that analogous to that of the consuls at Rome, were
the two supreme magistrates in the municipia called duumviri.




ï~~CHAPTER     XVI.
INTERNAL HISTORY-CONSTITUTION OF THE YEAR 306-VALERIAN LAWS, AND
TRIALS OF THE DECEMVIRS-REACTION IN FAVOR OF THE PATRICIANSCANULEIAN LAW-CONSTITUTION OF 812-COUNTER-REVOLUTION.
"The seven years that followed are a revolutionary period, the events of which we do not find
satisfactorily explained by the historians of the time."-HALLAM, Middle Ages, Vol. II. p. 458.
WE read in Livy and Dionysius an account of the affairs of Rome from      the
beginning of the commonwealth, drawn up in the form of annals Obseurity of the history
political questions, military operations, what was said in the sen- ef this period.
ate and the Forum, what was done in battle against the. Equians and Volscians,
all is related with the full details of contemporary history. It is not wonderful
that appearances so imposing should have deceived many; that the Roman history should have been regarded as a subject which might be easily and completely mastered. But if we press on any part this show of knowledge; it yields
before us, and comes to nothing. Nowhere is this more manifest than in the
story of the period immediately subsequent to the decemvirate. What is related
of these times is indistinct, meagre, and scarcely intelligible; but scattered fragments of information have been preserved along with it, which, when carefully
studied, enable us to restore the outline of very important events; and these,
when thus brought forward to the light, afford us the means of correcting or
completing what may be called the mere surface-view contained in the common
narrative. The lines, hitherto invisible, being so made conspicuous, a totally different figure is presented to us; its proportions and character are all altered, and
we find that, without this discovery, while we fancied ourselves in possession of
the true resemblance, we should, in fact, have been mistaking the unequal pillars
of the ruin for the original form of the perfect building.
The common narrative of the overthrow of the decemvirs omitted, as we have
seen, the important fact that the commons in that revolution occu- constitution of the year
pied the Capitol.   It mentions,' however, that the two popular 0.
leaders, Valerius and Horatius, were appointed the two chief magistrates of the
commonwealth, and that they passed several laws for the better confirmation of
the public liberty, without experiencing any open opposition on the part of the
patricians. In fact, the popular cause was so triumphant that all, and more
than all, of the objects of the Terentilian law were now effected; and a new
constitution was formed, by which it was attempted at once to unite the two
orders of the state more closely together, and to set them on a footing of entire
equality.
In the first place, the old laws for the security of personal liberty were confirmed afresh, and received a stronger sanction. Whoever, while
The valorian laws.
presiding at the comitia,2 should allow the election of any magis-  Valerianaws.
trate, with no right of appeal from his sentences, should be outlawed, and might
be killed by any one with impunity. This was the law proposed and passed by
Valerius; but even this, as we shall see presently, did not content the commons:
they required and carried a still stronger measure. A second Valerian law' for' Livy, III. 55. Dionysius, XI. 45.    neret. Livy III. 55. Dionysius describes this
2 Livy, III. 55.                      law correctly. He calls it veiov KicoAsvra ros
SQucd tributim plebes jussisset populum te-  0 ro"tO 65ov r eOavras ~v rais evXeTKa7Ls  lacksessi




ï~~122

HISTORY OF ROME.

[OCHAP XVI

mrally acknowledged the commons of Rome to be the Roman people; a Plebisciturn, or decree of the commons, was to be binding on the whole people: so it is
expressed in the annalists; but Niebuhr supposes that there was a restriction on
this power of which the annalists were ignorant; namely, that the plebiscitum
should have first received the sanction of the senate, and of the assembly of the
curiae.  It is, indeed, certain that the assembly of the tribes was not made the
sole legislative authority in the commonwealth; what was intended seems to have
been nothing more than to recognize its national character; its resolutions or
decrees,4 where not directly interfered with by another power equally sovereign,
were to embrace not the commons only, but the whole nation. In the same
way, in the later constitution, the senate was not all-powerful; it could not legislate alone, and its decrees were liable to be stopped by the negative of the tribunes; but no one doubted that its authority extended over the whole people,
and not over the members of its own order only. And this appears to have
been the position in which the Valerian law placed the assembly of the tribes.
Thus far we follow the express testimony of the annals from which Livy and
Division of all the ma- Dionysius compiled their narratives. But we are warranted in
gistrcies of the   he saying that the revolution did not stop here.  Other and deeper
patricians and commons, changes were effected; but they lasted so short a time, that their
memory has almost vanished out of the records of history.         The assembly of
the tribes had been put on a level with that of the centuries, and the same principle was followed out in the equal division of all the magistracies of the state
between the patricians and the commons. Two supreme magistrates,5 invested
with the highest judicial power, and discharging also those important duties
which were afterwards performed by the censors, were to be chosen every year,
one from  the patricians, and the other from the commons.      Ten tribunes of the
soldiers,' or decemviri, chosen five from the patricians and five from the commons, were to command the armies in war, and to watch over the rights of the
patricians; while ten tribunes of the commons, also chosen in equal proportions
from both orders, were to watch over the liberties of the commons. And as patricians were thus admitted to the old tribuneship, so the assemblies of the tribes'
were henceforth, like those of the centuries, to be held under the sanctions of
augury, and nothing could be determined in them if the auspices were unfavorable.  Thus the two orders were to be made fully equal to one another; but at
the same time they were to be kept perpetually distinct; for at this very moment8 the whole twelve tables of the laws of the decemvirs received the solemn
sanction of the people, although, as we have seen, there was a law in one of the
last tables which declared the marriage of a patrician with a plebeian to be unlawful.
There being thus an end of all exclusive magistracies, whether patrician or
noratiand  Dilian plebeian; and all magistrates being now recognized as acting in
laws.          the name of the whole people, the persons of all were to be rev6aovs, awaol KiraOatc Patosnc;  i'f ov, Tve alrv represent the whole nation, and not only one
ixovrag dvastvs roifv T raic )oxirtoetv hclscciat single order of men.
rnOrao sivost, XI. 45.  Now we know that at  5 Diodorus, XII. 25.
this time laws passed by the comitia of centu-  6 Diodorus, XII. 25. MAE  alpeiuOat   sipa'pxov
ries were not valid without the sanction of the pytearaf xovra  fovoias rwv cara ~r6Te s'pxevsenate, and, therefore, laws passed by the tribes Tov, cat ro6rovs erxv oaov ae<Xsragti r ds rw
must equally have required it.            rorsv e Aev6epta6. This description does not
SCompare the difference between a resolution suit the tribunes of the commons, and the exor an order of the house of commons (although pression, rys rdv W7rosrwv  Ev6s piac, instead of
that body cannot legislate without the consent r6 roe 6eyov XAFvEptia, seems to show that the
of the house of lords and the king) and the patricians or burghers were intended rather
canons of a synod of the clergy. A law which  than the commons.
should enact that " quod clerus jussisset popu-  7 Zonaras, VII. 19. He mentions the fact
lum teneret" need not give to a synod the ex- without its connection; but it seems to me exclusive right of making laws; it would deserve tremely valuable, towards confirming the view
its name if it merely placed it on a level with  of all these arrangements which is given in this
the house of commons; if it empowered it to history.
Â~ Diodorus, XII. 26. Livy, III. 57.




ï~~OHur. XVI.]

IMPEACHMENT OF APPIUS CLAUDIUS.

123

garded as equally sacred. Thus the consul Horatius proposed and carried a law
which declared, that whoever harmed any tribune of the commons, any adile,
any judge, or any decemvir, should be outlawed and accursed;9 that any man
might slay him, and that all his property should be confiscated to the temple of
Ceres. Another law was passed by M. Duilius, one of the tribunes, carrying
the penalties of the Valerian law to a greater height against any magistrate who
should either neglect to have new magistrates appointed at the end of the year,"
or who should create them without giving the right of appeal from their sentence. Whosoever violated either of these provisions was to be burned alive, as a
public enemy.
Finally, in order to prevent the decrees of the senate from being tampered
with by the patricians, Horatius and Valerius began the practice" Derees of the senate
of having them carried to the temple of Ceres on the Aventine, kept in the temple of
and there laid up under the care of the mdiles of the commons.  Ceres.
This complete revolution was conducted chiefly, as far as appears, by the two
consuls, and by M. Duilius.  Of the latter we should wish to have The to of firs wa.
some further knowledge; it is an unsatisfactory history, in which snot oripe for this constiwe can only judge of the man from his public measures, insteadto.
of being enabled to form some estimate of the merit of his measures from our
acquaintance with the character of the man. But there is no doubt that the
new constitution attempted to obtain objects for which the time was not yet
come, which were regarded rather as a triumph of a party, than as called for by
the wants and feelings of the nation; and, therefore, the Roman constitution of
306 was as short-lived as Simon de Montfort's provisions of Oxford, or as some
of the strongest measures of the long parliament. An advantage pursued too
far in politics, as well as in war, is apt to end in a repulse.
As yet, however, at Rome, the tide of the popular cause was at full flood, for
the decemvirs were still unpunished, and the fresh memory of Ipechment of Appi
'                                             Impeachment o)f Appiua
their crimes excited a universal desire for vengeance. Virginius Claudius. He is cast
singled out Appius and impeached him;1" but Appius, with the intoprison.
inherent pride of his family, scorned the thought of submission, and appeared in
the Forum with such a band of the young patricians around him, that he seemed
more likely to repeat the crimes of his decemvirate than to solicit mercy for them.
But the tide was not yet to be turned, and Appius only hastened his own ruin.

9 See this memorable law in Livy, III. 55.
" Qui tribunis plebis, edilibus, judicibus, decemviris nocuisset, ejus caput Jovi sacrum esset, familia ad udem Cereris liberi liberieque
venum iret." The different interpretations
given to the words "judicibus, decemviris," in
this passage, are well known. Niebuhr understands the latter nearly as I do, but the "judices" he considers to have been the centumviri. But the order of the words is, I think,
decisive against this last notion; the centumviri never could have been mentioned between
the udiles and decemviri. Whereas, according
to my interpretation, the two old plebeian offices are mentioned first, and then the two new
offices which they were thenceforward to share,
thosq of judge or consul, and of decemvir, or
tribune of the soldiers. Livy himself informs
us that there were some who had extended this
law to the patrician magistrates, and who explained the "judices" as I have done; but he
objects that judex, as applied to the consul, was
the later title, and that the consul at this time
was called praetor. To which the reply is easy:
that according to Zonaras, who derived his materials from Dion Cassius, the consuls ceased to
be called prators at this very time, and were
now first called consuls or colleagues; and it is
very likely that their military power, being

transferred to the tribunes of the soldiers, their
name of judices, which they are allowed by
Livy himself to have borne afterwards (see also
Cicero, de Legibus, III. 4), took its origin from
this period.
I may add, also, that the supposition that
there were to be ten tribunes of the soldiers
and as many tribunes of the commons, would
agree with the otherwise puzzling statement of
Pomponius, de Origine Juris, Â~ 25, " that there
were sometimes twenty tribunes of the soldiers," for the two tribuneships must, under
the constitution of 806, have so resembled each
other in many important points, that they may
easily have been represented as one magistracy.
10 Livy, III. 55. Diodorus, XII. 25. Livy
says, " Tergo et capite puniretur;" Diodorus,
more correctly,  vra scarasavOiva. The connection of this law with that mysterious story
of the burning alive of nine tribunes, for not
providing successors for themselves in their
office (see Valerius Maximus, VI. 8, Â~ 2, and note
89 to chap. XIII. of this history), cannot bit
strike every one; the clue, however, only go s,
far enough to excite curiosity, but will not en
able ua to satisfy it.
1 Livy, III. 55.
A Livy, III. 56.




ï~~124

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XVI

Virginius refused to admit the accused to bail, unless he could Drove" before a
judge duly appointed to try this previous issue, "that he had not, in a question
of personal freedom, assumed that the presumption was in favor cf slavery; in
having adjudged Virginia to be regarded as a slave till she was proved free, instead of regarding her as entitled to her freedom, till she was proved a slave."
Appius dared not have this issue tried; he only appealed to the tribunes, the
colleagues of Virginius, to save him from being cast into prison; and when they
refused to interpose,"4 he appealed to the people. The meaning of this appeal
was, that he refused to go before the judge as Virginius had proposed, and submitted his whole case to the judgment of the people in the assembly of centuries. This he might legally do; but on the other hand, his refusal to have the
question of fact, as to his conduct in the affair of Virginia, tried before a judge,
enabled Virginius to assume his guilt as certain. But bail was not to be given
to notorious criminals: it was thus that Kmso had defrauded justice, and Appius
would certainly fly from Rome before his trial; unless he were secured within the
walls of a prison. Accordingly, Virginius ordered him to be thrown into prison,
there to await the judgment of the people.
But that judgment he never lived to undergo. Livy chose to believe that he
His death before his killed himself,5 despairing of the event of the trial. Another actrial.        count implies, that it was the accusers, and not the accused, who
feared to trust to the decision of the centuries; the tribunes, it was said, ordered
him to be put to death in prison."  It would be painful to believe that so great
a criminal, like the dictator Cmsar, was not executed, but murdered; yet the
utter uncertainty of a trial before the centuries, where so many other points were
sure to be considered besides the fact of the criminal's guilt, and the strange latitude allowed by the Romans to their magistrates on the plea of the public safety,
render it not improbable that the tribunes dealt with Appius as Cicero treated
the accomplices of Catilina in the very same prison. Cicero's conduct on that

s  Ni judicem dices te ab libertate in servitutem contra leges vindicias non dedisse, in vincula te duci jubeo."  Livy, III. 56. Niebuhr
rejects the reading "judicem dices" as nonsense,
and corrects "judicem doces." I should lay littie stress on the authority of our MSS. of Livy,
which are all extremely corrupt; but in this instance the common reading is supported by the
similar expression " diem dicere" and the term
" condictio," qua "actor adversario denuntiabat
ut ad judicem capiendum die XXX adesset."
Gaius, IV. Â~ 18. " Ni judicem dices" signifies,
" Unless thou wilt give me notice to come before a judge with thee, to have this issue tried."
For the matter of the transaction itself it may
be observed, that the judge would have had to
try simply the question of fact, whether Appius
had given vindicice, or possession, in favor of
slavery or not. And it was manifest that if the
judge found against Appius on this issue, such
a verdict would have weighed strongly against
him at his trial before the centuries. On the
other hand, Appius wished to reserve his whole
case for the judgment of the centuries; for
there, as he well knew, the issue tried was far
less narrow, and the sentence would depend,
not on the evidence as to a particular fact, but
on the general impression produced on the
minds of the audience by the speakers on either
side; and to produce this impression the feelings and interests of the judges were freely aptealed to, so that the greatest criminal might
hepe to be acquitted, if his eloquence and the
influence of his friends were sufficiently powerful.
" An obscure and corrupt passage of Diodoras would appear to intimate, that, by the new

constitution, the act of one tribune could not
be stopped by another: in other words, that
the ordinary rule of Roman law, " melior est
conditio prohibentis," was, in the case of the
tribunes, at this time reversed. The words are
la   el of lpapxot /e v5PvWet 7rpif dtAiyoV, Kvpetot eTva rav &v   oeov KEo/EV/0 InKA$ EtOat, XII.
25. Wesseling and the other interpreters understand rv avd  deov xpevov, " in the interval,"
which seems to me to be neither good Greek
nor sense. I am inclined to read rob va p(eov
KE1eVov, " the matter that was between them:"
"If the tribunes should disagree, they had authority in the matter that was disputed between
them, so as not to be restrained by the veto of
their colleagues." But I am not yet satisfied
that this is the complete restoration of the passage.
" Livy, III. 58.
" Dionysius, XI. 46. "This," he'says, "was
the general opinion."     G pv, r v,roXev nrd-6 -); ss 4v. He must have copied this from some
annalist, although the oldest annalist could
know as little as Dionysius of the public opinion of the times of the decemvirs. Perhaps the
statement came from the memorials of'the Claudian family, which would naturally be glad to
impute such a crime to the hated tribunes.
But that Appius was put to death in prison, is
also the account given by the author of the little work " De Viris Illustribus;" and it is stated positively as a point which was not doubted.
And if this work was compiled, as Borghesi and
Niebuhr believe, from the inscriptions at the
base of the statues in the forum of Augustus, it
may be supposed to express the prevailing opinion in the Augustan age.




ï~~OnAr. XVI.]

THE PROSECUTIONS STOPPED.

125

occasion was sanctioned by Cato, and by the majority of the senate; and certainly the crimes of Appius were neither less flagrant, nor less notorious, than
those of Cethegus and Lentulus.
Another of the decemvirs, Spurius Oppius,'" underwent a similar fate. He
was particularly odious, because he had been left with Appius in rate of the other do.
the government of the city, while the other decemvirs were abroad  ev.rs.
with the legions; and because he had been a faithful imitator of his colleague's
tyranny.   His most obnoxious crime was his having cruelly and wantonly
scourged an old and distinguished soldier, for no offence, as it was said, whatsoever.  Bail, therefore, was refused to him also; he was committed to prison, and
there died before his trial came on, either by the hands of the executioner or his
own. The other decemvirs,'5 and M. Claudius, who had claimed Virginia as his
slave, were all allowed to give bail, or to escape before sentence was executed;
and accordingly they all fled from Rome, and went into exile. Their property,
as well as that of Appius and Oppius, was confiscated and sold at the temple of
Ceres.
From this point the reaction may be said to have begun. Vengeance having
been satisfied, compassion arose in its place; the patricians seemed Reaction an d division
the weaker party, and any further proceedings against them were among the popular
leaders.
received with aversion, as a generous spirit cannot bear to strike
an enemy on the ground. Accordingly, there seems from this moment to have
been a division amongst the popular leaders; some thinking that they had done
enough, and that in order to carry into effect the new constitution, nothing was
so much needed as conciliation; while others believed that the patricians would
never endure an equal government, and that it was the truest wisdom, as they
had once fallen, to keep them down forever. As far as we can discern any thing
of individual character amid the darkness of these times, the two consuls and M.
Duilius were of the former of these two opinions; L. Icilius and L. Trebonius
were of the latter.
The state required, as Duilius thought, a general amnesty; and accordingly he
declared"9 that he would stop any further political prosecutions; Dilies stops au farther
that he would allow no man to be impeached, nor to be thrown prosocutions.
into prison as unworthy of bail, during the remainder of the year.      With the
next year, as he hoped, the new constitution would come into force, and then the
liberty of the commons, and the peace of the nation, would be secured forever.
But, as far as appears, the patricians observed that there were symptoms of a
turn of the tide; and they hoped for better things than to be The consuls take the
obliged to submit to the constitution of Duilius. The two consuls" field, and are victorieus
over the enemy. The
went out to battle against the.lEquians and the Sabines, and re- aenate refuses them a
7, triumph, hat the people
turned, asserting that they had won great victories, and claiming grant tto theom.
the honor of a triumph. No doubt the boast of victories in that plundering warfare was often very unsubstantial; but in this case the defeat of the Sabines, at
any rate, seems to have been real and signal, for we hear no more of wars with
them for a hundred and fifty years afterwards. The patricians, however, would
grant no honor to consuls whom they regarded as traitors to their order, and the
triumphs were refused.   But on this occasion the consuls threw themselves into
the hands of the more decided popular party; they summoned the people to
meet in their centuries," and there L. Icilius, the tribune, with the consuls' sanc-.'17 Livy, III. 58.                     of a tribune, and it is said that " omnes tribus
18 Livy, III. 58. Dionysius, XI. 46.   eam rogationem acceperunt."  On the other
10 Livy, III. 59.                      hand, Dionysius says that the consuls summonSo Livy, III. 60-63.                    ed the people to the assembly, and the tribunes
2 It is not clear whether the vote in favor of are represented as seconding their representathe consuls' triumph was passed by the centu- tion, rather than originating the question themries or by the tribes. Livy's expressions are  selves. froaAo r7; (ovens careyopoavref, cvvayo"tulit ad populum," not "ad  lebem," and peudvrv abroi rnv 'ndpxwv. XI. 50. Theso
" populi jussu triumphatum est," not " plebis circumstances suit best the comitia of'centuries,
jussu." Yet the vote is passed on the motion for the consuls could not enter the city without




ï~~126

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XVI,

tion, moved that the Roman people, by its supreme authority, should order the
consuls to triumph.  In vain did the patricians oppose the motion to the utmost:
they had taken up an ill-chosen position, and the reaction here availed them
nothing: the people ordered as Icilius proposed, and the consuls triumphed.
This, if the consular Fasti may be trusted, took place in August. Again the
Growingstrengthofthe mist closes over the events of the remainder of the year, and we
aristocratical party.  can only judge of their nature by the result. The reaction grew
stronger, and was increased by all the inherent strength of an aristocracy, the
most powerful of all governments so long as it retains any portion of its original
vigor. The patricians were determined that the new constitution should never
take effect; that there should be no plebeian consul, and no plebeian tribunes of
the soldiers: whether, if these points were carried, they might be forced also to
have no patrician tribunes of the commons, they cared but little.
To meet this determination, the bolder part of the leaders of the commons reProceedings of Dili s solved that the magistrates for the present year should be re-electat the election of new
tribunes.     ed.   "If the patricians will not have the constitution," they said,
"we will at least keep matters exactly as they now are; we have two consuls
whom we can trust to the death, we have ten true and zealous tribunes, the leaders of our late glorious deliverance. If we retain these, the patricians will gain
little by their resistance." But here again the division in the popular party made
itself manifest: the -consuls shrunk from the odium  of re-electing themselves;
Duilius was equally opposed to the re-election of himself and his nine colleagues.
The lot for holding the comitia for the election of the new tribunes happened to
fall to him.  He resolutely refused' to receive votes for any of the last year's
tribunes; and as many of the voters would vote for no other candidate, it turned
out that only five candidates could obtain that proportion of suffrages out of the
whole number,23 which was required to constitute the legal vote of a tribe. Accordingly, when the sun set, he pronounced the comitia to be dissolved, and as
all elections were to end in a single day, he declared4 that the voting for tribunes

laying aside their imperium, and so giving up
their claim to a triumph, and would necessarily
assemble the people without the walls. Besides,
the question of a triumph might be more justly
decided by the people in the military array of
their centuries on the Campus Martius, than by
the commons in their tribes in the Forum. If
Livy's expression, " omnes tribus rogationem
acceperunt," could be relied upon, it would go
far to prove that the blending of the system of
centuries with that of tribes, in the comitia centuriata, that most perplexing question of Roman
constitutional history, began at least as early as
the time of the decemvirs, and probably accompanied the admission of the patricians and their
clients into the tribes. Fifty years later, in the
year 359, Livy speaks of the " prerogativa tribus," and the "jure vocate tribus," at the comitia of centuries, without the least intimation
that the system implied in those expressions
was then of recent introduction. See Livy,
V. 18.
22 Livy, III. 64. "Cum  ex veteribus tribunis, negaret ullius se rationem habiturum."
23 "Cum alii candidati tribus non explerent."
" Explere tribun," and " explere centuriam,"
signify the obtaining such an absolute number
of votes out of the whole number contained in
the tribe or century, as was required to constitute its suffrage: for if the votes of the tribes
were divided amongst so many candidates, that
no one had an absolute majority of the whole
tribe in his favor, the tribe was held to have
voted for no one. And so if no candidate had
an absolute majority of the whole number of
tribes in his favor, the comitia were held to

have voted for no one, and there was no legal
return.
24 There is much difficulty here in Livy's narrative. After saying that Duilius dismissed the
assembly when only five tribunes had been
elected, and that he would not go on with the
election on any future clay, "concilium dimisit,
nec deinde comitiorum caus habuit," Livy
goes on as follows, "satisfactum legi aiebat,
qun numero nusquam prmfinito tribunis, modo
ut relinquerentur sanciret, et ab iis qui creati
essent cooptari collegas juberet. Recitabatque
rogationis carmen," &c. Now this evidently
implies that Duilius referred to his own law,
passed in this very year, by which it was made
a capital offence in any tribune to go out of office, or to let the year expire without providing
for the election of new tribunes to succeed him:
and it appears that this very law had contained
a clause, authorizing the elected tribunes, if
fewer than ten, to fill up their number by choosing their own colleagues. Niebuhr, on the
other hand, supposes that this was a new law,
now proposed by Duilius; and he therefore
reads, " et ab iis qui creati essent cooptari collegas jubebat," referring the verb to Duilius,
instead of the common reading " juberet2' referring to the former law. I think, however,
that the grammar is against this construction,
for if Livy had meant that Duilius brought forward a new measure, which must have been
done at a particular time and place, hlie would
not have used the imperfect tenses "aiebat"
and "recitabat," but rather "dclixit" and1 recitavit." And besides, what likelihood is there
that suck a measure would have been passed by




ï~~CHAr. XVI.]

THE TREBONIAN LAW.

127

was duly finished; that the commons had elected no more than five, and that it
must remain with these five to complete their own numnber. Accordingly, the
five elected tribunes chose to themselves five colleagues, and two2" of these are
expressly said to have been moderate patricians. We may safely conclude that
all five were patricians, and that Duilius, hoping to prevail by moderation and
conciliation, took this opportunity to carry into effect one part of the new constitution, in the confidence that, after this proof of honorable dealing, the patricians,
for very shame, would be forced to fulfil the rest of it.
In this, however, he was mistaken: they had no thought of fulfilling it, although
by what means they were enabled to defeat it we can only conjec- The newc onstitution i.
ture.  Many years afterwards the patricians habitually set the Li- staside.
cinian law at defiance, and prevented the election of a plebeian consul, whenever the comitia were held by a magistrate devoted to their interests. But how
could they persuade Horatius and Valerius, whom they had so recently insulted,
to enter into their feelings, and when the day of election came on, to refuse all
votes given in favor of a plebeian candidate?  Perhaps the opposition of the patricians was so determined, that the consuls could not but yield to it; they might
know, that although the centuries should elect a plebeian, yet the curiaie would not
confirm the election by conferring on him the imperium, or sovereign power; and,
above all, they might feel that there was not in the mass of the commons so deep
an interest in the point as could overpower even the most resolute resistance.
Thus they abandoned the new constitution to its fate: there was no election of
tribunes of the soldiers, nor of a plebeian consul; only two patricians of known
moderation were chosen, Lars Herminiust6 and T. Virginius Caelimontanus, men
who were not likely to abuse their power, and so to make the victory of the patricians insupportable.
Thus the hopes of Duilius were altogether disappointed, and the tribuneship
had been laid open to the patricians for nothing.  The most mod-     e eninlaw.
The Trebonian law.
erate men now saw that they had been deluded, and L. Trebonius,
one of the five plebeians, was loud in his complaints of the treachery of the patricians. He then proposed a law,27 which enacted that the election of the tribunes of the commons should from henceforth be continued till the whole number of ten were elected.  We read of no opposition to this law from any quarter;
the patricians knew that they must abandon their hold on the tribuneship if they
insisted on keeping all the curule offices to themselves, and probably they were
anxious to leave no vestige of the new constitution in existence, lest the commons,
while any part of it remained, should be tempted to demand the whole. Accordingly, all things returned to their old state: except that the two orders were
rendered more distinct than ever by the positive law enacted by the decemvirs,
and introduced into the twelve tables, by which intermarriage between them was
strictly forbidden.
It was impossible, however, that matters should so rest. The moderate consuls of the year 307 were succeeded by two men of a different A.. s. A. c.4.
charcter M.Violences of the young
character, M. Geganius Macerinus" and C. Julius. Immediately patricians.
the commons at the very moment when they in a single day, if there was a very great numwere complaining of Duilius's conduct? Where- ber of candidates. And thus the tenses aiebat
as it is very conceivable that the clause appealed and recitabat are quite right; for they express
to by Duilius had been inserted by him in his the defence which Duilius was in the habit qf
former law, perhaps with a view to the very ob- making, whenever his conduct was called in
ject which he now proposed to gain by it; question.
namely, the securing the admission of some pa-  2 These were Sp. Tarpeius and A. Aternius,
tricians into the number of tribunes. And the the consuls of the year 300, who had passed the
clause would then have been passed without law "De multn sacramento." Livy, III. 65,
suspicion, as it involved no new principle, as and Cicero, de Repub. II. 35.
might seem intended merely to relieve the trib-  21 Livy, III. 65. The consuls at this time came
une presiding at the comitia from the fearful into office on the Ides of December. Dionysius
penalty of the law, in a case in which he might XI. 63. Livy, IV. 37.
be perfectly innocent; for it might not be in  27 Livy, III. 65.
his power to secure the election of ten tribunes  28 Livy, III. 65.




ï~~128

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XVL

we hear again of the young patricians, as in the time of the decemvir Appius
and of Kaso Quinctius.      The tribunes in vain endeavored to break up their
organization, by impeaching the most forward individuals: the consuls took their
part, and repressed, says Livy, the combination among the tribunes without
attacking the tribunitian power in itself, and yet without compromising the dignity of the patricians. This can only mean that private influence, corruption, or
intimidation, were used to deter the accusers from proceeding. Thus relieved
from all restraint, the patricians went on more boldly; violence was constantly
offered to individual plebeians; the young patricians, organized in their clubs,
supported each other in their outrages: and even the tribunes, far from being
able to protect their constituents, were themselves, in spite of the sacred laws,
insulted and assaulted. The commons complained that they wanted tribunes like
Icilius; that those whom  they now had were no better than mere shadows.       It
requires, indeed, no ordinary man to act the part of popular leader against a
powerful aristocracy.  Even in the Forum the patrician clubs were now the strongest party; so great is the superiority of youth, high birth, training in martial exercises, and organization, over mere numbers. But when they left the Forum, the
tribunes were but individuals, often advanced in life,29 with few slaves and no dependents; exposed in their own persons, and still more in their families, to all the
insults and oppressions which wealth, rank, and their numerous clients, enabled
the patricians to offer. Whose spirit would not be broken by such a trial?  Who
but the very boldest and firmest of men would have scrupled to purchase security in private life from such constant persecution, by withdrawing, in his public
capacity, that opposition which, after all, he might feel to be hopeless?
In the next year, a member of the Quinctian house was chosen consul, T. QuinoA. U. C. 309. A. C. tius Capitolinus.  Accordingly, the story of the year is made up
44in. cos.ulheip of T. from some of the memorials of the Quinctian family, and is a mere
Qoinctios. The canu-                iOSlan
loian law.     panegyxic of the consul's great qualities in peace and in war. The
real history of the year is lost almost entirely; it is only saids" that the irritation
of the commons was continually becoming more violent, and that impeachments
against individual patricians were constantly the occasion of fresh contests between
the orders.  Then the panegyric succeeds, and describes1, how the.Equians and
Volscians broke in upon the Roman territory, and carried their ravages up to the
very walls of Rome; how there was no one who went out to oppose them; and
how the consul then called the people together, and addressed them so earnestly,
and with such effect, that all internal quarrels were suspended, every man followed the consul to the field, and a great victory was gained over the enemy. So
ran the story; but on this occasion it has not found its way into the Fasti, and
the annals of the year contain no record of a triumph obtained by either consul.
When Quinctius and his panegyric disappear from the state, the story of interA. U. C. 310. A. C. 442. nal disputes returns, and we find" the Equians and Volscians, toA..C.0. A.C.44. gether with the Veientians and Ardeatians, again threatening Rome
from without. But the new college of tribunes contained a man of resolution,
C. Canuleius, and one, to all appearance, as wise as he was bold. He chose that
particular reform out of many in which the commons felt a deep interest, and in
29 Shakspeare has truly seized this point in cannot expect to be distinguished as early in
the character of the tribuneship, that it was life as those who are recommended at once to
generally held by men of mature, or even of ad- public notice by the celebrity of their faimily.
vanced age; the tribunes who oppose Coriola-  Afterwards, when the tribunes, as in the case
nus are elderly men, like the city magistrates of of the Gracchi, were chosenfrom families, which,
modern times; and the aristocratical party taunt though not patrician, were yet in the highest
them with their want of strength: "Aged sir, degree noble, young men might be elected to
hands off."  "Hence, rotten thing! or I will the office, for then they enjoyed all the aristoshake thy bones out of thy garments." So the cratical advantages of hereditary distinction, alpopular leader of Syracuse, Athenagoras, com- though their office was still a popular one.
plains of the youth and presumption of Her-  -o Livy, III. 66.
mocrates and his party. And this is natural;  21 Livy, III. 66.
bfor he who has to make his own way to fame,  Livy, IV. 1.




ï~~CHAP. XVI.]

THE CANITLEIAN LAW CARRIED.

129

which many of the patricians sympathized with them; the repeal, namely, of that
law of the twelve tables which forbade connubia between the two orders. Many
families must have felt the hardship of this law; for marriages between patricians
and plebeians were common, and as they were not in the highest sense legal, the
children followed the mother's condition, not the father's, and were not subject
to their father's power, nor could inherit from him if he died intestate.  On this
point there was a strong and general feeling; but the other nine tribunes,"3 encouraged by their colleague's boldness, attempted to revive the question of the
admission of plebeians to the consulship, and they proposed a law, "' that the
consulship should be thrown open, without distinction, to the members of both
orders."
Here, again, the family memorials, and the annalists who compiled their narratives from them, have left a blank in the story.  No patrician made Tmult on the Janiehimself remarkable, either by his magnanimous opposition to the        hm.eTh canule ian
commons, or by his patriotic support of their claims; no memora- law is carried.
ble tale of outrage or of heroism was connected with these events, and thus they
have been passed by almost unnoticed.     But the short statement of Zonaras,4
"that many violent things were said and done on both sides," acquires something
more of distinctness from the mention made by Florus3t of a tumult which broke
out on the hill Janiculum, headed by the tribune Canuleius.  It seems, then, that
the commons again took up arms, and established themselves, not, as before, on the
Aventine or the Sacred Hill, but beyond the Tiber, on a spot easily capable of
being converted into a distinct city. Thus pressed, the patricians once more
yielded, and the law of Canuleius, to repeal the decemvirs'6 prohibition of intermarriages between the two orders, was carried without further opposition.
The success of Canuleius encouraged his 'colleagues; and they now more vehemently urged their law for opening the consulship to the com- Disputes about the law
mons.   But this measure, it seems, excited a less general interest proposed by his coler opening the
in its behalf, while it awakened a yet fiercer opposition.  We may c0oeueshoip to the o
suppose, however, that the commons again occupied, in military Mons.
order, either the Aventine or the Janiculum: for the patricians held meetings
amongst themselves," which neither Valerius nor Horatius would attend; and C.
Claudius, true to the spirit of his family, wanted to invest the consuls with full
military power, and to commission them to attack the tribunes and the commons
by force of arms. The Quinctii, however, so said their family accounts, would
have no violence done on the sacred persons of the tribunes; and their milder
counsels led to a temporary settlement of the contest. The consulship was to be
suspended, but tribunes of the soldiers, with consular power, were to be appointed,
and these might be either plebeians or patricians. What was to be the number
of these tribunes is uncertain; three only were actually chosen; but Zonaras says,'"
that according to the constitution of the office there were to be six, three to be
chosen from each order. Perhaps the number three had reference to the three
old tribes of the Roman people, the Ramnenses, the Titienses, and Luceres, and
as these, in the division of the centuries, were now six, the sex suffragia, it may
have been intended, in like manner, that after three patrician tribunes had been
elected, three plebeians should be added to their number, like the first and second
centuries of the three tribes, according to the system ascribed to the elder Tarquinius.  At any rate, three tribunes were elected; and, as Livy declares; three
patricians: A. Sempronius Atratinus, L. Atilius, and Cloelius.39
"s Livy, IV. 1.                          37 Livy, IV. 6. Dionysius, XI. 55.
34 IIoAs Kar' d&Xe9v Ktat laa. $Ay6v re ica?  s VII. 19. Dionysius also agrees with him,
e rparrov. VII. 19.                      XI. 60.
STertiam seditionem incitavit matrimonio-  3 In the MSS. of Livy, this last tribune is
rum dignitas, ut plebeii cum patriciis jungeren- called " T. Celius," or "Calius," or 1 Caecilius;"
tur. Qui tumultus in monte Janiculo, duce Ca- Cacilius is the reading followed in Drakennuleio, tribuno plebis, exarsit. Florus, I. 25.  borch's edition, but Bekker has adopted the
"2 Livy, IV. 6. correction of Sigonius, "T. Cloelius." In Die
9




ï~~130

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XVI

It is remarkable that two out of these three, Sempronius and Cloelius, were chosen
The dispute ends inthe from families especially noted, twelve years4" earlier, for their vioappointment of consuls lent hostility to the commons, and for the great strength of their
asbefre.    bands of associated followers. This can hardly have been a mere
accident: it looks as if the patricians had made every effort to bring them forward as efficient leaders in the struggle for which they were preparing.  But
again the details are lost; and Livy's story4' merely relates that within three
months the tribunes were called upon by the augurs to resign, from an alleged
religious informality in their election; that there was then a dispute, whether
other tribunes should be elected, or whether consuls should be appointed, as before; that T. Quinctius Barbatus, whom the patricians had appointed interrex,
was on this occasion their leader; that the commons, feeling that only patricians
would be elected, whether under the name of consuls or tribunes, thought it vain to
dispute for nothing; and that thus, in the end, two consuls were appointed, L. Papirius Mugillanus, and another, Sempronius Atratinus, and all mention of the laws
proposed by the tribunes of the commons was thus for several years laid to sleep.
Another account42 represents T. Quinctius, not as interrex, but as dictator, and
Verying accounts of says that in no more than thirteen days he put an end to the conthese transactions.  test, and then laid down his office. And as we find the record of
a treaty concluded in this year between Rome and Arden, it has been conjectured3
that the patricians may have availed themselves of foreign aid in putting down
the opposition of the commons. It is certain that in the following year we meet,
for the first time, with the name of a new patrician magistracy, the censorship;
and Niebuhr saw clearly that the creation of this office was connected with the
appointment of tribunes of the soldiers; and that both belong to what may be
called the constitution of the year 312.
This constitution recognized two points: a sort of continuation of the principle
of the decemvirate, inasmuch as the supreme government was again,
Nrew const~itution. Cen-..rs, qoumstorr end trib- to speak in modern language, put in commission, and the kingly
nnes ef lbs soldiers. sp a
the soers  powers, formerly united in the consuls or prators, were now to be
divided between the censors and tribunes of the soldiers; and, secondly, the eligibility of the commons to share in some of the powers thus divided.  But the
partition, even in theory, was far from equal: the two censors, who were to hold
their office for five years, were not only chosen from the patricians, but, as Niebuhr thinks,  by them; that is, by the assembly of the curiae; the two qua stors who judged in cases of blood were also chosen from the patricians, although
by the centuries. Thus the civil power of the old praetors was, in its most important points, still exercised exclusively by the patricians; and even their military power, which was professedly to be open to both orders, was not transmitted

dorus the MSS. read Kdivro, for which the editors have corrected Kosvrto (Quintius, or Quinctius). In Dionysius, the common reading is
KXb cov zEucLev, but the cognomen enables us to
correct this, and in the Vatican MS. it is rightly
given KhAistov zecksAG6v. Neibuhr says that L.
Atilius must have been a plebeian, because the
Atilii were a plebeian family, and the L. Atilius,
who was tribune of the soldiers in 856, is expressly called a plebeian by Livy himself. But
this is merely the same question which occurs
with respect to some of the decemvirs; and it
never can be shown that there were not some
patrician houses of all those names, which, to
us in the later history, occur only as plebeian,
except where the plebeian family had been noble
in some other city of Italy, and was not of Roman extraction. Thus we do not hear of any
patrician 2Elii or Cncilii. It is more probable,
I think, that tie three tribunes first chosen
were patricians, and that three plebeians were
to have been added to their number; but that

the patricians resisted this, and finally, to simplify the question, got rid of their own tribunes
also, and returned to the government by consuls.
4o Dionysius, X. 41.
41 Livy, IV. 7.
42 Lydus, de Magistratibus, I. 38. But the
infinite confusions of the passage in which this
statement occurs, render its authority extremely
questionable.
4S Niebuhr, Vol. II. p. 410, Engl. Transl..  Vol. II. p. 894, Engl. Transl.  It appears
that in after times the election of the censors
was confirmed by alex centuriata, as that of the
other curule magistrates was by a lex curiata.
Both were, then, a mere formality; but Nie,
buhr infers from this difference between the
censorship and the other magistracies, that the
former was originally conferred by the curie,
and confirmed by the centuries, as the others
were conferred by the centuries, and confirmed
by the curiae.




ï~~CHAP. XVI.]

CONSTITUTION OF 312.

131

to the tribunes of the soldiers, without some diminution of its majesty. The new
tribuneship was not an exact image of the kingly sovereignty; it was not a curule
office, and therefore no tribune ever enjoyed the honor of a triumph,45 in which
the conquering general, ascending to the Capitol to sacrifice to the guardian gods
of Rome, was wont to be arrayed in all the insignia of royalty.
But even the small share of power thus granted in theory to the commons,
was in practice withheld from them. Whether from the influence Itsinequality asregardof the patricians in the centuries, or by religious pretences urged ed the commons.
by the augurs, or by the enormous and arbitrary power of refusing votes which
the officer presiding at the comitia was wont to exercise, the college of the tribunes was for many years filled by the patricians alone. And while the censorship was to be a fixed institution, the tribunes of the soldiers were to be replaced,
whenever it might appear needful, by two consuls; and to the consulship no plebeian was so much as legally eligible. Thus the victory of the aristocracy may
seem to have been complete, and we may wonder how the commons, after having
carried so triumphantly the law of Canuleius, should have allowed the political
rights asserted for them by his colleagues to have been so partially conceded in
theory, and in practice to be so totally withheld.
The explanation is simple, and it is one of the most valuable lessons of history.
The commons obtained those reforms which they desired, and they Causes why this was
desired such only as their state was ripe for. They had withdrawn quietly endured.
in times past to the Sacred Hill, but it was to escape from intolerable personal
oppression; they had recently occupied the Aventine in arms, but it was to get
rid of a tryanny which endangered the honor of their wives and daughters, and
to recover the protection of their tribunes; they had more lately still retired to
the Janiculum, but it was to remove an insulting distinction which embittered the
relations of private life, and imposed on their grandchildren, in many instances,
the inconveniences, if not the reproach, of illegitimacy. These were all objects of
universal and personal interest; and these the commons were resolved not to relinquish. But the possible admission of a few distinguished members of their
body to the highest offices of state concerned the mass of the commons but little.
They had their own tribunes for their personal protection; but curule magistracies, and the government of the commonwealth, seemed to belong to the patricians, or, at least, might be left in their hands without any great sacrifice. So
it is that all things come best in their season; that political power is then most
happily exercised by a people, when it has not been given to them prematurely,
that is, before, in the natural progress of things, they feel the want of it. Security
for person and property enables a nation to grow without interruption; in contending for this, a people's sense of law and right is wholesomely exercised; meantime, national prosperity increases, and brings with it an increase of intelligence,
till, other and more necessary wants being satisfied, men awaken to the highest
earthly desire of the ripened mind, the desire of taking an active share in the
great work of government. The Roman commons abandoned the highest magistracies to the patricians for a period of many years: but they continued to increase in prosperity and in influence; and what the fathers had wisely yielded,
their sons, in the fulness of time, acquired. So the English house of commons,
in the reign of Edward III.,46 declined to interfere in questions of peace and war, as
being too high for them to compass; but they would not allow the crown to take
their money without their own consent; and so the nation grew, and the influence
of the house of commons grew along with it, till that house has become the
great and predominant power in the British constitution.
45 Zonaras, VII. 19. It might be a curious origin the inferior rank of the general who had
question whether the ovation, or inferior tri- gained it, rather than the less importance of his
umph, in which the conquering general walked military successes.
on foot instead of riding in his chariot, was not  46 Hallam, Middle Ages, Vol. III. p. 71. e,
first introduced in the case of a tribune of the 1822.
soldiers; and whether it did not mark in its




ï~~132.

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XVII.

If this view be correct, Trebonius judged far more wisely than M. Duilius; and
the abandonment of half the plebeian tribuneship to the patricians, in order to
obtain for the plebeians an equal share in the higher magistracies, would have
been as really injurious to the commons, as it was unwelcome to the pride of the
aristocracy. It was resigning a weapon with which they were familiar, for one
which they knew not how to wield. The tribuneship was the foster nurse of Roman liberty, and without its care that liberty never would have grown to maturity.
What evils it afterwards wrought, when the public freedom was fully ripened,
arose from that great defect of the Roman constitution, its conferring such extravagant powers on all its officers.  It proposed to check one tyranny by another;
instead of so limiting the prerogatives of every magistrate and order in the state,
whether aristocratical or popular, as to exclude tyranny from all.
CHAPTER XVII.
INTERNAL HISTORY FROM 812 TO 850-THE CENSORSHIP, AND THE LIMITATION
OF IT BY MAMERCUS EMILIUS-SP. M.ELIUS AND C. AHALA-THE QUESTORSHIP LAID OPEN TO THE COMMONS-SIX TRIBUNES OF THE SOLDIERS
APPOINTED, AND PAY ISSUED TO THE SOLDIERS.
"What can be more instructive than to observe the first principles of right springing up,
involved in superstition and polluted with violence; until, by length of time and favorable circumstances, it has worked itself into clearness?"-BUIEKE, Abridgment of English History, Book
III. Chap. IX.
THE period of nearly forty years on which we are now going to enter, so short
a space in the history of a nation, so long to all of us individually, includes within
it the whole of the Peloponnesian war. Whilst at Rome the very form and tendency of great political revolutions cannot be discovered without difficulty; whilst
military events are wholly disguised by ignorance or flattery, and whilst we can
as yet obtain no distinct ideas of any one individual, nor fully conceive the character of the national mind, Athens is, on the other hand, known to us almost in
its minutest points of detail. During this time Thucydides was collecting materials for his history; and Herodotus, after having travelled nearly all over the
world, was making the last additions to his great work in the country of his later
years, on the southern coast of Italy. Pericles had passed all of his glorious life
except its most glorious close; and Socrates, the faithful servant of truth and
virtue, was deserving that common hatred of the aristocratical' and democratical
vulgar, which made him at last its martyr. The arts and manufactures of Athens
were well known at Rome; and those names and stories of the wars of Thebes
and Troy, which their dramatists were continually presenting afresh to the memory of the Athenians, were familiar also in the heart of Italy, were adopted into
the language and traditions of Etruria and of Rome, and employed the genius of
I The aristocratical hatred against Socrates is who politically are most at variance with each
exhibited in the Clouds of Aristophanes; and other; and so the common dread and hatred of
the famous speech of Cleon on the question of improvement, of truth, of principle-in other
the punishment of the revolted Mytilenians, words, of all that is the light and life of man,
shows the same spirit in connection with the has, on more than one occasion, united in one
strong democratical party. Political parties are cause all who are low in intellect and morals,
not the ultimate distinction between man and from the highest rank in society down to the
man; there are higher points, whether for good humblest.
or evil, on which a moral sympathy unites those




ï~~CHAP. XVII.]

INTERNAL HISTORY.

133

Italian artists2 as of those of their original country. But, during the period at
which we are now arrived, central Italy became acquainted, not with Athenian
art only, but with the fame of the Athenian arms.       The Etruscans heard with
delight that a mighty avenger of their defeat at Cuma3 was threatening their old
enemies of Syracuse; their cities gladly lent their aid to the invader; and the
Romans must have heard with interest from their neighbors and friends of Caere
or Agylla, how some of their countrymen had done good service in the lines4 of
the Athenian army, and how they had been involved in that sweeping ruin in
which the greatest armament ever yet sent out by a free and civilized commonwealth had so miserably perished. But the Romans knew not, and could not
know, how deeply the greatness of their own posterity, and the fate of the whole
western world, was involved in the destruction of the fleet of Athens in the harbor of Syracuse. Had that great expedition proved victorious, the energies of
Greece during the next eventful century would have found their field in the west
no less than in the east: Greece, and not Rome, might have conquered Carthage;
Greek, instead of Latin, might have been at this day the principal element of the
languages of Spain, of France, and of Italy; and the laws of Athens, rather than
of Rome, might be the foundation of the law of the civilized world.
The period now before us is marked, as far as Rome itself is concerned, with
few events of great importance. The commons retained and asserted General character of
those rights which were the best suited to their actual condition; the ensuing period.
and thus became gradually fitted to desire and to claim others of a higher character. But for the first important advantage to their cause they were indebted
to one of the wisest and best Romans of his time, who was at once trusted by
them, and respected by his own order, the patrician Mamercus.zEmilius.        Nine
years after the institution of the censorship, Mamercus, having been A. U. c 321. A. c.
named dictator, to oppose a threatened attack from the Etruscans, 431.
proposed and carried a law5 to limit the duration of the censorship. That office,
in its powers and outward splendor a lively image of royalty, was held for a term
of five years.. By the law of Mamercus.iEmilius it was to be held in future only
for eighteen months; and as the election of censors still took place only at intervals of five years, this magistracy was always in abeyance for a longer time than
it was in existence.
The censorship was an office so remarkable, that, however familiar the subject
may be to many readers, it is necessary here to bestow some notice
on it. Its original business6 was, to take a register of the citizens The censorship.
and of their property; but this, which seems at first sight to be no more than
the drawing up of a mere statistical report, became, in fact, from the large discretion allowed to every Roman officer, a political power of the highest importance.   The censors made out the returns of the free population; but they did
more; they divided it according to its civil distinctions, and drew up a list of the
senators,3 a list of the equites, a list of the members of the several tribes, or
2 In specimens of Etruscan vases and frescoes by Pindar, Pyth. I. 140, and one of the helmets
given by Micali in the atlas accompanying his taken from the enemy on this day, and sent as
History of the Ancient People of Italy, and in an offering to the Olympian Jupiter, was disthose published more recently by the Antiqua- covered by an English traveller, in 1817, amongst
rian Society of Rome, it is curious to observe the ruins of Olympia, and bears an inscription
how many of the subjects are taken from the which tells its story, "that IHiero, the son of
story of the siege of Thebes, and still more from  Dinomenes, and the Syracusans, offered it to
that of Troy. Many of the vases on which these Jove as a part of the Tyrrhenian spoil from Cusubjects occur are thought to be actually of ma." See Bdckh, Corpus Inscript. Grec. tom.
Athenian manufacture; others appear to be Ital- I..34.
ian imitations; but both equally prove that the  Thucydides, VII. 58.
stories of the heroic age of Greece were well  5 Livy, IV. 24.
known in Italy, and the works of Grecian art  6 Magistratus, cui scribarumministeriumousadmired and sought after.                 todimeque et tabularum cura, cui arbitrium fora The naval victory of Cuma was wonby Hiero, mule censendi subjiceretur. Livy, IV. 8.
the brother and successor of Gelon, over the  7 See the accounts of the census in Livy,
Etruscans, in the year 474 B. C. Olymp. 76-8. XXIV. 18, and XXXIX. 42, 44. See also ZoIt is commemorated by Diodorus, XI. 51, a id naras, VII. 19.




ï~~134

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XVII.

of those citizens who enjoyed the right of voting, and a list of the mrarians, consisting of those freedmen, naturalized strangers, and others, who, being enrolled
in no tribe, possessed no vote in the comitia, but still enjoyed all the private rights
of Roman citizens. Now the lists thus drawn up by the censors were regarded
as legal evidence of a man's condition: the state could refer to no more authentic standard than to the returns deliberately made by one of its highest magistrates, who was responsible to it for their being drawn up properly. He would,
in the first place, be the sole judge of many questions of fact, such as whether a
citizen had the qualifications required by law or custom for the rank which he
claimed, or whether he had ever incurred any judicial sentence which rendered
him infamous:' but from thence the transition was easy, according to Roman notions, to the decision of questions of right; such as whether a citizen was really
worthy of retaining his rank, whether he had not committed some act as justly
degrading as those which incurred the sentence of the law; and in this manner
the censor gave a definite power to public opinion, and whatever acts or habits
were at variance with the general feeling, he held himself authorized to visit with
disgrace or disfranchisement. Thus was established a direct check upon many
vices or faults which law, in almost all countries, has not ventured to notice.
Whatever was contrary to good morals, or to the customs of their fathers, Roman
citizens ought to be ashamed to practise: if a man10 behaved tyrannically to his
wife or children, if he was guilty of excessive cruelty even to his slaves, if he
neglected his land," if he indulged in habits of extravagant expense,' or followed
any calling which was regarded as degrading,'3 the offence was justly noted by
the censors, and the offender was struck off from the list of senators, if his rank
were so high; or if he were an ordinary citizen, he was expelled from his tribe,
and reduced to the class of the erarians. Beyond this the censor had no power
of degradation;14 for the private rights of Roman citizens could not be taken away
by any magistrate; the sentence could only affect his honors, or such privileges
as were strictly political.
Yet the censors had a further hold even on the erarians, nor was their power
Power of the  limited to the degrading a citizen from his rank; they could also
rthe proope tyotheo affect his fortune. It was their business, as I have said, to make
people.       a return of the property of every Roman, and of its value; for
the taxes were levied according to this return, and here, too, its evidence was
decisive. Every citizen presented at the census a detailed account of his prop
8 For instance, whether a man claiming to belong to one of the tribes, followed any trade incompatible with the character of a plebeian; all
retail trades being forbidden at this time to the
commons. See Dionysius, IX. 25.
9 This was called a "judicium turpe," and
this was incurred in various actions, which are
specified by the lawyers: as, for instance, if a
man were cast in an actio furti, or vi bonorum
raptorum, or tutele, or mandati, or pro socio,
&c. See Gaius, Institutes, IV. Â~ 182. And the
disqualification thus incurred was perpetual,
and could not be reversed by the censors. See
Cicero, pro Cluentio, 42.
'u Dionysius, XX. 3. Fragm. Mai.
" A. Gellius, IV. 12.
12 Dionysius, XX. 3. See the well-known story of the censor Fabricius expelling Rufinus from
the senate, because he had ten pounds' weight
of silver plate in his possession.
13 As, for instance, that of an actor. See
Livy, VII. 2.
14 There is a remarkable passage in Livy,
XLV. 15, in which C. Claudius, one of the censors in the year 584, is represented as denying
the right of the censor to deprive any man of
his vote: he could remove him from a more

honorable tribe to a less honorable, but he could
not remove him from all the thirty-five tribes,
and so, in effect, disfranchise him. And yet
the expression "in erarios referri,"' is equivalent to "in Ceritum tabulas referri," and this
is a well-known designation of the " civitas sine
suffragio;"'' for Gellius says expressly, that " in
has tabulas censores referri jubebant, quos note
causa suffragiis privabant." XVI. 13. It would
seem, however, that "tribu movere," and " in
erarios referre," were two distinct sentences,
and that the former did indeed only imply a removal from a higher tribe to a lower (in which
sense it probably is that Dionysius speaks of
the censors as removing a man di ra Tgv 1ripowv evads, XVIII. 22. Fragm. Mai); but that
the latter was, for the time, equivalent to a judicium turpe, and deprived a citizen of all his
political rights; but it could be reversed either
by the censor's colleague, or by the next censors. But the question concerning the nrarians
like every other connected with the censors and
the centuries, is beset with difficulties, from our
ignorance of the changes introduced at different periods, and thus being apt to ascribe to ons
time what is applicable only to another.




ï~~OCAr. XVII.]

POWERS OF THE CENSORS.

135

erty; he stated the namel5 and situation of his landed estate, what proportion of
t was arable, what was meadow, what vineyard, and what olive ground.         He
was even to number his vines and olive-trees, and to the whole thus minutely
described he was to affix his own valuation. He was to observe the same rules
with regard to his slaves, and undoubtedly with regard to his horses and cattle;
for all these came under the same class of res mancipii. But the censor had an
unlimited power of setting on all these things a higher valuation, and, consequently, of subjecting them to a higher rate of taxation. Further, we have instances16 of a censor's calling for a return of other articles of property, such as
clothing, jewels, and carriages, which were not returned in the regular order of
the census; and on these he would set an extravagant valuation, to ten times
their actual worth.  Nor does it appear that in these cases there was any remedy
for the person aggrieved: the censor's decision was final.  On the return of taxable property thus made, the senate, in case of need, levied a certain rate, ordinarily,"7 as it seems, of no more than one per thousand; but raised, as circumstances might require, to two, three, or four per thousand. For it must be understood that this property tax, or tributum, was mostly a war tax, and not a
part of the regular revenues of the state: it might happen, therefore, that no
property tax was levied, and in that case the censor's surcharge, or over-valuation, would have been inoperative; but wars were so frequent, and the necessities of the state so great, in the early periods of the Roman history, that there
was probably no one term of five years in which the tributum was not needed,
and, consequently, no return of any censors which was not carried into effect.
We are told also that the censors,'8 on some occasions, not only put their own
valuation on the property returned at the census, but also fixed the rate to be
levied upon it: being sure in this, as in so many other instances, to have their
acts sanctioned by the senate, if it did not appear that they had been influenced
by any unworthy motives.
In addition to this great power with regard to the taxes, or tributa, the censors had the entire management of the regular revenues of the
Over the vectigalia, or
state, or of its vectigalia.'  They were the commonwealth's stew- property of the emards, and to their hands all its property was intrusted. But these moneifllth.
state demesnes were ample and various, including arable land, vineyards, pastures, forests, mines, harbors, fisheries, and buildings. The letting or farming of
all these belonged wholly to the censors; the harbors including the portoria or
customs, which appear to have been levied as a harbor, wharfage, and perhaps
warehouse duty. They were thus a charge paid by the merchant for his use of
the state's property; and this is the proper notion of vectigal as opposed to
tributum; that the first was received by the state in its capacity of landlord or
proprietor, the latter was paid to it as a political society; the vectigal was given
by the farmer, trader, or consumer, as the price of some commercial or economical benefit; the tributum was the citizen's duty to his country. 'Besides all
these sources of revenue, the state claimed a monopoly of salt;20 and the right of
1 See all these particulars in the "forma cen-  18 Livy, XXXIX. 44.
sualis," given by Ulpian, de Censibus, lib. III.  " Ut vectigalia populi Romani sub nutu atque
quoted in the Digest, Tit. de Censibus, L. 4. arbitrio (censorum essent). Livy, IV. 8.
(Lib. L. Tit. XV.)                        2) The salt works at the mouth of the Tiber
1G Livy, XXXIX. 44. Ornamenta et vestemn were said to have been first established in the
muliebrem et vehicula.... in ceisum referre reign of Ancus Marcius. Livy, I. 33. Accordjussit:...... uti dclecies tanto pluris quam ing to Gronovius' excellent note on the wellquanti essent nstimarentur.              known passage in Livy, II. 9, the government,
1 This was the proportion observed in the in the early times of the commonwealth, kept
tribute imposed on the twelve defaulting colo- the sale of salt in its own hands, and did not
nies in the second Punic war; Livy, XXIX. 15; farm it, as was usual with the other vectigalia.
and Niebuhr concludes that it was the ordinary But it was farmed, and the price at which it was
rate. "Three per thousand" is mentioned as to be sold was fixed by the censors in the year
tle rate fixed by Cato and Valerius Flaccus in 548, when M. Livius, one of the censors, actheir severe censorship in 568. Livy, XXXIX. quired from this very circumstance his nicknameo
44.                                      Salinator. Livy, XXIX. 37.




ï~~136

HISTORY OF ROHR,

[CHAP. CVII

selling this most necessary article was also let by the censors on their own terms;
for they fixed the price at which it was to be sold to the public. Why salt was
thus considered as state property may probably be explained on the principle
that the sea and the sea-shore belonged to no man; and in a country where the
Whole supply of salt comes from the sea, it would not appear unnatural that the
state should take into its own hands the sale of a commodity so universally
needed, and which was derived immediately from that element which no individual could claim as his property. At any rate, salt was at Rome, as afterwards
in France, an article that could be sold only by the governmernt.
With these almost kingly powers, and arrayed in kingly state, for the censor's
robe1 was all scarlet, and not merely bordered with a scarlet band, elected by
the curiae, and holding their office for five years, the censors might well seem too
great for a free commonwealth, and the patricians, in retaining an office  o important in their own exclusive possession, seemed to have more than compensated
for their loss of a part of the military tribuneship, had the constitution of 312
been really acted on. It was a most welcome law, then, to the commons, when
the dictator Mamercus iEmilius, in the year 321, proposed the shortening of the
term of the censor's office to eighteen months.   Nor did the patricians refuse
their consent to the measure; for there were many of their body who felt that a
magistracy held for five years could be accessible only to a few individuals of the
highest distinction; and that the mass of the patricians, no less than of the commons, would be subject to the power of the censors, without being ever able to
exercise it themselves.
The greatness of the censor's office has led me to depart a little from the chronological order of events, and to anticipate, by a few years, the regular mention
of the fEmilian law.  I now go back to the year 312, and the appointment of
consuls in the room of tribunes of the soldiers, immediately after the institution
of this latter office.
Consuls continued to be appointed for the next four years; but a memorable
a. U. c. s15. A. c. event which occurred in the year 316, again led to the election of
537. Scarcity,,and et-of tribunes. The year 315 had been a season of great scarcity:". a
sp. Maeus.     special officer had been named with the title of prefectus annono, or master of the markets, in order to relieve the general distress; but he had
been able to do very little, and the suffering was so extreme that many of the
poorer citizens threw themselves into the Tiber in despair. In this state of
things," Sp. Mmlius, one of the richest of the commons, and a member of one of
the plebeian centuries of knights or equites, a man of large mercantile dealings,
and having thus many connections in the neighboring countries, succeeded in
making large purchases of corn, and issued it to the poorer citizens either at a
very low price, or even gratis. He thus became exceedingly popular, and was
followed by a great multitude24 whenever he appeared in the Forum; so that it
was supposed that he would attempt to win a share of the consulship for the
commons, and was likely himself to become the first plebeian consul. The patricians, resolved to prevent this, procured the appointment of one of the most emiA. U. c316.. a c. nent of their order, T. Quinctius Capitolinus; but the danger
436.           might be only delayed: the scarcity still continued, and Maelius
was gaining fresh popularity every day: the harvest was still distant, and if the
distress became greater, the mingled despair and gratitude of the commons might
overbear all opposition, and the consulship'might be wrested from the patriciahs
in spite of all their efforts. On a sudden"25 it was announced that the old L.
21 Polybius, VI. 58. And a censor's funeral,  23 Livy, IV. 18. Zonaras, VII. 20.
funus censorium, used to be voted even to the  24 Zonaras adds, that he had actually providemperors, as the most honorable and magnifi- ed himself with men to seize the Capitol, and
cent of any. See Tacitus, Ann. IV. 15, and other strong positions in the city; for this must
XII. 2, with Lipsius' note on the first quoted be the meaning of the expression, ropiearo ppopassage.                                vpovs.
2 Livy, IV. 12.                         2 The senate, according to Zonaras, appoint,




ï~~CHAP. XVI.]

DEATH OF SP. IIuLLIUS.

137

Quinctius Cincinnatus had been named dictator by the consul T. Quinctius, in
consequence of a meeting of the senate: the dictator had made C. Servilius Ahala
his master of the horse; the patricians and the plebeian knights"t had occupied
the Capitol and the other strong places of the city during the night, and in the
morning the dictator appeared in the Forum, with the array of his four-andtwenty lictors, all bearing along with their rods those well-known axes which denoted his sovereign power, while he was supported besides by his master of the
horse, at the head of a numerous body of the younger patricians in arms.
The dictator took his seat at his tribunal, and sent C. Ahala to summon Maelius to appear before him.   As master of the horse, all the mem- He is utto death by
bers of the centuries of equites were under his immediate authori- C. Aha 1a.
ty; and on this account, perhaps, he was chosen to deliver the summons.      Maelius saw  that his fate was determined; he endeavored to fly: his enemies
charged him with snatching up a butcher's knife,"7 and endeavoring to repel the
knights who were pursuing him; under somewhat similar circumstances the
treacherous murder of Wat Tyler was excused by his pretended insolent behavior to the king; and Ahala, as eager as Sir William Walworth to do is
work, slew Meelius on the spot, as guilty of disobedience.     The old dictatorH
justified the deed to the multitude: " Mmalius had aimed, not at the consulship,
but at making himself king; the master of the markets had reported to the senate that secret meetings were held at his house, and arms collected. To meet
this danger the senate had appointed a dictator; he had purposed to try Mmlius, and judge him according to his guilt or innocence; but, as he had refused
to obey his summons, and had resisted his own immediate commander, he had
been lawfully slain.""9  Immediately afterwards, treating Meelius as a convicted
traitor, he ordered his house to be levelled with the ground; thus the story of
the concealed arms could never be disproved, for no time was allowed to the
tribunes of the commons to search the house: Mmlius' enemies might report
whatever they pleased. The house stood under the Capitol, not far from the
Mamertine prison,30 and the site of it was, for ages after, called the.Equimmlium, or the Meelian level.
Such is the story which the traditions or memoirs of the Quinctian and Servilian families handed down, and which the annalists adopted on The commons are intheir authority. Whatever ambitious designs Mmelius may have had, dignant at his death.
nothing, even according to the statement of his enemies, was proved against him;
and his aiming at the consulship would have been a sufficient crime in the eyes of
the patricians to tempt them to violent measures. On the other hand, charity
was so little familiar to the Greeks and Romans, that the splendid munificence of
Mmlius is in itself suspicious; a time of great distress would make it easy for a
man of his wealth to engage a band of armed adventurers, sufficient to put him
in possession of the Capitol by a sudden attack; and then his popularity with
the commons, and their hatred of the patricians, would have rendered him ample
service.  However, the commons were indignant at his summary death; and
there is a dim and confused account of disturbances consequent upon it. Ahala
ed L. Quinctius dictator before they left the in the sex. suffragia, or patrician centuries of
senate-house; and they did not separate till knights or cavalry. And so, after the death of
evening, that the result of their measures might Mnlius, Ahala is described as returning to the
not be prematurely known. The occupation of dictator," stipatus caterva patriciorum juvethe Capitol during the night, and the appear- num." Livy, IV. 14.
ance of the dictator in the Forum early in the  n Dionysius, XII. 1. Fragm. Mai.
morning, ready to anticipate whatever might  2 Livy, IV. 15.
have been the designs of Mmelius, remind us of  29 "Jure casum pronuntiavit," an expression
the Doge o f Venice, Gradenigo, and the ener- which seems as technical and official as our
getic measures by which he met and baffled the verdict of "justifiable homicide." Suetonius
conspiracy of the Querini and Thiepoli. See pronounces this same judgment on the murder
Daru, B. VII.                             of Caesar, "Pregravant catera facta dictaque
6 Zonaras says that the Capitol was secured ejus ut... jure casus existimetur." C. 76.
Zia rv i nniv. This may include the plebeian  0 Niebuhr Vol. II. note 928. Bunsen, Becenturies of knights, but it certainly applies schreibung der Stadt Rom. Vol. III. p. 4G8
mainly to the patricians, who were all enrolled Varro, Ling. Lat. V. Â~ 157. Ed. Miiller.




ï~~138

RISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XVII

was obliged to leave Rome;31 and tribunes of the soldiers, instead of consuls,
were chosen for the following year: thus much is intelligible; and the strength
of the patricians in the comitia of the centuries, the immense power of the officer
who presided at them, and perhaps, also, the natural leaning of the richer phbeians to the side of the patricians in a time of distress, when the contest was so
likely to take the form of one between numbers and property, will sufficiently
account for the election of three patricians, and, amongst them, of L. Quinctius,
the son of the old dictator. But still the greatest number of votes was given to
Mamercus.Jmilius, who had been chosen one of the quastores parricidii along
with L. Valerius a few years before, and whose popular dictatorship four years
later we have already noticed.
There was, however, a much more mysterious story2 to be found in some of
story of L. Minuotui, the annalists from whom Livy compiled his history; that L. Minuhavioggone over to the
commons.ndofhs cius, that very master of the markets who is said to have given
popolar acts.  the first information of the dangerous designs of Sp. Mmlius, now,
in the disturbances that followed, went over from the patricians to the commons,
was chosen by the ten tribunes to be their colleague, thus raising the number to
eleven, and in this office put a stop to the dissensions. Further, he is said to
have brought down the price of corn at the end of three market days to one as
for the modius,33 and to have become so popular, that the commons presented
him, as their deliverer out of misery, with an ox with gilded horns to offer as a
sacrifice;34 and a statue was erected in his honor without the Porta Trigemina,
made out of the bronze or brass coins which the commons subscribed for the
purpose, each man contributing an ounce, or the twelfth part of the as, which
was still of the weight of a full pound.
Dion Cassius has preserved a statement, that in these times many patricians
remarks on tis story. did, in fact, go over to the commons; and it is remarkable, that
from this time forward we meet with none but plebeians of the
name of Minucius, although patrician Minucii have hitherto occurred several
times in the Fasti. And it is conceivable enough, that if any man had wished so
to degrade himself, as the patricians would consider it, he might have done it
with no opposition on their part: nay, they would have at once cast him out
from their body as an unworthy member; for the feeling of later times, when
P. Clodius was adopted into a plebeian family to enable him to stand for the
tribuneship, and when the aristocracy opposed it as only furthering the purposes
of his ambition, could not exist amongst the haughty patricians of the fourth

9 Valerius Maximus, V. 3, Â~ 2. And so Cicero, de Republica, I. 3. Offensio commemoratur Ahal. He had just before spoken of
" Camilli exilium," and immediately afterwards
mentions " invidia Nasion." iXow offensio is
in itself an ambiguous term, and may signify
either exilium or invidia; either " the misfortune or calamity of Ahala," or "the odium
which he incurred."  But then this odium may
have induced him to leave Rome, as Nasica
did, without undergoing any formal trial; and
then, when his party was strong enough, he
may have returned, according to the statement
of the pseudo-Cicero pro Domo, c. 82, and this
may have been called a return from banishment
without much exaggeration.
3" Livy, IV. 16.
3 Pliny, Hist. Nat. XVIII. 4. Livy describes
this, as if Minucius had sold at this rate the
corn which Mmlius had collected, and which
had been confiscated after his death. But Pliny's expression, "in trinis nundinis ad assem
redegit," implies a more gradual, and, at the
same time, a more extensive reduction of the
price. If he proposed a law to fix a maximum,
it would, of course, require three nundinm to
elapse before it could be passed; and this may

be Pliny's meaning. Then the sale of Mnlius'
corn at a cheap rate may have taken place in
the mean while; and if much corn had really
been hoarded, it would naturally cause a great
reduction of prices when brought suddenly into
the market in the spring, especially if there
was a promise of an abundant harvest in the
coming summer.
s Livy mentions the ox, Pliny the statue,
XVIII. 4, and XXXIV. 11, and both specify
the place, extra portam Trigeminam, that is, on
the bank of the Tiber, between the northeastern foot of the Aventine and the river. But as
Livy's expression, " bove aurato extra portam
Trigeminam est donatus," is rather strange, his
editors have proposed various corrections,
amongst which, the most plausible was that of
Gronovius, who proposed to read "bove et
prato."  But a bos auratus, that is, auratis
cornibus, was given by the consul to P. Decius,
one of the tribunes of the soldiers, for saving
his army in the first Samnite war, Livy, VII.
87; and Niebuhr's conjecture is simpler and
more probable, that the words "et statua"
have dropped out in Livy's text, between
" bove aurato" and "extra portam Trigemid
nam."




ï~~CHAP. X VII.]

DICTATORSHIP OF M. 2EMILIUS.

139

century. On the other hand, Cicero treats these supposed passings over from
one order to the other as mostly fictitious, and invented by plebeians, merely to
claim for themselves kindred with an old patrician house of the same name. Nor
is it probable that there could have been eleven tribunes at once; but it may "be
that L. Minucius so acted in concert with the tribunes as master of the markets,tt
that he was said to be like an eleventh member of their college. The rest is sufficiently probable, that he proposed and carried, after the regular period of three
market days, a law to fix the maximum at which corn should be sold; and this,
in a season of scarcity, when the evil is always attributed by the vulgar to the
covetousness of corn-dealers, rather than to natural causes, would quite account
for his popularity.
In the following year, however, consuls were.again chosen, and continued to
be so for four years, that is, till 321, when Mamercus.Emilius Dictatorship of Ma
was appointed dictator.   His law for abridging the duration of nerous cli.
the censor's office so offended the existing censors, one of whom was M. Geganius Macerinus, already known as a zealous partisan of his order in his consulship in 308, that they degraded him from his tribe," and rated his property in
the census at eight times as much as its real value. The commons were so indignant that they called aloud for military tribunes instead of consuls; and for
the next two years tribunes were accordingly elected; but still no plebeian was
chosen, nor even any patrician distinguished for his attachment to the popular
cause.
Again, for five years, we find the names of consuls in the Fasti, from 324 to
328 inclusive.  But the power of the commons was silently and The tribunes o f the
healthily advancing; and within this short period we find two re- to by the asento to
markable instances of it.  In 325,3 T. Quinctius, a son of the old c ompe th. sto to
a-sn                 Â~         ubmit to ito outhoriL. Cincinnatus, and C. Julius Mento, were consuls. The.Equians tY"
and Volscians had united their forces, and assembled a great army at their usual
position on Algidus. A pestilence, nearly cotemporary with that which visited
Athens so fearfully in the early years of the Peloponnesian war, had prevailed
in Rome at intervals during the last four years, and had carried off great numbers of the people.  This gave a sense of weakness; and, to increase it, the consuls, attacking the enemy on Algidus, were defeated. Then the senate resolved
to appoint a dictator; but the consuls, jealous at this implied censure on themselves, refused to obey the senate's decree.   Some party or family feuds, of
which we know nothing, were most probably at work in this dispute; and it was
proposed and carried, that the senate should call upon the tribunes for their aid.
Niebuhr thinks that the tribunes were called upon to propose the senate's decree
to the commons, that their acceptance of it might give it the force of a law.
Livy's story is, that the tribunes threatened to throw the consuls into prison, if
they persisted in disobeying the senate. However this be, there was, at any
rate, an important acknowledgment of the power of the commons, when the patrician senate appealed to them to enforce its authority over the highest patrician
magistrates.
Again, in 328, when a war with Veii was resolved on, the tribunes threatened'
to stop the enlistments of soldiers, unless the question of going to The quostion of
war were first submitted to the people in their centuries. The with oeii is submitted
senate had considered its own decree sufficient; but it had taught to the centuries.
the tribunes, by its own conduct, not to regard it so; and accordingly the war
a Three of the tribunes, we are told by Livy, the college, must have gone along with him in
had taken no part in proposing the vote of the his measures as master of the markets, and his
commons, which rewarded Minucius with his acting in concert with them, perhaps, in some
ox and his statue, but, on the contrary, con- instances, against the wishes of the patricians,
tinued to revile him, as he had been the first may have given rise to the story.
person to give information to the senate of the  s Livy, IV. 24.
supposed treasonable designs of Mielius. But  s Livy, IV. 26.
the other seven, constituting the majority of  " Livy, IV. 80.




ï~~140

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Cr. XVII,

was proposed in the comitia, and sanctioned by the votes of all the centuries.
These were great constitutional points; another matter, deeply affecting indiA. U. c. 35. A. c viduals, had been provided for by a law passed three years before,
427. Law fora fixedoa which fixed a definite money computation for the fines of"9 sheep
money commutation for
the nes of sheep and and oxen commonly imposed by the consuls for contempt of their
oxen.         jurisdiction.  That the payment of these fines in kind would be
often highly vexatious, is obvious: and if the consul were allowed to fix his own
rate of commutation, it might bear hardly on the delinquent, especially if, as is
probable, the brass money was now beginning to rise in value, so that the old
money price of an ox or a sheep would be now more than it was worth. Cicero's statement40 is, that the censors, L. Papirius and P. Pinarius, had imposed
their fines in kind, and had thus seized so many cattle; that the consuls, to relieve the commons, fixed an easy rate of money commutation, at which the cattle might be redeemed.
From the year 329 to 341 we have tribunes constantly, with the exception of
A. U. C. 331. A. C. only two years, instead of consuls. In 331, after a long interval,41
4a1. New demand for we again hear of a call for an agrarian law; recent victories over
anagrarian aw.  the Volscians and Veientians had added, probably, to the amount
of the demesne land; and the patricians who occupied it, either paid no acknowledgment for it at all, or if they did, it went not into the national treasury, but
into that of their own order; the commons reaped no benefit from it. At the
same time the commons had to serve at their own expense in war; and thus, as
the poorer classes could ill support this burden, and could provide themselves
only with inferior arms, the numbers and the efficiency of the regular infantry
were much below what they might have been. Accordingly, the tribunes demanded that there should be a division of a portion of the demesne land amongst
the commons; and that the occupiers of the remainder should pay their vectigal
regularly, and that it should be devoted to the purpose of paying the soldiers.
Here was a question in which the mass of the commons were interested; and it
was likely that, during the continuance of this contest, the leaders of the commons would gain some of those points which they so longed for, but which were
of far less importance, in the estimate of their followers, an admission to the
higher magistracies.
A favorable opportunity presented itself three years afterwards, in 334: when
A. U. C. 334. A. C. the patricians4 themselves proposed an increase in the number of
418. The office of the the qumstores classici, those officers chosen by the centuries, and
quastores  classic], is.
cown open osth quite distinct from the qumstores parricidii, whose business it was
to receive all money paid to the public treasury, and to make all
payments from it. This was an office of great trust and dignity, and was usually regarded as entitled to a place in the senate; the censors, in drawing out
their list of that body, generally included in it the questors of the last five
years. Now, as wars were beginning to be carried on on a greater scale, and
were attended with more success than formerly, it was desirable to have two new
qumstors to accompany the armies to the field, and to take charge of the plunder that might be gained, or of the lands that might be conquered. But the
tribunes naturally demanded, that if the college of questors were thus increased
to four, two of them should be chosen from the commons. This the senate
would not listen to, but proposed that the whole number should be taken indiscriminately from either order. When the tribunes refused to accept this compromise, having learned, from experience, that such a pretended free choice
would always end in the exclusive election of patricians, the senate dropped the
measure altogether. But the tribunes then brought it forward themselves, and,
after long disputes, the compromise first proposed by the senate was accepted,

2 Livy, IV. 80.
0 De Republica, II. 35.

41 Livy, IV. 86.
42 Livy, IV. 43.




ï~~CUAr. XVII.]

THE MURDER OF M. POSTUMIUS.

141

and the qurestorship, with its four places, was declared by law to be open alike
to the patricians and to the commons.
Here, again, the advantage gained by the commons as an order was great;
but the individuals who had sown the seed did not reap the fruit; Dispute about theoagra.
anlaw.   Murder of
for again, owing to the great influence of the magistrate who pre- io i. mu urby
sided at the comitia, none but patrician qurestors were chosen. soldiers.
Still the commons waxed stronger: three years afterwards, in 337, an agrarian
law43 was passed, by which fifteen hundred of the commons received allotments
of two jugera a man out of the land lately conquered from the A. v. c. 3. A. c.
people of Lavici. But a larger division of the demesne land was 41.
demanded, and in a quarter where it could be enjoyed more securely; for the
colonists sent to a frontier district would have continually to defend their new
property with their swords, and men naturally longed for a division of the old
demesne nearer home, which every new advance of the Roman boundary placed
at a greater distance from danger. This, however, the patrician occupiers of
this land were too powerful to permit; and the contest really A. U. c. 340. A. c.
turned upon the disposal of the new conquests. Thus, in 340, 412.
Bola was conquered, a town of the.Equians, not far from Lavici; and the commons required that a portion of this newly-won territory might, at least, be
allotted to them. Even this was resisted, and by none more vehemently than
by M. Postumius Regillensis,44 one of the military tribunes of the year 341. He
commanded one of the armies which were in the field against the AEquians, and,
abusing his military power for political purposes, he threatened to visit upon his
soldiers any display of feeling which they might have shown in favor of the proposed agrarian law.  This excited universal indignation, which he heightened by
refusing to his army any share of the spoil which they had won in recovering
Bole from the.Equians.   Open discontent then broke out, and Postumius, repressing it with extreme severity and the most merciless executions, provoked his
soldiers to a mutiny, in which he was stoned to death.
A crime so rare in the Roman annals produced its natural and just consequence, a reaction against the cause which appeared to be con- Proceedings in consenected with it.  Consuls were chosen instead of tribunes of the quence of this murder
soldiers; and the commons, to whom the senate had given the choice of the
judge45 in this cause, commissioned the consuls to inquire into the murder of
Postumius, and to punish the guilty. This choice was sanctioned by. the curiae,
and the judges thus appointed fulfilled their task with moderation, so that the
influence which the patricians had gained by the whole transaction was marked
by the undisturbed election of consuls for three years following. But by that
time the feeling had changed: the continued opposition of the patricians to any
agrarian law seemed a more present evil than the murder of Postumius; and,
while that crime had been duly punished, the injustice of the patricians was triumphant. It is dangerous to overlook a change in public opinion, and still more to
try to force in its old direction the tide which is beginning to turn. The patricians
carried the election of consuls for a fourth year in spite of a strong feeling of discontent; but the commons were so roused, that in spite of all ob- A. U. c. 346. A. c.
structions caused by the presiding officer, they elected, at the 406.
open comitia of questors,46 no fewer than three plebeians.
Then the agrarian law was demanded more vehemently than ever, and three
4 Livy, IV. 47.                      ted by plebeians against the patrician order;
" Livy, IV. 49, 50.                  it was then an act of moderation in the senate
40 " A plebe consensu populi, consulibus ne- to allow the offending party to name the judge
gotium mandatur." Livy, IV. 51. A remark- and the patricians, to whom the injury had
able passage, which Niebuhr, as may be sup- been done, would, at any rate, require that the
posed, has not forgotten to appeal to, as a proof nomination should be submitted to them for
of the identity of the populus in old times with their approval.
the patricians. It would seem as if the murder  * Livy, IV. 54.
of P'ostumius was regarded as a crime commit



ï~~142

HIISTORY OF ROME

[CIHAP. XVIL

Contest about the agra. tribunes, all of the Icilian family, were conspicuous as the leaders
rian aw continued,  of the commons. The year passed away in these contests, but the
commons insisted on having tribunes instead of consuls for the year following;
and this was consented to,4 but at the same time rendered nugatory by the condition annexed to it, that none of the tribunes of the commons of that year
should be either re-elected to the same office, or be chosen tribunes of the soldiers.  Thus those candidates being excluded whose claims were greatest, the
patricians once more succeeded in defeating the plebeian candidates of less name,
and in obtaining every place in the tribuneship for their own body.
Two years afterwards came the issue of the contest. A truce, which had
A. U. C. 4. A. C. been concluded for twenty years4t with the Veientians, was now
A. U. C. aa9. A. C.
403. P y granted to on the point of expiring; and as war, rather than peace, was supthe soldiers:  number
of tribunes of the sol- posed to be the natural state of things between two nations, undiers increased to six.
less some express treaty was interposed, so, at the end of the
truce, hostilities would be resumed of course, unless eithei party wished to renew it, and was willing to purchase its continuance on the enemy's terms.' Rome
now felt itself much stronger than Veii, for that town had been lately torn with
internal discords, so much more violent and injurious than those of Rome, in
proportion as there was less of equal law and of acknowledged rights.    The Romans, therefore, put a higher price on the renewal of the truce than the Veientians would consent to pay; and both nations prepared for war.       This was the
moment for the commons to press their claims, and they refused to vote for the
law unless something was done to satisfy them.     The patricians, looking forward
to all the glory and dominion promised them by the expected conquest of Veii,
or yielding to the power of justice, at last gave way. The vectigal,49 or tithe,
due from the occupiers of the public land, was to provide pay for the soldiers;
if this were not sufficient, it was to be made good by a tax or tribute levied upon
the whole people, according to the census of every citizen; and six tribunes of
the soldiers were henceforth to be elected annually; one of whom, as Niebuhr
thinks, was always to be a patrician, and to perform the important judicial duties afterwards discharged by the praetor urbanus; the other five were to be
elected indiscriminately from either order. At any rate, six tribunes were elected
from this time forwards, and this increased number gave the commons a greater
likelihood of seeing some of the places filled by men of their own body. And
so it happened, in fact; but for this the commons had yet to wait five years
more.
Accordingly payÂ~ was issued to the soldiers, six tribunes of the soldiers were
A. U. C. 350. A. c. elected, and in the year 350, about the end of the Peloponnesian
402.           war, the Romans began their vast career of dominion by laying
siege to the great Etruscan city of Veii.
SLivy, IV. 55.                         14, that it was usual, when a truce was nearly
4 Livy, IV. 58. Livy says, that in the year expired, to negotiate as to the terms on which
848 the truce had already expired; and, as it it might be renewed; and this, I doubt not, is
had been concluded, according to his own ac- the true explanation of the negotiations that
count, in the year 330, Niebuhr supposes that went on during the years 348 and 349.
it must have been intended to last only twenty  49 This is not stated by Livy; but as it had
cyclic years, of ten months each. But we find been the great object insisted on by the tribthat hostilities did not begin till 350, and no unes, it is natural to suppose that it must either
one will believe that the Romans allowed two have been granted, or at any rate promised. It
years, in which they were, according to ancient was probably, however, paid very irregularly,
notioins, at war with Veii, to pass away without and hence the pay of the soldiers would, in
attacking their enemy, because the Veientians point of fact, be provided chiefly out of the tax
were involved in civil dissensions, and the Ro- or tributum.
mans were too generous to take advantage of  b0 Livy, IV. 59, 60, 61.
their weakness. We see from Thucydides, V.




ï~~143.

CHAPTER XVIII.
WARS OF THE ROMANS FROM         300 TO 864-THE JEQUIANS AND VOLSCIANSTHE ETRUSCANS-SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF VEII.
Ta fAEVa rsva6pEvoS, is RI roX6eo-vrs-i 7 rap rKnVdsavro rd 7roXEfLa xai jorstp6rEpoL EyvoVro, p r67
tv5avwov rTao jf ra rototiOSVot.-THUOYDIDES, I. 18.
THE internal history of Rome in the first century of the commonwealth is obscure and often uncertain; nor can we venture to place full con- Tho foreign history of
fidence in the details of events, or of individual characters. The eom... tho the omen
family traditions and funeral orations out of which the oldest an- tie.
nalists compiled their narratives were often, as we find, at variance with each
other, and dealt largely in exaggeration and misrepresentation. Yet still, up to
a certain point, they were a check upon one another; there were necessarily limits
to falsehood, when fellow-citizens, whether individuals or parties, were the subject on which it was exercised. But with regard to foreign enemies, even this
check was wanting. Every family might claim victories over the iEquians or
the Veientians: there was no sufficient knowledge of chronology to make it evident that the story of one victory and one triumph was fatal to the truth of
others; the accommodating annalists found room for aA. The account, then, of
the early wars of the Romans cannot be trusted implicitly in its merest outline;
we have the highest authority' for saying that victories, and even triumphs, were
sometimes purely imaginary; a year which is filled with pretended successes of
the Romans may have witnessed nothing but their defeats. We are reduced,
therefore, not only to an outline, but to one made up from such scattered and
almost accidental notices, that scarcely any one but Niebuhr would have attempted, far less have been able, to restore it. Here, as well as in the domestic
history, the work is almost done to my hands: it were endless to make particular acknowledgments, when scarcely a page of this volume could have been written, had I nofr enjoyed the benefit of Niebuhr's guidance.
Our last notice of the foreign affairs of Rome stopped at that disastrous period,
the end of the third century, when the.AEquians and Volscians, do. o     o
having overrun Latium, having occupied many of the Latin towns, powe  etween 300 a n
and established themselves on the Alban hills, were in the habit 4.
of carrying their plundering inroads up to the very walls of Rome. And whilst
the Opican nations were thus formidable on the side of Latium, the Sabines made
frequent descents into the Roman territory between the Tiber and the Anio, and
sometimes spread their ravages on that side also as far as the immediate neighborhood of the city. Such nearly was the state of things about the year 300,
which may be considered as the lowest point of the Roman fortunes. The next
sixty years witnessed a wonderful change; at the end of that period the Roman
power had spread itself out on every side, and the Opican nations, the Sabines,
and the Etruscans, had all given way before it.
Of these three enemies, the Sabines were the soonest and most effectually repelled. After the year 306, when M. Horatius Barbatus, the deSuccessflf  war  and
liverer of the Roman commons from the decemvirs' tyranny, is pec with the S a.
said to have gained a great victory over them,2 we read of them bies.
1 That, namely, of Cicero, in the often quoted  2 Livy, IIT. 62, 63. Fasti Capitolini. "lM.
passage of his Brutus, c. 16. "Multa scripta Horatius, IV. F. Barbatus, de Sabineis (trisunt in eis (scil. in mortuorum laudationibus) umphavit) Ann. CCCIV. VII. K. Septembr."
ku facta non sunt, falsi triumphi," &c.




ï~~144

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XVIII

no more during a period of more than a hundred and fifty years. A treaty of
some sort or other must have followed this victory; perhaps it was only a truce
for a certain number of years, which may have been continually renewed by mutual consent; the Romans having enough to do in Latium and in Etruria; and
the Sabine youth finding a field for their enterprise, by joining their kinsmen the
Samnites, who soon after this time began their conquests in Campania. Thus
the Roman territory along the left bank of the Tiber was left in peace, and the
frontier of the commonwealth on this side remained long unaltered, being bounded
by the territory of the Sabine city of Eretum, which was situated about nineteen
miles from Rome.
A far more obstinate and varied contest was maintained against the fEquians
and Volscians. It is pretended that L. Valerius, the worthy coltns nh VOiSCias. i- league of M. Horatius, gained a great victory over them in the
tatorship  and  victory;
of A.PostumiusTubr- year 306;3 but in 3094 we find them again overrunning the Roman
tus.      territory, and advancing unopposed, for the last time, as far as
the walls of Rome by the Esquiline gate. In that same year T. Quinctius the
consul is said to have gained a great victory over them, and there is this evidence of its reality, that the Romans established a garrison on the enemies' frontier at Verrugo;5 a place undoubtedly on the Alban hills, but whether on Algidus above Tusculum, or on the side of Velitree looking towards Antium and the
Volscian lowlands, seems impossible to be ascertained. From this time we hear
of no general efforts of the.zEquians and Volscians for fifteen years; but in 324
A. U. c. 324. A. c. the united armies of the two nations again appeared on Algidus,6
428.          and the Romans, in alarm, named A. Postumius Tubertus dictator
to oppose them. That the danger was great, is shown by the dreadful story related of A. Tubertus,7 that he executed his own son for having engaged with the
enemy without orders, although successfully. This rigorous observance of discipline always occurs in Roman history, when the Roman arms were engaged in
any contest more than ordinarily hazardous; and thus in the great Latin war
about ninety years after this period, the act of A. Postumius Tubertus was again
repeated in the more famous instance of T. Manlius. On the present occasion
the Latins and Hernicans aided the Romans with their whole force, and the Opican nations were completely defeated. A truce of eight years was concluded
with the zEquians;8 the power of the Volscians, already shaken by their defeat,
was further weakened by civil dissensions; the advocates for peace and war proceeding to the most violent extremities against each other.
Eight years afterwards,' the Opican nations, first the Volscians, and soon after

3 Livy, III. 61.
4 Livy, III. 66.
a Livy, IV. 1.
6 Livy, IV. 26.
SLivy, IV. 29, mentions the story, but wishes
not to believe it. It is related, however, by Diodorus, XII. 64; by Valerius Maximus, II. 7, Â~
6; and by Aulus Gellius, XVII. 21. Gellius
also speaks of "Posthumia" or "Posthumiana
imperia et Manliana," I. 18, Â~ 7; although it is
one of Livy's reasons for not believing the story,
that the common proverbial expression to denote power arbitrarily and cruelly exercised was
"imperia Manliana non Postumiana."
SLivy, IV. 80.
SAccording to Livy, the.Equians had obtained a truce for eight years, in the beginning
of the year 325. IV. 30. Five years afterwards,
in 330, they are described as suing again for an
extension of this term, and obtaining an additional truce for three years. IV. 35. The renewal of hostilities is placed in the year 334,
Livy, IV. 43; but it may be concluded that it
8hould in fact be placed a year earlier, and that

the year 33, which with the.Roman annalists
is wholly devoid of military transactions, was
indeed devoid of Roman victories, but not of
defeats, or at least of disasters. For Livy begins the account of the next year with the
words, "Non diutius fortuna Equis indulsit,
qui ambiguam victoriam Volscorum pro sul amplexi fuerant." Now this " dubia victoria" had
been won in 332, and the expression, "non diutius indulsit," would imply that for a certain
time fortune had favored the.Equians; in other
words, that they, encouraged by the Volscians'
success in 3382, took up arms themselves in the
following year, and were during that year masters of the field. Thus it would seem that a
truce of eight years, not cyclic, but common
years, had been observed froni 325 to 333; and
the probability is, that the term originally
agreed upon was five years, to which three
were afterwards added; Livy's mistake consisting in this, that he supposes the whole eight
years' truce to have been granted in 325, and
that the three years added in 330 were an ad
dition to this number.




ï~~C(AP. XVIII.]

WARS WITH THE OPICAN NATIONS.

145

the.Equians, again renewed the contest. The seat of war was war on the Aqaian
again on the frontier of the.IEquians: and there, in the year 332, ronter. Lavici and
q                          Bola taken by the Rothe Romans received a check which we may not improbably con- mans.
jecture to have been a serious defeat.  But four years afterwards, in 336, the
people of LavicPi are mentioned as joining the Equians, and are spoken of as
new enemies. Lavici, now La Colonna, placed on an isolated hill which rises as
a sort of outwork at the northern extremity of the Alban cluster, had been one
of the thirty Latin cities which signed the treaty of alliance with Rome in 261.
Since that time the conquest of the Opican nations had separated it from its old
confederacy, and it had possibly received an.Equian colony; but it had hitherto
taken no active part against Rome.  Now, however, it openly joined the tEquians; and its soldiers, after having ravaged the neighboring territory of Tusculum,
encamped, together with their allies, in their old station on Algidus. They gained
one victory, but it was speedily retrieved by the dictator Q. Servilius Priscus;
Lavici was taken by the Romans," its inhabitants massacred, expelled, or sold for
slaves, and a large portion of its land was allotted to colonists of the Roman
commons. This was a decided conquest, and gave the Romans possession of an
advantageous post on their enemy's frontier. The victory seems also to have
shaken the Equian confederacy; for Bola, another town formerly belonging to
the Latins, but wrested from them by the Opican conquerors, was allowed by the
other iEquian states to fall unassisted, and another important post was thus occupied by the Romans. This happened in the year 341.12
The tide had now turned, and as ill success loosened the bond which held the
Opican nations and cities together, so victory strengthened the al- Cntined  ees
liance of the Romans, Latins, and Hernicans. In 342, this last the   dans, a.sti
people recovered Ferentinum,3 one of their towns which the andHeri rns.
Volscians had formerly conquered; and as we hear, in two following years, of
the ravage of the Latin and Hernican territory by the enemy, we cannot doubt
that all the three confederate nations took an active part in the war. The Opicans, however, struggled vigorously; the frontier posts of Verrugo,4 and of the
castle of Carventum,'5 were taken and retaken; but the zEquians suffered so
much from having the seat of war so continually on their frontier, that in the
rally of the Opican league, which took place in the year 347, the lowland Volscians appear at the head of the confederacy, and the gathering-place of the
army was at Antium. For two years nothing decisive happened; but in 349,1
the Romans opened the campaign with their force divided into three small armies; and while one threatened Antium, and a second advanced upon Ecetree,
laying waste the country on every side to divert the enemy's attention, the third
pushed direct for Anxur, or Tarracina, a most important place, standing at the
very end of the plain of the Pontine Marshes, at the point where the Apennines
of the Volscian highlands come down close upon the sea. Tarracina,r a Tyrrhenian city, had been subject to Rome in the last period of its They take Tarracina,
monarchy; immediately afterwards. it had been conquered by the or Anxar,
Volscians, and from them received its name of Anxur; it is the natural gate of
the country'round Rome on the one hand, and of Campania on the other, and
its capture would restore the Roman boundary to the extent which it had foras Livy, IV. 45.                      been able to find any notice of the place in West1 Livy, IV. 47.                       phal's work on the neighborhood of Rome.
12 Livy, IV. 49.                       16 Livy, IV. 59.
13 Livy, IV. 51.                       17 It was probably a town belonging to the
14 Livy, IV. 55, 56, 58.              same race as Circeii and Ardea: that race which
6 Livy, IV. 58, 55. The position of Carven- may be called either Tyrrhenian, Pelasgian, or
turn and of its castle or citadel is wholly un- Sikelian, and which, in language and religion,
known. Sir W. Gell puts it doubtfully at Rocca bore so close an affinity to the Greeks. TarraMassimi, a high point on the Volscian high- cina is mentioned as a dependent ally of Rome
lands near Cora. Bunsen suggested to me the in the first treaty between Rome and Carthage,
high ground of Monte Ariano, Mons Artemi- concluded in the first year of the commonsius, the southeastern summit of the Alban wealth. See Polybius,, III. 22.
hills, which rises above Velletri. I have not
10




ï~~146

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XVIII

merly reached under the Tarquinii. Its distance from the front of the war
probably put its inhabitants off their guard, and it yielded to the sudden attack
of the Romans with little resistance."  Twenty-five hundred of the inhabitants,
who survived the storming of the town, were saved alive to be sold for slaves;
and the two divisions which had covered the siege now came up to join their
comrades, and the plunder of the town was given to the whole army without
distinction. Two years afterwards the Romans invaded the Volscian highlands,
and Artena,9 on the edge of the mountains, looking across to the
and Artena.    Alban hills at the back of Algidus, was taken, and razed to the
ground. From henceforward the attention of Rome, for some years, was so
much engaged by her wars on the Etruscan frontier, that she would have been
well contented to have maintained and secured her conquests from the iquians
and Volscians, without endeavoring to extend them. And now was proved the
advantage of the occupation of posts on the enemies' territory, and still more of
the Roman system of colonies. When Anxur was taken, the neighboring Volscian cities seem to have concluded a truce with Rome to save their lands from
ravage; at least, there was a free intercourse between them and the garrison,
and the Roman soldiers were scattered0 over the neighborhood to traffic with
Anxur is lost again by the inhabitants instead of plundering them. Advantage was taken
a surprise,.   of this, and Anxur was surprised by a sudden attack and recovered. But, as the Volscians are not charged with perfidy, we must either suppose that the assailants came from some of the more distant cities, which had
not been included in the truce, or that the truce itself was concluded only for
periods of a few days,"' and continued by successive renewals; and that, at the
end of one of these periods, the Volscians had refused to renew it, whilst the
Romans had fully depended on its continuance. This was in 353, and two years
afterwards Anxur was again recovered by a fresh surprise, the
Byg.ain.recovered. Volscians2t neglecting to guard their walls whilst keeping a festival.  It was recovered just in time; for as the war of the Romans with Veii and
the neighboring cities still continued, the Opican nations seem to have renewed
their league, and made another combined effort to retrieve their losses.  In 358,23
the Volscians were employed in besieging Anxur, while the Â~Equians were surrounding Lavici: had not the Romans possessed these two posts, the enemy
might have again spread ravage over their whole territory, at a moment when a
force could ill have been spared to check them. As it was, Anxur and Lavici
were left to their own resources, and to the aid of the Latins and Hernicans,
who, at this critical period, seem to have sustained the whole weight of the
struggle with the Opican nations, for all the Roman armies were engaged elsewhere. Whether Lavici was taken or not, we know not; but in the next year
Veii fell, and then the Equians and Volscians solicited and obtained a truce.24
The Roans establish The Romans availed themselves of' it to establish a new colony
a colony at vitelison in the country conquered from the Equians, at Vitellia,' not far
the Equian frontier,  from Prreneste, on the opposite side of the great gap or break by
which the chain of the Apennines is there interrupted. They had found the
benefit of their colony at Lavici; and this more distant settlement was made
1s Livy, IV. 59.                       with Athens, when Lacedemon concluded the
i9 Livy, IV. 61. The present Monte Fortino, peace of Nicias. See Thucydides, V. 26, 32.
according to Sir W. Gell; and according to  2 Livy, V. 13.
Westphal also, if Artena, Ortona, and Virtona  23 Livy, V. 16.
be, as is probable, only one and the same place. 24 Livy, V. 23.
I learn, from a review of this history in the  25 Livy, V. 24, 29. Sir W. Gell places Vitellia
Dublin Review, No. XIII., that Nibby fixes the at Valmonte, in the situation described in the
exact site of Artena at a place not more than a text. Westphal puts it, but doubtfully, immemile on the southeast of Monte Fortino, where diately under the northeast extremity of the
the remains of a polygonal wall on a high level Alban hills, on that shoulder of ground, raised
Spot are still visible,                  above the ordinary level of the Campagna, which
su Livy, V. 8.                         connects the roots of the Alban hills with the
2 Like the ten days' truce, which was all that Apennines.
the Boeotians could be persuaded to agree to




ï~~CHAP. XVIII.]

WARS WITH THE VOLSCIANS, ETC.

147

proportionably stronger; three thousand colonists were sent to occupy it instead
of fifteen hundred.  But the.Equians were more roused than daunted by this
occupation of Vitellia, as they had already been taught the importance of such
colonies. We hear nothing of the Volscians, so that they probably remained at
peace; but the   Equians, though alone, dislodged the Romans The zEquians destroy
from their old post of Verrugo,6 and in the following year sur- it.
prised the new colony of Vitellia. Four years after the fall of Veii, the whole force
of Rome, under both consuls, was once more employed against the.Equians on
the old battle-ground of Algidus;t which clearly shows that the.Equian frontier had again advanced, and that Vitellia and its territory were lost to Rome.
An easy victory is, indeed, claimed for the Roman armies in this
The war undecided up
campaign, but the contest was not over, and its issue was still uan- tothetie oft he Gauldecided, when in the next year the storm of the Gaulish invasion ishinvasion.
broke upon Latium, and crushed both of the contending parties; the Romans,
however, for a short time only, the./Equians forever.
Thus in her long contest with the Opican nations, Rome had advanced, indeed,
from her depressed state at the beginning of the century, yet had Results of thic ~ng
by no means reduced her enemies to submission.      The occupa- contest.
tion ofAnxur on the side of the Volscians, and of Lavici and Bola on the JEquian frontier, was an important advantage; but the attempt to effect a settlement
within the line of the.Equian highlands had been utterly defeated, and the.Equians, instead of defending their own country, were still able to fix the war
on what may be called their advanced post of observation, the Alban hills; and
from their advantage ground of Algidus, could still overhang Tusculum, and
threaten devastation to the whole territory of Rome.    It was in the opposite
quarter, on the right bank of the Tiber, that the Romans made the first important addition to their dominion, and, for the first time, since the days of their
kings, increased their power by an accession of new citizens from the population
of the countries which they conquered.
We have seen that in the year 280,28 the Veientians had concluded a peace
with the Romans for forty years.   But in the year 317 the two wars with veii and
nations were again involved in war; whether we are to suppose, Fiden..
with Niebuhr, that the truce was to last only for forty cyclical years of ten months
each, and, therefore, that it had expired three years before, or whether it was
brought to a premature termination, like the thirty years' peace between Athens
and Sparta, which was cut short in the midst by the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war. The latter seems more probable, because the quarrel is especially said to have originated in the revolt of Fidenm; whereas, had the truce
been at an end, no particular cause of war would have been needed; hostilities
would have been resumed as a matter of course.
The left bank of the Tiber, immediately above its confluence with the Anio, is
skirted by a line of low hills at the distance of about half a mile. On Situation of Fiden. It
one of these, which, like all the hills of the Campagna, break off into 'twiceten, no  ncliffs on their sides, stood the town of Fidenm,9 between five and man.
six miles distant from Rome; the citadel, as some think, was on a higher point
21 Livy, V. 28.                       modern Villa Spada, just. five miles from Rome;
Livy, V. 31. According to Diodorus, Ve- a spot which is now shown to strangers as the
litrn and Satricum revolted from Rome at this site of the villa of Phaoa, Nero's freedman, and
period, and Circeii must have been lost pre- the place where Nero killed himself. Accordviously and recently recovered again, as a col- ing to Sir W. Gell, Fidene was about half a mile
oniy was planted there in the year 362. It is further on the road, and its citadel stood on the
clear, from this statement, that the Opican na- isolated hill of Castel Giubileo, which rises imtions were rather roused than daunted by the mediately above the Tiber. Westphal says that
fall of Veii, and were carrying on the war with some inscriptions have been found which idenRome with unabated vigor, down to the very tify the spot. If so, and if I recognize his detime of the Gaulish invasion. See Diodorus, scription, the excavations in the rock behind the
XIV. 102, 106.                          Villa Spada, resembling those at Snenton, near
20 See chapter XII.                    Nottingham, would be, probably, the tombs of
SWestphal places FidenH at the site of the the citizens of Fidene.




ï~~148

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XVII.

of the ridge, separated from it by a valley, and rising immediately above the river.
Fidenre is described as an old Roman colony, established as early as the time of
Romulus;30 other accounts call it an Alban or Latin colony,"1 while it is represented as having been originally a city of the Etruscans.32 It is said also to have
twice revolted from Rome since the expulsion of the kings, and to have been twice
reduced, the last time in the year 256,11 and to have forfeited the half of its territory to the Roman garrison or colonists who occupied its citadel. All that can
be gathered from these stories is, that the subject population in Fidene consisted
chiefly of Etruscans; and that the ruling part of the inhabitants, the citizens of the
colony, were Romans. In the year 317,34 from some causes, of which we know
nothing, the old Etruscan population rose against the Roman colonists, expelled
them, and then put themselves under the protection of Veii. It is added that
four Romans, sent to remonstrate with them upon their revolt, were murdered by
them at the command of the Yeientian king, who was become their new sovereign;
and statues of the men thus slain were afterwards set up in the rostra; an honor
that was paid two centuries later to the ambassadors murdered by the Illyrian
queen Teuta. This revolt of Fidene, and the protection afforded to the revolters
by the Veientians, led to a renewal of war between Rome and Veii; and the seat
of the war was removed not only from the right to the left bank of the Tiber,
but even, on more than one occasion, to the left bank of the Anio, that is to say,
within three miles of Rome. In 320, however, Q. Servilius Priscus,35 who was
appointed dictator, is said to have taken Fidenm, and new colonists were again
sent to occupy the place; but in 329 we read of another revolt, accompanied by
a massacre8 of the colonists, and Mamercus.Amilius was named dictator to meet
this new danger. He gained a great victory over the Veientians and Fidenatians,
and again took Fiden; but this time the work was done effectually:7 the Etruscan population were either massacred or sold for slaves, and the town and its territory remained from henceforth in the undisturbed possession of the Romans. At
the same time a peace was concluded with the Veientians for twenty years.38
This was in 330; but in the year 348, Livy says that the term of the truce had
war with e  already expired;" so that Niebuhr conjectures that in this instance
war wi ve. also we must reckon by cyclical years of ten months, and that the
truce was only concluded for sixteen common years and eight months. On the
other hand, if this were so, the truce must have expired early in 347, for there
seems no foundation for Niebuhr's conjecture, that it had not begun before 331:
it was surely likely that it would have been solicited immediately after the taking
of Fidenu, and concluded early, rather than late, in 330, much less can we suppose it to have been delayed till the year following. Besides, we read of no actual hostilities before the year 350, that is, till the end of twenty common years;
and the story that the Romans forbore to press their demands on Veii during

3 Compare Livy, I. 14 and 27.
3 Dionysius, II. 53, says that Fidenn, Nomentum, and Crustumeria were all of them Alban colonies, founded at the same time by three
brothers. Virgil names Fidenm along with Nomentum and Gabii, and also speaks of it as an
Alban colony. En. VI. 73.
Livy, I. 15. Strabo, V. 2, 9 9, p. 226. Plutarch makes Fidene, Crustumeria and Antemnme to have been Sabine towns, Romulus, 17.
Miller well remarks that in Fidenm and Crustumeria, as in Rome, we find traces of these
same three elements of the population, Latins,
Sabines, and Etruscans.   But at Fidens, the
close connection of the place with Veil (to which
place it seems to have been subject or dependent, as was also Capena), seems to show, that
previously to its final conquest by the Romans,
the Etruscan element was predominant. See
Kfiller's Etrusker, Vol. I, p. 1183, 861.
'3 Dionysius, V. 60.

S Livy, IV. 17. He speaks as if the Roman
colonists had revolted; but Niebuhr seems
right in supposing, that when we read of the
revolt ofa colony in these early times, we should
understand it not properly speaking of the colonists, but of the subject population who arose
and drove them out, and then asserted their
own independence, or connected themselves
with some people of their own race.
SLivy, IV. 21.   The cnmmon editions of
Livy, including Bekker's, call him A. Servilius,
following in this most of our present MSS. But
Glareanus says that most of the MSS. had
" Quintus, and that " Aulus" was the reading
of Aldus' MS., which he followed in his edition.
Sigonius, Glareanus, Pighius, and Drakenborch,
all prefer the reading " Quintus."
s Livy, IV. 81.
37 Livy, IV. 84.
" Livy, IV. 85.
" Livy, IV. 58. Tempus induciarum exmerat.




ï~~CaAr. XVIII.]

SIEGE OF" VEII.

149

the year 348 out of magnanimity, because the Veentians were distracted by
internal factions, is suspicious enough to throw discredit upon the whole narrative which involves it. It is far more probable that, as the expiration of the truce
drew near, both parties tried what could be gained by negotiation.40 The Romans were engaged in war with the Equians and Volscians, and although successful
in the campaign of 347, yet they had obtained no decided advantage. Thus the
Veientians tried to spin out the negotiation till they should see the event of the
next campaign, but as that was unfavorable to the Romans, the garrison at Verrugo being surprised and cut to pieces by the Volscians, the Veientians took courage, and refused to grant the Roman demands. The next year, however, greatly
altered the face of affairs; the Romans were completely successful against the
Volscians, and took the important city of Anxur: war with Veii was now looked
forward to with delight, the commons were conciliated by the grant of pay to the
soldiers, and thus, at the close of the twentieth year of the truce, apparently in
the spring of 350, the Roman people voted for instant war with the Veientians;
and the military tribunes of that year4 commenced the invasion of the Veientian
territory, and the occupation of fortified posts in the neighborhood of Veii.
Again, in the year following, 351, the Roman arms were called off from Veii
by the Volscian war,42 and nothing was attempted against the city. The siege ofvoii formBut in the next year the. Volscians were quiet, and the siege of ed.
Veii was commenced in earnest. Livy's expressions43 convey the notion that a
double line of walls was carried all round the city, as at Plataea, A. U. c. 352. A. c.
the inner wall to blockade the besieged, the outer one to shelter 400.
the besiegers from any attempt to raise the siege on the part of the other states
of Etruria. But the circuit of the walls of Veii, according to Sir W. Gell's measurements,44 was above five miles; the besiegers' line, therefore, must have embraced a still larger space, and the deep valleys with rocky sides, between which
the small streams of this district always flow, would have offered formidable
interruptions to the work. Besides, it is manifest that if such a circumvallation
had been completed, Veii must have been starved out within a year, instead of
resisting for seven years, and not being even at last reduced by famine. It appears rather that the two Roman armies employed in the siege established themselves in two separate camps, and secured the communication between them as well
as they could by detached forts, intending to carry on their circumvallation
on each side from their camps, as the Athenians did at Syracuse, till it should
meet and effectually inclose the city. And as it was necessary that the lines
should be maintained through the winter, the Romans now, for the first time,
became acquainted with war on a greater scale, and, instead of returning home
after a few days' service, a-considerable portion, at least, of the soldiers were to
remain before Veii during the whole year. This was as strange and unwelcome
to the Romans as it would have been to the Peloponnesians, but the national
feeling was interested in the war, and the lines, after having been once taken by
a sally of the besieged, were recovered and maintained by an army of volunteers.
Still there was no complete circumvallation: Veii was open and accessible to
relief; and the people of the two neighboring cities of Capena and A       A
A....353.  A. C.
Falerii, being at length aroused to a sense of their own danger if 399. Attacks made on
Veii fell, exerted all their power to deliver it. They attacked the the  besieging army.
Roman lines,45 stormed one of the two camps which formed the strongholds of
the besieging army, and for the remainder of the year the communications of
Veii with the surrounding country were carried on in freedom.
4 See note 48 of the last chapter.    description of the Peloponnesian lines round
41 Livy, IV. 61. Ab his primum circumsessi Platea: r TEiXos isC io roag repsjlGovs, r dsre
Veii sunt.                              IIMarauwv, sca iT rig if Ov eir' 'AOsjvwv Prto. III.
4 Livy, IV. 61.                       21.
4 Livy, V. 1. Ita muniebant ut ancipitia mu-  " See the conclusion of the article "  Veii," in
aimenta essent, alia in urbem-versa, aliis frons his work on the topography of Rome and its
in Etruriam spectans auxiliis, si qua forte inde vicinity.
venirent, obstruebatur. Compare Thucydides'   Liv!, V. 8.




ï~~150

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XVIll

For five years after this, the siege, if so it may be called, made but little progs oth Etuscaress.  The Romans retained their camps before Veii, as the Veienstas refuse their aid tians had once held the Janiculum; they plundered the Veientian
otveientian.  territory, and by their advanced position protected their own. The
Capenatians and Faliscans could not again succeed in carrying the Roman camps,
and the Tarquinensians, who took part in the contest in the year 358,46 and ventured to invade the Roman territory, were repelled with loss. But this interference of the people of Tarquinii, one of the greatest and most influential of the
Etruscan cities, and not the immediate neighbor of Veii, was probably a symptom of the dispositions of the whole Etruscan confederacy. A great council of
the whole nation met at the temple of Voltumna,4 the Panionium of Etruria; the
question of aiding Veii with the united force of the twelve cities was debated:
but at this critical moment the attention of the northern states of the league was
drawn off to another and a more imminent danger. The Gauls had crossed the
Alps, and were overrunning the country of the twelve cities of northern Etruria,
between the Alps and the Apennines. With such an enemy so near them, the
northern states of Etruria proper, Volterm, Fmsulae, Cortona, and Clusium, were
not disposed to march their forces away to a contest on the banks of the Tiber,
and to leave their own homes open to the inroads of the Gauls. Accordingly,
the southern cities were left to their fate; and only Capena and Falerii took any
part in the final struggle between Veii and Rome.
But the events of the last year of this struggle plainly showed what Rome
A. U. C. 359. A. C would have had to fear from a coalition of all the twelve cities of
393. The Roman, de- Etruria.  Two of the Roman military tribunes45 were defeated by
feated  before  Veii
Camillusappointed dic- the Faliscans and Capernatians; one of them was killed in the
tator.         battle; and the panic spread to the lines before Veii, and even to
Rome itself, where the rumor prevailed, that the whole force of Etruria was on
its march, that the lines before Veil were actually assailed by the enemy, and
that his victorious bands might be expected every moment to advance upon
Rome. So great was the alarm, that the matrons crowded to the temples to
avert, by prayers and sacrifices, their country's peril; and the senate resolved
to appoint a dictator.49 The dictator thus chosen was the famous M. Furius
Camillus.
During thirty years from this period Camillus was undoubtedly the most emiThe history of the fall nent man in Rome, and the favorite leader of the aristocracy, who
o; Vei ha been nap twice made him their champion in the hour of their greatest need,
planted by the poetical
pto ry t.       once to put down M. Manlius, and again to prevent, if possible,
the passing of the Licinian laws. Nor was the distinction of his family confined
to him alone; one of his sons was the first prator, and another was twice dictator, and twice consul, and gained a memorable victory over the Gauls.     But in
proportion to this high eminence of the Furian family, was the exaggeration of
which they were the subject. The stories told of them were so popular, that
they were not merely engrafted upon the brief notices contained in the genuine
records of the time, but took the place of these altogether; so that it is through
41 Livy, V. 16.                        point supplant the real history, that Livy does
47 Livy, V. 17. The situation of this temple not so much as mention the resolution of the
is unknown, as well as the attributes of the. senate to appoint a dictator, but after describgoddess to whom it was dedicated. The as- ing the alarm at Rome, and the prayers of the
semblies held at the temple werecomposed only matrons, he passes abruptly to the legend, and
of the ruling caste, the Principes or Lucumones merely says, " faitalis dux ad excidium illius
of Etruria: but they were connected with a re- urbis servandeque patris M. Furius Camillus
ligious festival, with games of various sorts, and dictator dictus magistrum equitum P. Corneespecially with dramatic entertainments; so that lium Scipionem dixit." V. 19. It appears,
people of all ranks came together on these so- however, that the master of the horse, accordlemnities, and the concourse attracted traders ing to the Fasti Capitolini,was not P. Cornefrom foreign countries, as to a favorable oppor- lius Scipio, but P. Cornelius Maluginensis.
tunity of carrying on their traffic.     See the "Frammenti nuovi," published by
48 Livy, V. 18.                        Borghesi.
4 So strangely does the poetical story at this




ï~~CHAP. XVIII.]

LEGEND OF THE FALL OF VEII.

151

the Greek writers only that we can learn the real issue of the Gaulic invasion,
and the history of the taking of Veil has not been preserved at all.  That the
beautiful and romantic story of the fall of Veii belongs entirely to the traditions
and funeral orations of the Furian family, is plain from this, that the events, even
of the very last year of the war, are related historically down to the very time
of the appointment of Camillus to the dictatorship; but then the history suddenly vanishes, and a mere romance succeeds in its place wherever the actions
of Camillus are the subject, interspersed here and there with fragments of authentic history, where the story relates to the actions of other persons. Thus
we do not really know how Veii fell, or by what means a contest which, in the
beginning of the year 359, wore so unpromising an aspect, was, before the end
of that same year, brought to a triumphant conclusion. It is mentioned5 that
the Latins and Hernicans, who seem hitherto to have taken no part in the war,
joined the Romans with their whole force as soon as Camillus was made dictator.
Probably the defeat sustained in the early part of the year, and the fear lest all
Etruria should combine to relieve Veii, if any accident should turn the stream of
the Gaulish invasion upon other countries, convinced the Romans that they must
make the most of the present moment, whilst the Etruscans still stood aloof.
An overpowering army of the Romans and their allies was brought against Veil;
the siege of Plataea shows what great works for the reduction of a town could be
completed within a short time by the united labor of a multitude of hands: a mound
might be carried to the top of the loftiest walls; or their foundations might be undermined, and a breach opened in an instant; or, in the wide extent of Veii, some
ill-guarded spot might be found, by which the enemy might effect an entrance
without opposition. Be this as it may, the manner of the real capture of the
place is irrecoverably lost; but it is certain that in the year 359, after a war of
nine years, this old antagonist of Iome, the large, the wealthy, and powerful
city of Veii, was taken by the Romans, and the political existence of its people
destroyed forever.
But before we finally quit the poetical legends of the early Roman history, the
last of them, and not the least beautiful, that which relates to the Difference between the
egends and the
fall of Veil, must find its place in this narrative. In the life of p ilful falsehoods of th
Camillus there meet two distinct kinds of fiction, equally remote fan lymemoirs.
from historical truth, but in all other respects most opposite to one another: the
one imaginative, but honest, playing, it is true, with the facts of history, and converting them into a wholly different form, but addressing itself also to a different
part of the mind; not professing to impart exact knowledge, but to delight, to
quicken, and to raise the perception of what is beautiful and noble; the other,
tame and fraudulent, deliberately corrupting truth in order to minister to national
or individual vanity, pretending to describe actual events, but substituting in the
place of reality the representations of interested or servile falsehood. To the
former of these classes belongs the legend of the fall of Veil; to the latter the
interpolation of the pretended victory of Camillus over the Gauls. The stories
of the former kind, as innocent as they are delightful, I have thought it an irreverence to neglect; the fabrications of the latter sort, which are the peculiar disgrace of Roman history, it is best to pass over in total silence, that they may, if
possible, be consigned to perpetual oblivion.
The poetical story of the fall of Veii is as follows:
For seven years and more the Romans had been besieging Veil. Now the
summer was far advanced,"5 and all the springs and rivers were Poetical. story of the
very low; when on a sudden the waters of the lake of Alba be- fnof ebavo  oh 5lak
of Alba overflows its
gan to rise; and they rose above its banks, and covered the banks.
fields and houses by the water-side; and still they rose higher and higher, till
they reached the top of the hills which surrounded the lake as with a wall, and

5 Livy, V. 19.

L.  Dionysius, XII. 11. Fragn3. Mai.




ï~~!52

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP XVIII

they overflowed where the hills were lowest; and behold, the water of the lake
poured down in a mighty torrent into the plain beyond. When the Romans
found that the sacrifices52 which they offered to the gods and powers of the
place were of no avail, and their prophets knew not what counsel to give them,
and the lake still continued to overflow the hills and to pour down into the plain
below, then they sent over the sea, to Delphi, to ask counsel of the oracle of
Apollo, which was famous in every land.
So the messengers were sent to Delphi. And meanwhile the report of the
A Prophet of yeii de overflowing of the lake was much talked of; so that the people
ele the meg of of Veii heard of it. Now there was an old Veientian,53 who was
the overflow.  skilled in the secrets of the Fates, and it chanced that he was
talking from the walls with a Roman centurion whom he had known before in the
days of peace; and the Roman spoke of the ruin that was coming upon Veii,
and was sorry for the old man his friend; but the old man laughed and said:
"Ah! ye think to take Veil; but ye shall not take it till the waters of the lake
of Alba are all spent, and flow out into the sea no more." Win the Roman
heard this he was much moved by it, for he knew that the cld man was a
prophet; and the next day he came again to talk with the old man, and he enticed him to come out of the city, and to go aside with him to a lonely place,
saying that he had a certain matter of his own, concerning which he desired to
know the secrets of fate. And while they were talking together, he seized the
old man, and carried him off to the Roman camp, and brought him before the
generals; and the generals sent him to Rome to the senate. Then the old man
declared all that was in the Fates concerning the overflow of the lake of Alba;
and he told the senate what they were to do with the water, that it might cease
to flow into the sea: "If the lake overflow, and its waters run out into the sea,
woe unto Rome; but if it be drawn off, and the waters reach the sea no longer,
then it is woe unto Veii." But the senate would not listen to the old man's
words, till the messengers should come back from Delphi.
After a time the messengers came back, and the answer of the god agreed in
The Romans dig all things with the words of the old man of Veii. For it said,54
drough othe. ot o. See that the waters be not confined within the basin of the
and draw off the water
of the lake., lake: see that they take not their own course and run into the
sea. Thou shalt let the water out of the lake, and thou shalt turn it to the watering of thy fields, and thou shalt make courses for it till it be spent and come
to nothing."  Then the Romans believed the oracle, and they sent workmen, and
began to bore through the side of the hills to make a passage for the water. And
the water flowed out through this passage under ground; and it ceased to flow
over the hills; and when it came out from the passage into the plain below, it
was received into many courses which had been dug for it, and it watered the
fields, and became obedient to the Romans, and was all spent in doing them service, and flowed to the sea no more. And the Romans knew that it was the will
of the gods that they should conquer Veii.
So Marcus Furius Camillus was made dictator; and the Veientians sent to
The  omans refuse Rome to beg for peace,55 but the Romans would not grant it.
peace to thoVeientians. Now the Etruscans are skilled in the secrets of fate above all other
nations; and one of the chief men of Veii, who had gone with the embassy,
turned round as he was going out of the senate-house, and looked upon the senators, and said: "A goodly answer truly have ye given us, and a generous; for
though we humble ourselves before you, ye will show us no mercy, but threaten
to destroy us utterly. Ye heed neither the wrath of the gods nor the vengeance
of men. Yet the gods shall requite you for your pride; and, as ye destroy our
country, so ye shall shortly after lose your own."
6 Dionysius, XII. 12.                6 Livy, V. 16.
o  Dionysius, XII. 13. Livy, V. 15. Plu-  65 Dionysius, XII. 17.
tarch, Camillus, 4.




ï~~CHAP. XVIII.]

LEGEND OE THE FALL OF VEII.

153

Meanwhile Marcus Furius'6 pressed the city on every side; and he was at the
head of a mighty army; for the Latins and the Hernicans had
A  mine dus into the
brought their aids; and he commanded his men to dig a way un- ear of tho oitaodel of
der ground, which should pass beneath the walls, and come out ei.
again to the light within the precinct of the temple of Juno, in the citadel of
Veii. The men worked on by night and by day; for they were divided into six
bands; and each band worked in turn and rested in turn; and the secret passage was carried up into the precinct of the temple of Juno; but it had not
broken through the surface of the ground; so that the Veientians knew not
of it.
Then every man7 who desired to have a share of the spoil hastened from
Rome to the camp at Veii. And Marcus, the dictator, made a
vow, and promised to give the tenth part of all the spoil to Apollo, vi tk.
the god of Delphi; and he prayed also to Juno, the goddess of the Veientians,
that she would be pleased to depart from Veii, and to follow the Romans home
to their city, which from henceforth should be hers, and where a temple worthy
of her majesty should be given her for her abode. After this, he ordered the
Romans to assault the city on every side; and the Veientians ran to the wall to
meet them; and the shout of the battle arose, and the fight was carried on
fiercely.5" But the king of the Veientians was in the temple of Juno in the citadel, offering a sacrifice for the deliverance of the city; and the prophet who
stood by, when he saw the sacrifice, cried aloud, "This is an accepted offering;
for there is victory for him who offers its entrails upon the altar!"  Now the
Romans were in the secret passage, and heard the words of the prophet. So
they burst forth into the temple, and they snatched away the entrails from those
who were sacrificing, and Marcus, the Roman dictator, and not the king of the
Veientians, offered them upon the altar. Then the Romans rushed down from
the citadel, and ran to the gates of the city, and let in their comrades; and all
the army broke into the town, and they sacked and took Veii.
While they were sacking the city, Marcus looked down upon the havoc from
the top of the citadel, and when he saw the greatness of the city Camillus vaunts him.
and the richness of the spoil, his heart swelled within him,59 and'  olf fhis victory.
he said, "What man's fortune was ever so great as mine?"  But then in a moment there came the thought, how little a thing and how short a time can bring
the greatest fortune down to the lowest, and his pride was turned into fear, and
he prayed, if it must be that in return for such great glory and victory, some
evil should befall himself or his country, yet that it might be light and recoverable. Whilst he prayed he veiled his head,6 as is the custom of the Romans in
prayer, and turned round towards the right. But as he turned, his foot slipped,
and he fell upon his back upon the ground. Yet he was comforted rather than
dismayed by his fall, for he said, " The gods have heard my prayer, and for the
great fortune of my victory over Veii they have sent me only this little evil."
Then he ordered some young men,6" chosen out from all his army, to approach
to the temple of Juno; and they had washed themselves in pure The statue of Jono i
water, and were clothed in white, so that there was on them no carried from Voeii to
sign or stain of blood and of slaughter; and they bowed low as Rome.
they came to the temple, but were afraid to touch the image of the goddess, for
no hand might touch it except the priest's who was born of the house that had
the priesthood. So they asked the goddess whether it was her pleasure to go
with them to Rome. And then there happened a wonder; for the image spake,
and answered, "I will go;" and when they touched it, it moved from its place
of its own accord, and it was carried to Rome. Thus Juno left her abode in the
s5 Livy, V. 19.                       6 Dionysius, XII. 22, 28. P utarch, Camil
57 Livy, V. 20, 21.                 lus, 5.
be Livy, V. 21. Plutarch, Camillus, 5.  e1 Livy, V. 22.
69 Dionysius, XII. 19.




ï~~154

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XVIII

citadel of Veii, and she dwelt in her temple at Rome, on the hill Aventinus,
which the Romans built and dedicated to her honor.
After this62 there were rejoicings at Rome greater than had ever been known
camillus triumph before; and there were thanksgivings for four days, and all the
proudly.       temples were filled with those who came to offer their thankofferings. And Marcus entered the city in triumph, and he rode up to the Capitol in a chariot drawn by four white horses, like the horses of Jupiter and like
the horses of the sun.    But wise men thought that it was done too proudly;
and they said, "Marcus makes himself equal to the blessed gods; see if vengeance come not on him, and he be not made lower than other men."
To return from this famous legend to our imperfect history of the times, the
Increase of the Rm Romans, by the fall of Veii, acquired a considerable addition to
territory by the io. their territory.  The inhabitants of several districts subject to the
quest of veii.  Veientians had revolted to the Romans during the war, or rather,
to escape the ravage of the Roman armies, had surrendered themselves and their
lands at discretion.  The rest of the country, if any remained so long independent, must have fallen with the capital; and thus the Romans now extended
their dominion along the right bank of the Tiber from its mouth to a distance of
about thirteen miles above Rome,62 whilst it stretched northwards from the Tiber
as far as the Lago di Bracciano, Lacus Sabatinus,64 and the edge of the actual
Campagna at Monterosi; passing thence, in a line including the remarkable eminence of Monte Musino,65 to the Tiber opposite the Ager Crustumerinus. But
in the years immediately following the conquest of Veii, the Romans penetrated
still deeper into Etruria. Capenia, which had stood by the Veientians to the
last, fell in the very next year after its ally;66 and its conquest put the Romans
in possession of an additional portion of the right bank of the Tiber, above the
territory just won from the Veientians. In the year after, we hear of the submission of Falerii, the sole remaining member of the alliance, situated either on or near
the site of the modern town of Civita Castellana.61 Camillus was the military
tribune who reduced Falerii, and accordingly we have another tale in the place
of history.  A schoolmaster," who had the care of the sons of the principal citizens, took an opportunity, when walking with his boys without the walls, to lead
them to the Roman camp, and throw them into the power of the enemy. But
Camillus, indignant at this treason, bade the boys to drive their master back into
the town again, flogging him all the way thither, for the Romans, he said, made
no war with children.   Upon this the Faliscans, won by his magnanimity, surrendered to him at discretion, themselves, their city, and their country. Whether
the city, however, was really surrendered at this time, may seem very doubtful;
that it sued for and obtained peace is likely: it lost, also, a portion of its territory, for we read of a number of Faliscans as forming a part of the four new
tribes69 of Roman citizens, which were created immediately after the Gaulish invasion.
In the same year, or in the following year, may be placed also the submission
Sbmission of Nepete of Nepete and Sutrium,Â~ which appear immediately after the reand Sutrium.   treat of the Gauls as the dependent allies of Rome. They did not
62 Livy, V. 23.                        Musino, in Sir W. Gell's work on the neigh6 Pliny, Hist. Nat. III. 9.            borhood of Rome, under the title " Ara Mu6 This may be concluded, not only from the tie."
short distance between Veii and the Lacus Sa-  66 Livy, V. 24.
batinus, and from there being no independent  7 Westphal and Nibby place the Etruscan
city, so far as we know, between them; but it Falerii at Civita Qastellana, and the later Roman
seems to follow, also, from the name of one of colony at S. Maria di Falari, about half way bethe new tribes which were formed immediately tween Civita Castellana and Ronciglione. Sir
after the Gaulish invasion, the tribus Sabatina. W. Gell places the Etruscan city at S. Maria di
The lands of this tribe must have been situated Falari.
near the lake; and from whom could the Ro-  68 Livy, V. 27.
mans have conquered them at that period, ex-  69 Livy, VI. 4.
cept from the Veientians?                 o Diodorus places in the same year the peace
SSee the description and sketch of Monte with the Faliscans, and something in conneo



ï~~CHAP. XVIII.]

THE CIMINIAN MOUNTAINS.

155

surrender themselves, "dediderunt se," but obtained a treaty of alliance, such
as we find so often between the weaker and the stronger states in Greece. Nepete still exists, with almost the same name, and is a well-known town on the
Perugia road to Rome, standing in a beautiful country between the edge of the
Campagna and the valley of the Tiber, a little to the north of Monterosi. Su.
trium also exists in the modern town of Sutri, a little to the west of the present
road from Monterosi to Ronciglione.
The Romans had now reached what may be called the extreme natural boundary of the basin of the Tiber on the side of Etruria. Sutrium  e oman reach the
The Romans reach the
and Nepete looked up immediately to the great and lofty ridge of ridge f theo C iminian
Â~               -       moantains.
the Ciminian mountains, that ridge which the traveller ascends as
soon as he leaves Viterbo, while from its summit he catches his first view of the
neighborhood of Rome, of the line of the Apennines skirting the Campagna to
the northeast, and of the Alban hills in the farthest distance, and, although the
particular objects cannot be distinguished, of that ever memorable plain in which
stands Rome. This ridge, in short, separates the streams which feed the Tiber
from the valley of Viterbo and the basin of the lake of Bolsena, or, to speak the
language of the fourth century of Rome, it separated the territories of Veii and
Falerii, the advanced posts, as it were, of the Etruscan confederacy, from those
of Vulsinii and Tarquinii, two of the greatest and most distinguished states of the
whole nation.
Eighty years after this period, the passage of the Ciminian mountains was regarded as a memorable event, as little less than the entrance into They cros. them, and
an unknown world."    But now, emboldened by their victories.engagedoi... ith
an.                                             vcul  C  the peapte ef Vutaini
over the nearer Etruscan cities, and aware, no doubt, that the ad the Salpinatians.
dread of the Gauls on the northern frontier would render a general gathering of
the whole nation impossible, the Romans seemed anxious to cross their natural
boundary, and to penetrate into the heart of Etruria. A war broke out, we
know not on what grounds, between Rome and Vulsinii;n but in the first year
the Romans were crippled, according to their own account, by a famine and pestilence; and the Vulsinians, aided by the Salpinatians, a neighboring people
wholly unknown to us, invaded the Roman territory without op- A. U. C. 364. A. C
position. In the next year, however, the Romans were able to 38.
act on the offensive; a great victory was gained over the Vulsinians; the Salpinatians did not risk a battle; and, after the lands of either people had been laid
waste by the conquerors, the Vulsinians sued for and obtained a truce for twenty
years,13 on the condition of giving satisfaction to the Romans to the extent of
their demands, and furnishing a year's pay for the army employed against them.
Of the Salpinatians we hear no further mention, either now or at any future
period.
Thus Rome was gaining ground rapidly in Etruria, while in Latium she could
not yet dislodge her old enemies the.zEquians, even from the Al- Conclusion.
ban hills. With so stubborn, so active, and so powerful an adversary on the south, any attempt to make extensive conquests on the north
must ever have been full of danger; and an alliance between the Etruscan confederacy and the Opican nations, at this period of the Roman history, would
probably have effected what the league between the Etruscan and Sabellian nations, ninety years afterwards, attempted in vain. But Providence, which designed that Rome should win the empire of the world, altered the course of
events by turning the torrent of a Gaulish invasion upon Latium. This it was
which crushed the.zEquians forever; and which obliged the Romans, by its
tion with Sutrium. The present text is cor-  7 Livy, IX. 86.
rapt: aodrpcor p  ipp,eav. Niebuhr proposes  73 Livy, V. 81.
to supply hbr, but the corruption lies, I think,  73 Livy, V. 32.
in the verb, and in the preceding conjunction,
lt. See Diodorus, XIV. 98.




ï~~156

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XIX,

consequences, to confine their attention again for a long period to the left bank
of the Tiber. There, in many years of patient and arduous struggles, they laid
deeper and firmer the foundations of their after greatness, by effectually subduing the remnant of their Opican enemies, and obtaining a more complete command than ever over the resources of the cities of the Latins. Thus the Gaulish
invasion and conquest of Rome was but the instrument of her greater and surer
advance to the dominion of Italy.
CHAPTER XIX.
INTERNAL HISTORY FROM 850 TO 864-PLEBEIAN MILITARY TRIBUNES-BANISHMENT OF CAMILLUS.
" Sio riNus.-He's a disease that must be cut away.
MENENIUS.-Oh, he's a limb that has but a disease:
Mortal to cut it off; to cure it easy."
SHAKSPEARE, Coriolanus.
'o/3?Se'raec yop a roe oe roo r  ys90r iff re Kara rb iavrov ua5pa ira pavopda i ri 3Laa
W.  s vpavvhdo FrtLheVvr s7ToXE/oL Kabraav.-THUCYDIDEs, VI. 15.
IN the fourteen years which elapsed between the beginning of the last war
Advance of the plebe- with Veii and the invasion of the Gauls, the plebeian leaders reaped
ane.           the fruit of the seed which their predecessors had sown so perseveringly.  Now, for the first time, we find plebeians not only admitted into the
college of military tribunes, but forming in it the majority. Yet even this was,
as it were, only the first-fruits of the harvest; many years elapsed before the
full crop was brought to the sickle.
In the year 352, the third year of the war with Veii, the Romans intending,
patriciansinterere as has been mentioned, to blockade the city, were obliged to keep
witthe electionoftrib - a part of their forces on duty during the winter. This was doubly.es.          unpopular, both as it obliged so many citizens to be absent from
their homes for several months together, a term of service ill endured by an army
of householders and agriculturists; and also as it increased the expense of the
war, for the soldiers received pay only for those months in which they were actually under arms. Thus the tribunes began to complain of the burden of the
siege, and the indecisive character of the war hitherto was likely to make it unpopular; but when news came that the Roman lines had been destroyed by a
sally of the besieged,' national pride prevailed, and all ranks united in supporting
A. U. c. 35s3. A. c. the contest zealously. But the next year only brought fresh dis399.          asters:' Anxur was surprised by the Volscians, and the armies before Veii were completely defeated, and the blockade entirely raised. Then feelings of irritation revived; and these were so far shared by the senate, that they
obliged all the military tribunes of the year to go out of office on the first of October,' two months and a half before the expiration of their year. The commons,
however, were not satisfied; for the first act of the new military tribunes was to
call out to military service, not only the citizens within the usual age,4 but the
older men also, who were to form a force for the defence of the city. Such a

a Livy, V. 7.

v  Livy, V. 8.        Livy, V. 9.

} Livy, V, 10.




ï~~CHAr. XIX.]

PLEBEIAN MILITARY TRIBUNES.

157

call, just as winter was coming on, was most unwelcome; besides, every additional soldier rendered a heavier taxation necessary; and as the patricians were
continually evading the payment of the vectigal for their occupation of the public land, so the tributum or property tax necessarily increased in amount. In
this state of things, the patricians were so afraid of the possible effects of the
tribunician power, that they ventured on the unusual step of tampering with the
elections for new tribunes, which took place in December. The tribune who presided at the comitia must have been gained over to betray his trust; he refused
votes, we must suppose, when given in favor of the most popular, and therefore
the most obnoxious candidates, whilst others could not gain from the tribes themselves the requisite majority of suffrages. The consequence was that, in defiance
of the Trebonian law, only eight tribunes were returned;5 and these, by a second
violation of the law, filled up the vacant places by choosing two colleagues for
themselves.
But this overstraining broke the bow. One honest tribune of the college, On.
Trebonius, was enough, where the cause was so manifestly just, to   ean for.... Plebeians for the first
awaken the indignation of the commons. Three of the other trib- time lctedastribunes
unes,6 men, as it seems, of those base natures which always follow of the o
the stream, now strove to avert their own unpopularity by impeaching the two
unfortunate military tribunes who had been defeated before Veii. These were
condemned and fined, but their punishment did not abate the storm. The tribunes then proposed an agrarian law; and when this was resisted, they positively
refused to allow the tribute to be collected' for the benefit of the army at Veii.
This stoppage of the supplies brought the soldiers almost to a state of mutiny.
We have seent that a custom, so old as to be held equivalent to law, authorized
the soldier to practise a summary process of distress upon the paymaster, if his
pay was not regularly issued. Thus the law itself seemed to sanction insubordination, if the soldier's right was denied him: so that if the tribunes persisted in
forbidding the tribute to be levied, the siege of Veii was inevitably at an end.
Then at last, after an interval of more than forty years, the con- A. v. c. 355. A. C.
stitution of the year 312 was fully carried into effect; the elections 97.
of military tribunes were left really free, and four out of six9 of the members of
the college were chosen from among the plebeians. A similar re- A. v. c. 356. A. c.
sult attended the elections of the year following; four out of six *s.
of the tribunes of the soldiers were again chosen from the commons.
Such a choice, continued for two years successively, proves how deep was the
indignation excited by the attempt of the patricians to tamper with Endeavor s of the patri.
the tribuneship, of the commons.  But the influence of an aristoc- ant.recover the.
elusive possession of the
racy acts through the relations of private life, which are in their military tribuneship.
very nature permanent, whilst it is opposed only by a strong feeling of anger, or

SLivy, V. 10.
o Livy, V. 11.
' Cum tributum conferri per tribunes non
posset. Livy, V. 12.
o Pignoris capio. See Gaius, IV. Â~ 27.
s The names, as given by Livy, are, P. Licinius Calvus, P. Manlius (Menius being a mere
correction by Sigonius), L. Titinius, P. Melius,
L. Furius Medullinus, and L. Publilius Volscus.
He calls them all patricians, except Licinius;
yet it is certain that all, except L. Furius and P.
Manlius, were plebeians. The names are all
plebeian; which, although not a decisive argument with respect to the very early times of the
commonwealth, yet becomes a circumstance of
great weight in the middle of the fourth century of Rome. Again, the reappointment of
many of the tribunes of this year, four years
afterwards, as colleagues ofP. Licinius, is a confirmation of their being plebeians. And if we

examine the sev nra names, we find a M. Titinius elected tribune of the commons in the year
806, and a Sex. Titinius tribune in the year 816.
And the fragments of the Fasti Capitolini describe P. Mmlius as the son of Sp. Mnlius, and
give him the surname of Capitolinus; so that
there is every reason to regard him as the son
of that Mmlius who was murdered by Servilius
Ahala in 316, and whose house, as we know,
stood sufficiently within the precincts of the
Capitoline Hill to entitle him to the name Capitolinus. Lastly, Publilius Volscus is described
in the Fasti as " Voleronis Nepos," and as bearing the surname of Philo; so that there can be
no doubt that he was a descendant of the famous tribune who carried the Publilian law in
the year 283, and of the family of the no less
famous plebeian dictator who passed the Publilian laws of the year 416.




ï~~158

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XI

an urgent sense of public interest, both of which exist only in seasons of excitement, and wear out by the mere lapse of time. It happened also that in the
last two years Rome had been visited by a winter of such unusual severity, as to
appear preternatural, and afterwards, by a pestilence; and such calamities have
a well-known tendency to engross men's minds with their own domestic affairs,
and to make them regard political questions with indifference.  Nor did the patricians fail to represent these visitations as proofs of the displeasure of the gods,
who were offended that plebeians" had been elected even in the comitia of centuries, which professed to be regulated according to the divine will as observed
and declared by the augurs.   And still further to secure their object, when the
election of military tribunes came on, the most eminent individuals of the noblest
families of the patricians appeared as candidates.  Accordingly, every place in
the college for the year 35711 was once more filled by a patrician; and the election of the following year presented the same result.
The tribunes of the year 358 appear, however, to have been moderate men;
The commons resist and there was a danger lest they should hold the comitia fairly,
them with success.  and lest some plebeians might thus again be elected as their successors.  Accordingly the senate obliged them    all, on religious pretences,"2 to
resign before their year was expired; and an interrex was named to hold the
comitia.  But the discontent of the commons had been again growing; even in
this very year the tribunes had opposed the enlistment of soldiers to meet a new
enemy, the people of Tarquinii; and now, when the object of the patricians in
appointing an interrex could not be mistaken, they interfered, and would not
allow the comitia to be held. The dispute went on for some time, and lasted
till a third interrex had been appointed, the famous M. Camillus. But even he,
though one of the bitterest enemies of the commons, was, on this occasion,
obliged to yield; either Veii must be relinquished, or the commons must have
justice; and accordingly it was agreed that the elections should be held freely,
so as to allow a majority in the college to the plebeians,3 and four out of six of
the military tribunes were again chosen from the plebeians.
The defeat of two of these tribunes by the Faliscans and Capenatians led to
But after the nlofVeii the appointment of M. Camillus as dictator, and in this year Veii
the patriciansagainpre- fell.  Thus the patricians were no longer obliged to conciliate the
vail.         commons; the opposition of the tribunes to the levying of the tribute was henceforward of no importance; and we hear no more of plebeian military
tribunes. The entire college was composed of patricians in the years 360, 361,
and 364; and in the years 362 and 363, the senate decreed that consuls should
be created, instead of military tribunes; so that from the fall of Veii to the
Gaulish invasion the patricians appear to have recovered their old exclusive possession of the highest magistracies.
Yet this period was by no means one of hopeless submission on the part of the
Drisputes about the tithe commons; nor were there wanting subjects of dispute, which the
of pnder of vei, tribunes followed up with vigor.  Camillus had vowed to offer to
Apollo the tithe of the spoil won at Veii; but the town had been plundered before Apollo's portion had been set apart for him; and the soldiers having disposed of all that they had gained, were unwilling to refund it afterwards. 4 The
1o Livy, V. 14.                        consul, and afterwards decemvir, with Appius
'1 Livy, V. 14, 16.                    Claudius, in the year 303. Thus the plebeians
12 Livy, V. 17.                        were four to two in the college of 359, and not
i~s Livy, V. 18, Fasti Capitolini. Frammenti five to one; and this agrees with the stipulanuovi, Borghesi. According to Livy, the trib- tion made previously to the election, " ut major
unes were P. Licinius, the son of the tribune pars tribunorum militum ex plebe crearetur."
of 355, L. Titinius, P. Mnius, P. Maelius, Cn. Livy, V. 17.
Genucius, and L. Atilius. But the fragments  1 Livy, V. 23. The practice of devoting a
of the Fasti show that for P. Munius we should tithe of the spoil to some god was adopted
here also read Q. Manlius; and the cognomen sometimes, in order to prevent an indiscrimiof Cn. Genucios, as appears from the Fasti for nate plunder: the spoil was first to be brought
856, was Aug.rinus; so that he belonged to to the general, that the tithe might be duly septhe patrician Genucii, one of whom was elected arated from-it, and the remainder was then to




ï~~OCu. XIX.]  INFLUENCE EXERCISED BY THE PATRICIANS.

159

pontifices, however, declared that the vow must be performed; and an appeal
was made to the conscience of every individual, calling upon him to value his
share of the plunder, and bring the price of the tithe of it into the treasury for
the purchase of an offering of gold to Apollo. This call was slowly obeyed, and
Camillus complained loudly of the profane neglect of the people: he urged further, that his vow had included the tithe, not only of the movable property of
Veii, but also of the city and territory." The pontifices decided that this too
must be paid; and the money was accordingly advanced out of the treasury for
this purpose. The money of the Romans at this period was all of copper; gold
was dear, and could not readily be procured. Accordingly the Roman matrons
are said to have brought to the treasury all their ornaments of gold;16 and the
senate showed its sense of their zeal by giving them permission to be drawn in a
carriage about Rome on all occasions, and to use a peculiar and more luxurious
sort of carriage at the games and solemn sacrifices. Yet, after all, the gold was
not accepted as a gift; the senate ordered every matron's contribution to be
valued, and the full price paid to her.
This transaction irritated the minds of men against Camillus, as if his vow had
been a mere pretence, in order to defraud the people of the spoil The commons desire to
which they had so hardly won. But the conquest of Veii gave move toveii.
occasion to another dispute of a more serious character. T. Sicinius,"7 one of the
tribunes, proposed a law for removing a portion of the patricians and commons
to Veii, and for allotting to them the whole, or a considerable part, of the Veientian territory; so that the Roman commonwealth should consist of two cities,
Rome and Yeii. The peculiarity of this proposal, according to Roman notions,
consisted in making Veii a co-ordinate state with Rome, instead of a colony.
The unity of the commonwealth was in no way injured by the foundation of new
colonies, because these became its subjects, and not its equals; whereas, if a
portion of the Roman people lived in Veii, a city equal to Rome in extent and
magnificence, the commonwealth must either be reduced to a mere confederacy,
like that of the cities of the Latins, or else it would be a matter of dispute at
which of the two cities the assemblies of the united people should be held, and
which of them should be the home of the national gods. Accordingly the project was strenuously resisted by the patricians, who saw how fatal it would
prove to the greatness of Rome, and they persuaded two of the tribunes to oppose it.'8 Thus the measure was resisted for that year, and it met with the same
fate the year following, 361; both parties having obtained the re-election of the
same tribunes, so that T. Sicinius and his friends again brought forward the law,
and A. Virginius and Q. Pomponius, the two tribunes who sided with the patricians, were again ready to meet it with their negative.
But in the year 362, Virginius and Pomponius were no longer re-elected tribunes, but were, on the contrary, impeached for their betrayal of   mesre
their constituents' interests during the time of their magistracy. through the iniuencot
They were tried, and condemned to pay a heavy fine,"9 and the of the potricians.
tribunes again brought forward their law, with a confidence that it would meet
with no opposition. But the patricians now resolved to exert their influence in
a fair and constitutional manner, and they exerted it with success. Leaving the
decision of the question to the votes of the tribes," and being prepared themselves to attend at the comitia and give their votes like the rest of their fellowcitizens, they endeavored, by their individual authority, to win the suffrages of
their tribesmen, entreating and reasoning by turns, and imploring them not to
pass a law which would put the conquered city of Veii on a level with its conqueror. Their arguments and solicitations were listened to with respect, and
be equitably divided. See the advice given by  17 Livy, V. 24.
Craesus to Cyrus after the taking of Sardis.  18 Livy, V. 25, 29.
Herodotus, I. 39.                        " Livy, V. 29.
" Livy, V. 25.                         ' Livy, V. 30.
6 Livy, V. 25.




ï~~160

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XIX,

when the question was brought forward, it was negatived by the votes of eleven
tribes out of twenty-one.
A victory thus fairly and honorably obtained, was likely to dispose the patriA grant of land in the cians to placable and kindly feelings. Immediately after the reterritory of Vei mado jection of the law, the senate decreed a division of the Veientian
to tho commons.
o th...... territory"2 amongst the commons on a scale of unusual liberality.
Each lot consisted of seven jugera; and not only fathers of families were considered in this grant, but they received an additional allotment of seven jugera
for each free person in their household. Thus the dispute was, for the time,
peaceably and advantageously settled.
The year 363 is remarkable, as introducing another change in the time at
Altoration of the timo which the curule magistrates entered on their office. The consuls,
at which the tribunes
of the soldi ers entered one of whom was M. Manlius, afterwards so famous, were obliged
on their office.  by the senate"2 to resign three months before the end of their
year, so that their successors, the military tribunes of the year 364, came into
office on the first of July. But why they were required to resign is doubtful.
The ostensible reason was the state of their health; a dry and exceedingly hot
season had ruined the crops, and given birth to a violent epidemic disorder, which
attacked both of the consuls, and prevented them from taking the field against
the Vulsiniensians.  On the other hand, Niebuhr thinks that the real cause of
their deposition was their having neglected to aid the people of Cmre, the allies
of Rome, when their harbor of Pyrgi was taken and sacked by Dionysius of
Syracuse. Perhaps, too, personal feelings were concerned, for immediately on
the resignation of the consuls, M. Camillus was appointed interrex, who was
afterwards so strongly opposed to M. Manlius, and whose enmity may have
already begun before this period. It should be observed that the six military
tribunes elected for the following year were all patricians.
If Camillus had any undue share in effecting the resignation of the late conChnrge of corrption suls, he did not long enjoy his triumph. L. Appuleius," one of
against Camils. He the tribunes, impeached him for having appropriated secretly to
tne from Rome.  his own use a portion of the plunder of Veii. It was said"4 that
some doors of brass, the bullion of a country which at this time used only brass money, were found in his house; and that his numerous clients and friends told him
plainly," when he applied to them for their aid, that they were ready to pay his
fine for him, but that they could not acquit him. We are startled at finding the
great Camillus brought to trial on a charge of personal corruption; but that
strict integrity which Polybius ascribes to the Romans seems not always to have
reached as high as the leaders of the aristocracy, for the great Scipio Africanus
was impeached on a similar charge, and his brother, the conqueror of Antiochus,
was not only accused, but condemned. Nor were the eminent men of the Spartan aristocracy free from  the same reproach; the suspicion attached itself to
Leotychides, the immediate predecessor of Archidamus; to Pleistoanax, the son
of Pausanias; and just before the banishment of Camillus, the famous Gylippus,
the conqueror of the Athenians at Syracuse, had been driven from his country
for a similar act of baseness. Other accounts,' as was natural, ascribed the condemnation of Camillus solely to the envy and hatred of the commons; while,
according to others,"7 his punishment was a sort of ostracism, because the arrogance of his triumph, after the conquest of Veii, seemed inconsistent with the
conduct of a citizen in a free commonwealth. It seems allowed by all, that no
party in the state attempted to save him; and it is clear, also, that he incurred
the forfeiture of all his civil rights in consequence of his not appearing to stand
his trial, either as an outlawry, or because his withdrawal was held equivalent to
21 Livy, V. 80.                       25 Livy, V. 82.
2 Livy, V. 81.                        26 Dionysius, XIII. 5. Fragm. Mai.
28 Livy, V. 82.                        2 Diodlorus, XIV. 117.
" Plutareh, Camillus, 12.




ï~~CHAP. XX.]

CONDITION OF THE ETRUSCAN STATES.

161

a confession of guilt, and a man convicted of furtum, incurred thereby perpetual
ignominy, and lost all his political franchise.  Perhaps his case was like that of
the Spartan Pausanias; and the treasure which he secreted may have been intended to furnish means for making him tyrant of Rome. But at any rate, he
withdrew from Rome before his trial came on, and retired to Ardea. The annalists reported" that as he went out of the gates, he turned round, and prayed
to the gods of his country, that if he were unjustly driven into exile, some grievous calamity might speedily befall the Romans, and force them to call him back
again. They who recorded such a prayer must have believed him innocent, and
therefore forgave him for it; they even thought that the gods heard it with favor, and fulfilled its petition by sending the Gauls, in the very next year, to be
ministers of vengeance on his ungrateful country.
CHAPTER XX.
STATE OF FOREIGN NATIONS AT THE PERIOD OF THE GAULISH INVASIONITALY, SARDINIA, CORSICA.
To r4s *4Eopritpa8  rpayp/artdaS iov.... ro6Far  errt 8rt a&drEp n' rixy oaXev siravra Tri rfs
oxouvivri lsrpdyara  rp s v xs v  opipo,....oir   Kca  s  gTr Laropias  b tlZav vvot/Jv yayai
rois vreyXdvoeucr ray x urav riovnc-rrini, x   KXp ieraL rpc it v rv idu  wv rypayIzdrwv TvvrXfiav.
PoLTBIUS, I. 4.
THE farthest point hitherto reached by the soldiers of any Roman army was
scarcely more than fifty miles distant from Rome.    The southern Intro     toeview
Introduction to the viewv
limit of Roman warfare had been Anxur; its northern was Vul- of theo state of foreign
sinii.  Nor do we read of any treaties or commercial intercourse nation.
by which Rome was connected with foreign powers, since the famous treaty with
Carthage, concluded in the first year of the commonwealth.     Still the nations of
the ancient world knew more of one another than we are inclined to allow: for
we do not enough consider how small a portion of their records has come down
to us; how much must have been done of which mere accident has hindered us
from hearing. About thirty' years later than the Gaulish invasion, the author of
that most curious survey of the coasts of the Mediterranean, known by the name
of the Periplus of Scylax, mentions Rome and Ancona alone of all the cities of Italy,
with the exception of the Greek colonies; and this notice is the more remarkable,
as Rome is not immediately on the coast, and the survey rarely extends to any
place far inland. Aristotle also was not only acquainted with the fact that Rome
was taken by the Gauls, but named an individual whom he called Lucius,' as its
2 Livy, V. 32. Plutarch, Camillus, 12. Dio- ony, but Scylax does not describe it as such;
nysius, XIII. 6.                          whereas, in speaking of the cities on the LucaFor the date of the Periplus of Scylax, see nian and lapygian coast, he expressly notices
Niebuhr's essay in the first volume of his their Greek origin.
"1 Kleine Historisehe Schriften," Bonn, 1828, p.  2 Plutarch, Camillus, 22. It need not be said,
105; or, as translated by Mr. Hare, in the second that in the old times men were designated by
number of the Philological Museum. I have their prenomen rather than by their nomen or
said that Scylax mentions no other Italian cities cognomen; and thus Aristotle would call L.
but Rome and Ancona, with the exception of Furius "Lucius," rather than " Furius," or
the Greek colonies. It is true that, according  " Camillus," just as Polybius calls Scipio "PuI -
to other writers, Ancona itself was a Greek col- lius," and Regulus " Marcus."
11




ï~~162

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. X,

deliverer. Heraclides Ponticus3 even spoke of Rome as a Greek city, which, while
it shows the shallowness of his knowledge concerning it, proves also, that it was
sufficiently famous in Greece, to make the Greeks think it worthy of belonging
to their race and name; and we see, besides, that a wide distinction was drawn
between the Latins and the Etruscans, the latter of whom they always regarded
as foreigners, while in' the former they did but exaggerate the degree of connection really subsisting between the two nations; whose kindred is proved by the
resemblance of their languages. But the fame of the Gaulish invasion, the first
great movement of barbarians breaking down upon the civilized countries of Europe
from the north, which had occurred within historical memory, drew the attention
of the Greeks more than ever towards Italy. And as this invasion led to a more
general mixture of nation and nation, for less than twenty years afterwards we
read of Gaulish cavalry in the service of Dionysius of Syracuse, and of their being
sent by him to Peloponnesus to help the Lacedemonians against Epaminondas;
so I may at this period draw up the curtain which has hitherto veiled from our
view all countries and people beyond the immediate neighborhood of the Tiber,
and look as widely over the face of the world as the fullest knowledge of Greeks
or Carthaginians enabled them at this time to see either eastward or westward.
The fall of Veii, and the submission of Capena and Falerii, have shown us that
the greatness of the Etruscans was on the wane. In the days of
The Et.rusans,  their highest prosperity they had spread their dominion widely
over Italy. The confederacy of their twelve cities, each of which was again the
head of a smaller confederacy of the neighboring towns, occupied the whole country between the Tiber, the Macra, the Apennines, and the sea. But they were
also to be found on the north of the Apennines,4 and another Etruscan confederacy, consisting also of their favorite number of twelve cities, extended to the
shores of the Adriatic, and possessed the plain of the Po, and of its tributary
rivers to the north and south, from the sea as high as the Trebia. Bononia,
under its older name of Felsina, Melpum, Mantua, and Atria, with Cupra on the
coast of the Adriatic, were Etruscan towns. Nor had their dominion been confined to the north of the Tiber; a third confederacy of twelve cities had occupied
Campania;' and amongst these were Capua, Nola, Surrentum, and Salernum.

3 Plutarch, Camillus, 22. Heraclides noticed
Rome in his treatise, IIHepi pvx6; and said that
a report had come from the west, telling how a
host had come from the land of the Hyperboreans, without the Pillars of Hercules, and had
taken a Greek city called Rome, which was situated somewhere in those parts about the great
sea.
4 This is the positive statement of the ancient
writers; as Livy, V. 33, Strabo, V. p. 216, and
Verrius Flaccus and Cacina, quoted by the inierpreters of Virgil,.En. X. 198, in the Verona
MS. Niebuhr, agreeably to his notion that the
Etruscans came into Italy over the Alps, from
the north, and not by sea from Asia, considers
their settlements in the valley of the Po to have
been older than those in Etruria. Miller believes them to have been of equal antiquity with
each other; the Etruscans, or Rasena, he holds
to have been an aboriginal people of Italy, settled from time immemorial both on the north
and south sides of the Apennines.-(Etrusker,
Einleitung, III. Â~ 1.) Micali places the original
seat of the Etruseans in the Apennines; he
even ventures to fix on the precise spot, namely,
the mountains which extend from the high point
of La Falterona, above the valley of the Sieve, or
ofMugello. (Storia degli antichi popoli Italiani
Vol. I. p. 106.) From thence they descendecd
first into Etruria, and afterwards, having become
a civilized people, they sent out their colonies
into northern Italy. Without entering on the

endless question of the origin of the Etruscans
or of the comparative antiquity of their several
settlements, I have thought it sufficient merely
to notice the limits which their nation reached
at the time of its greatest power.
b It is well known that Niebuhr doubts the
existence of this Campanian Dodecapolis; and
he thinks that the whole statement of Etruscan
settlements in Campania is a mere mistake, arisis.g out of the common confusion between the
Tyrrhenians and the Etruscans. He says that
neither in the inscriptions found in Campania,
nor in the works of art, is there to be observed
any trace of an Etruscan population; and he
thinks that in the days of the Etruscan greatness, that is, in the third century of Rome, we
cannot conceive the possibility of Etruscan colonies being settled in Campania, while the intervening country between the Tiber and the Liris
was occupied by the Romans and the Opican nations. See Vol. I. p. 74, 76, Eng. transl. Muiller,
on the contrary, receives the common account of
the ancient writers as containing in it nothing
improbable. Etrusker, Einleitung, IV. I. Polybius' testimony is positive that the Etruscans
possessed the Phlegrnan plains round Capua
and Nola, at the time when they were also in possession of the plains round the Po, II. 17. And
there were writers whom Velleius Paterculus
quotes as saying that Capua and Nola were
founded by the Etruscans, about forty-eight
years before the common date of the foundation




ï~~CHAP. XX.]

CONDITION OF THE ETRUSCAN STATES.

163

Nay, there are traditions and names which have preserved a record of a still more
extended Etruscan sovereignty: there was a time when their settlements in Campania must have been connected with those in Etruria by an uninterrupted line of
conquered countries; the Volscians6 were once subject to the Etruscans; the
name of Tusculum seems to show that their power had penetrated into Latium;
and it is stated generally that they had possessed nearly the whole of Italy.' But
from this their height of greatness they had long since fallen. Within historical
memory they were only to be found in Etruria, on the Po, and in Campania; but
about half a century before the period at which we are now arrived, the Samnites had broken up their southern confederacy, and had wrested8 from them
Capua, and most of their other cities in that quarter; while more recently, in the
last year of the siege of Veii,9 the conquest of their northern confederacy was
completed by the Gauls. Thus there only remained the central confederacy of
Etruria Proper, and even this had been broken in upon, as we have seen, by the
loss of Veii. Still there were left to them the powerful cities of Tarquinii, Vetulonium, Volaterrs, and Pisa, on or near the coast; and Nr the interior Vulsinii,
Clusium, Perusia, Cortona, and Arretium.
We are told that in early times0 the Etruscans had enjoyed the dominion of
the neighboring seas, as well as the land of Italy. About one hun- Theirrelationswiththe
dred and fifty years before the fall of Veii, the Etruscans and Car- Greeks.
thaginians in the western part of the Mediterranean stood in nearly the same
relation to the Greeks who ventured into those seas, as the Spaniards in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did to the English in the West Indies and in
South America. The Greeks were treated as interlopers, and they in their turn
seem to have held, that there was no peace beyond the Straits of Messina. Dionysius of Phocea, when he fled from the ruin of the Ionian cause in Asia Minor,
after the sea-fight off Miletus, considered the Etruscans1 and Carthaginians as his
natural prey, just as Raleigh regarded the Spaniards; and those treaties of commerce between Etruria and Carthage, of which Aristotle' has preserved the memory, provided, it is likely, not only for their relations with one another, but for their
mutual defence against a nation whom both looked upon as their common enemy.
But with the growth of the Greek cities in Sicily the maritime dominion of the
Etruscans began to fall; and after the great naval victory gained over them at
Cuma by Gelon's brother and successor, Hiero, they sank from sovereigns of the
sea to pirates; and a few years afterwards, a very short time before the decemvirate at Rome, the Syracusans"3 sent a fleet to the coast of Etruria, with the

of Rome. When Paterculus further quotes Cato,
as saying that Capua had been founded by the
Etruscans, and yet that it had existed only two
hundred and sixty years at the time of its conquest by the Romans in the second Punic war,
there is indeed a calculation not very easy to be
explained; for this would place the foundation
of the Etruscan Capua, or Vulturnum, only
about fifty years earlier than its conquest by the
Samnites, and in the year of Rome 281, a period
at which it is indeed difficult to conceive of the
Etruscans as establishing themselves for the first
time in Campania. The solution of the whole
question is, probably, to be found in what Virgil says of Mantua: " Gens illi triplex:....
Tusco de sanguine vires." The ruling portion
of these Camlanian cities was Etruscan, but the
bulk of the population was Oscan. Thus, when
they were conquered by the Samnites, the marks
of the Etruscan dominion speedily vanished,
and the inscriptions which have reached our
times are naturally Oscan, as that continued to
be the language of the mass of the people. The
foundation of Capua and Nola by the Etruscans
may, in fact, have been no more than their occupation by some bands of Etrusean adventurers, who may have been engaged in the service

of the Oscan inhabitants; just as Mastarna and
his followers once occupied Rome, or as the
Campanians afterwards occupied Messina. The
Etruscan Dodecapolis, or confederacy of twelve
cities, ifindeed it ever existed in Campania, must
have been founded undoubtedly at an earlier
period; and yet we need not conceive it much
earlier than the beginning of the commonwealth
of Rome.
6 Servius, JEn. XI. v. 567.
SServius, En. XI. v. 567.
8 Livy, IV. 87.
9 Melpum, one of the richest cities inthe country north of the Po, was said by Cornelius Nepos [Pliny, Hist. Natur. III. 17] to have been
destroyed by the Gauls on the very day on which
Camillus took Veil. What gave occasion to this
story, representing the coincidence as so x ery
exact, it is hard to guess; but that generally the
fall of the northern Etruscan confederacy was
contemporary with the siege of Veii, is rendered
sufficiently probable by the appearance of the
Gauls in Etruria Proper so soon afterwards.
to Livy, V. 833.
1 Herodotus, VI. 17.
12 Politic. III. 9.
13 Diodorus, XI. 88.




ï~~164

HISTORY OF ROME.

[C AP. XX

avowed object of putting down their piracies. And yet we know there was an
active commerce14 carried on between Etruria and the cities of old Greece, so
advantageous to both nations, that we can scarcely conceive how either of them
could have allowed the robberies of its own people to hazard its interruption. It
is possible, however, that what the Greeks call piracy was a system of vexations
and violence carried on against Greek vessels in the Etruscan seas, with the view
of keeping the trade exclusively in Etruscan hands; and the robberies of which
the Greeks complained were committed by the people of the small towns along
the coast, who, not possessing natural advantages or wealth enough to engage on
a large scale in commerce, turned their seamanship and enterprise to account in
another way, and fitted out small vessels for piracy instead of the large ships
employed for trading voyages. Thus it is expressly mentioned that the people
of Care,' which was a large and wealthy city, possessing its harbor on the coast
for the convenience of its trade, were wholly free from the reproach of piratical
practices thrown by the Greeks upon the mass of their countrymen.
Nothing can be more unequal than the fate of the three sister islands of Sicily,
Sardinia, and Corsica. Whilst the first of them has rivalled in its
Sardinia.     fame the most distinguished countries of Europe, the two latter
have remained in obscurity from the earliest times down to the present hour. They
seemed to repel that kindling spark of Greek civilization, which found so congenial an element in Sicily; and, therefore, as they did not receive what was the
great principle of life in the ancient world, they were condemned to perpetual
inactivity and helplessness. Of what race were the earliest inhabitants of Sardinia, we have no records to inform us. Settlers from Africa, not Carthaginians,
but native Lybians," are said to have crossed over to the island at a very remote
period. They were followed at intervals, such was the Greek tradition, by some
adventurers or fugitives from Greece and Asia Minor; but these all belong to
the mythic period, and the Greek settlements are said to have been afterwards
utterly extirpated, whilst those from Asia, described as fugitives from Troy, were
driven to the mountains and became barbarized. A more probable statement mentions a colony of Iberians from Spain, the founders of Nora,7 the oldest city in the
island; and during the height of the Etruscan dominion, the Etruscan colonists
brought in a new element to the already mingled population. When the power
of the Carthaginians began to grow, Sardinia soon attracted their notice; already,
in the first year of the Roman commonwealth, eight-and-twenty years before the
expedition of Xerxes, it is spoken of as belonging exclusively to their dominion,
in their famous commercial treaty with Rome; and at the period of the great Persian invasion of Greece, Sardinia is mentioned, together with Corsica, as furnishing
mercenary soldiers to that great host with which Hamilcar invaded Sicily, and
which was destroyed by Gelon at Himera. Yet a few years before, when the
Persians were overpowering the Greek commonwealths in Asia Minor, Sardinia
was more than once looked to by the Ionions,'5 as offering them a desirable refuge
from the conquerors' dominion, and as affording every facility for a flourishing
Greek colony. But it was to the lonians of Asia like an unknown world; and
no sufficient number of colonists could be induced to join in the enterprise, while
a small body would have been utterly unable to maintain its ground against the
Carthaginians. Thus Sardinia remained subject to Carthage; and as the Carthaginians wanted it chiefly to supply their armies with soldiers, and to provide
harbors for their ships engaged in the trade with Etruria, they took no pains to
improve its natural resources, but are said to have purposely kept waste" some
14 We know this by the surest evidence,  Strabo, V. 2,.Â~ 3, p. 220.
namely, by the vast quantities of Greek, and in  is Pausanias, X. 17.
particular of Athenian pottery, found in the re-  Pausanias, X. 17.
cent excavations at Vulci and Tarquinii. See  HIlerodotus, VII. 165.
the "i Discours de M. Bunsen," in the sixth vol-  19 Herodotus, I. 170, V. 124.
lume of the " Annali dell' Instituto di corrispon-  20 Aristotle, De mirabil. 100.
denza archeologica," p. 40, et seqq.




ï~~CHAP. XX.]

CORSICA--CAMPANIA.

165

of its most fertile districts, that no reports of its fertility might tempt thither what
they above all things dreaded, a colony of Greeks.
Corsica had undergone nearly the same course of events as Sardinia. It
oldest inhabitants were Iberians and Ligurians; it was then occu-cri
pied by the Etruscans, who after having, by the aid of the Carthaginians, effected the ruin of the Greek settlement of Aleria or Alalia,2 and having
shared the dominion of the island with their Carthaginian allies down to the time
of the decemvirate at Rome, were now, in the general decline of their nation,
leaving it entirely to the Carthaginians. Corsica was valuable for its timber and
its mines, but its agriculture was of no account, and its native inhabitants were
reckoned among the most untamable of barbarians.22
These were the countries which bounded the horizon of Rome to the north and
west. Southward and eastward, beyond that belt of mountain
country held by the Opican nations, the Â~Equians and Volscians, CJampania.
which girt in Latium from the Anio to the sea, there lay a country, destined ere
long to be the favorite battle-field of the Romans, but a stranger to them as yet
both in the relations of peace and of war. Campania, inhabited in the most remote times by the Sikelians,23 then wrested from them by the Opicans, receiving
at a very early period the first germ of Greek civilization, in the Chalcidian colony
of Cuma, and afterwards subjected, like so many other parts of Italy, to the
wide-spreading dominion of the Etruscans, had lately, as we have seen, submitted
to a new invader, the nation of the Samnites. The Samnites, a people of the Sabellian or Sabine race, had descended from their high valleys amidst the ranges
of the divided line of the Apennines, and were now the ruling nation in Campania, although they had by no means extirpated the older races of its inhabitants
On the contrary, they seem themselves to have almost melted away into the general mass of their mixed subjects; the conquered did not become Samnites, but
the conquerors became Campanians, the Opican or Oscan being the prevailing language, but the influence of the Greek colonies, Cuma and Neapolis, spreading
powerfully around them, as usual, the arts and the manners of Greece. But the
Samnite invasion, and the revolution which followed it, produced great disorder;
the old inhabitants, whom the conquerors despoiled of their property, were driven
to maintain themselves by their swords; the conquerors themselves had many adventurers amongst them, who preferred war with the prospect of fresh plunder,
to a peaceful life in the country which they had won; and thus for more than a
century we read of numerous bands of Campanian or Opican mercenaries, partly
Samnite and partly Oscan, employed in the wars of Sicily, as if foreign service
had been one of the principal resources of the nation. It is mentioned that eight
hundred of them were engaged by the Chalcidian Greeks of Cuma or Neapolis,24
to serve in the Athenian armament against Syracuse; but that arriving in Sicily
after the destruction of the Athenians, they were hired by the Carthaginians.
As a new people had thus arisen in Campania, so new names and a new power
had lately come into notice in the south of Italy. From Thurii to nvason of the soth of
Rhegium, on the shore of the Ionian sea, from Rhegium to Posi- Italy by theo Lucanians.
donia on the Tyrrhenian sea, the numerous Greek colonies which lined both
coasts were settled in a country known to the early Greek writers by the names
of Italia and (Enotria25  The natives of the interior, (Enotrians and Chonians,
had for many years past wanted either the will or the power to offer serious annoyance to the Greeks; and when Sybaris was destroyed by its neighbor city
Croton, the natives took no advantage of these internal quarrels, and a new
Greek colony, Thurii, arose in the place of Sybaris, without any opposition on
their part. But the latter part of the fifth century before the Christian era, in
other words, the early part of the fourth century of Rome, and the period of the
21 Herodotus, I. 166.                 2 Diodorus, XIII. 44.
22 Strabo, V. 2, 6, 7, p. 224.        " Aristotle, Politica, VII. 10. Herodotus, L
2 Thucydides, VI. 2.                o167.




ï~~166

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. X

Peloponnesian war, was a time marked by natural as well as political calamities
beyond all remembered example. The pestilences, which we have already noticed as causing such havoc at RIome and throughout Latium, travelled, we may
be sure, into Samnium also; their visitations are often accompanied by unfavorable seasons, which cause scarcity or famine; and the distress occasioned by one
or both of these scourges, may have led to those movements amongst the Samnites, which at this period so greatly changed the face of Italy. On one side, as
we have seen, they broke in upon the Opicans of the valley of the Vulturnus and
the country round Vesuvius; on another they overwhelmed the Enotrians and
Chonians,5 and spread themselves as far as the Ionian sea. The tribe or mixed
multitude which moved on this expedition southwards, was afterwards known by
the name of Lucanians. It does not follow that they were numerous, far less
are we to suppose that they extirpated the older inhabitants; but as conquerors
they gave their name to the country, and till they gradually became a settled
people, they were the terror of the Greek colonies. It is probable that many of
the (Enotrians became barbarized by the oppressions and example of their conquerors, and that the whole population of the interior, known under one common
name of Lucanians, carried on a restless plundering warfare against the Greek
cities on both coasts of the peninsula. Posidonia fell into their hands, and the
Greek inhabitants, like the Opicans of Capua, became a subject people in their
own city; and so general was the terror excited by the Lucanian inroads, that
the Greeks formed a league7 amongst themselves for their mutual defence, and
if any city was backward in coming to the rescue, when summoned to aid against
the Lucanians, its generals were to be put to death. But whilst the barbarians
were thus driving them to the sea, another enemy drove them back from the sea
to the barbarians. Dionysius of Syracuse had formed an alliance with the Lucanians, hoping, with their aid, to obtain possession of the Greek cities; he repeatedly invaded Italy, destroyed Caulon and Hipponium, and made himself
master of Rhegium.
When the Lucanians first became formidable to the Italian Greeks, they were
character ofthe Luca- stigmatized as a horde of the lowest barbarians,28 a mixed band
nians.        of robbers, swelled by fugitive slaves, and desperate adventurers
of every description. But when time had converted the invaders and plunderers
of Enotria into its regular inhabitants and masters, when the Lucanians had an
opportunity of displaying the better points of their character, then the contrast
between their simple and severe manners, and the extreme profligacy of the
Greek colonies, could not fail to attract attention.  "The Lucanians," says Heraclides Ponticus,2 "are a hospitable and an upright people."  And another testimony80 declares that "amongst the Lucanians, extravagance and idleness are
punishable crimes; and if any man lends money to a notorious spendthrift, the
law will nob enable him to recover it." We find similar praises bestowed by
Scymnus of Chios on the Illyrians, who a century before his time had been infamous for their piracies. But when a rude people have lost somewhat of their
ferocity, and have not yet acquired the vices of a later stage of civilization, their
character really exhibits much that is noble and excellent, and both in its good
and bad points it so captivates the imagination, that it has always been regarded
by the writers of a more advanced state of society with an admiration even beyond its merits.
The extreme southeastern point, the heel of Italy, was the country of the
21 Strabo, VI. 1, Â~ 2, 8, p. 258, 254.  latter part of the fourth century before the
27 Diodorus, XIV. 101.                Christian tnra: he was a disciple of Plato, Spen28 We Athenians, says Isocrates, pov pOraati- sippus, and Aristotle. See Fynes Clinton, Fasti
6oecv rois f3ov ua0voa racirrs re sbyvsia  Tplt3aX- Hellen. Vol. III. Appendix XII.
oi Kait Asvcavoi r7il earwv vcAsvSiae. De Pace,  30 Nicolas Damascenus, de moribus gentium.
Â~ 62, p. 169.                          Artic. " Lucani." He lived in the Augustan
SDe Politiis sive rebuspublicis. Artic. " Lu- age.
ceni." Heraclides Ponticus flourished in the




ï~~OCr. XX.]

DIONYSIUS OF SICILY.

167

Iapygians or Apulians, the one being the Greek and the other the
Latin form of the same name.3' They stretched round the Iapy- Ipygia.
gian cape, and were to be found along the coast of the Adriatic, as far as the
headland of Garganus. But neither these nor the Sabellian nations immediately
beyond them, nor the Umbrians, who lived again still further to the northwest,
and joined the Etruscan settlements on the shores of the Adriatic, were, as yet,
become famous in history.
There was, however, a movement beginning about this period on the east of
Italy, which threatened to lead to the most important conse- Interference of niony.
quences. Dionysius of Syracuse, unsatisfied with his Sicilian do- ius of Syracuse  in the
minion, and looking to Greece itself as the most tempting field of asof oath Italy
ambition to every Greek, was desirous of getting a footing on the coast of Epirus, and of establishing a naval power in the Ionian sea and the Adriatic. Accordingly he entered into an alliance with the Illyrians,32 and, unless there is a
confusion between the two names, he occupied both the island of Issa,n the modern Lissa, and the town of Lissus34 on the main land, a little to the north of Epidamnus, and kept a fleet regularly stationed at this latter settlement, to uphold
the reputation of his power. But there is a statement in Pliny3" and other writers, that Ancona, Mumana, and Adria, on the coast of Italy, were ilso Sicilian
settlements. Adria is expressly said to have been founded by Dionysius, and
his intercourse with these countries is further shown by the fact, that he was in
the habit of importing the Venetian horses,36 as the best breed for racing; the
great games of Greece being to him, as they had been to Alcibiades, an object
of peculiar interest and ambition. Strabo also calls Ancona a Syracusan colony,3"
but ascribes its foundation to some exiles who fled from the tyranny of Dionysius. That there was a Greek population there, and that the Greek language
was prevalent, is proved by its coins; yet on the other hand, Scylax, though he
names Ancona, does not call it a Greek city, a circumstance which he rarely or
never admits, when he is speaking of Greek cities built on a foreign coast. The
probability is, that the death of Dionysius, and the subsequent decline of his
power, left these remote colonies to themselves; that their communication with
Greece and Sicily was greatly checked by the growing piracies of the Illyrians,
and that they admitted, either willingly or by necessity, an intermixture of barbarian citizens from the surrounding nations, which destroyed or greatly impaired
their Greek character. But it marks the power of Dionysius, that at one and
the same time he should have been founding colonies on the coast of the Adriatic, and that on the other side of Italy he should have been master of the sea
without opposition, insomuch that, under pretence of restraining the piracies of

3 See Niebuhr, Vol. I. p. 151. Ed. 1827.
2 Diodorus, XV. 13.
3 Scymnus Chius, V. 413. Scylax also calls
Issa a Greek city.
34 Diodorus, XV. 13, 14. It is hard to account
for the strange state of the actual text of Diodorus, in which, after mentioning the foundation of
Lissus, it goes on, ~i ravrs ovv bpiewOs'evoLsovvyo KaroKs[asr6S vEpta. K. r. X. describing, in three
lines, the great works of Dionysius at Syracuse,
which Diodorus had already mentioned at
length in the preceding book, and which have
no intelligible connection with the foundation
of Lissus. It is a curious specimen of the patchwork of so many of the ancient histories; for
the whole passage, beginning at Ildptot Kard riva
XP  e6v, and going down to the end of the chapter, is taken apparently from some account
either of Paros, or of the Greek settlements in
the western seas, where the writer having been
led accidentally to mention Dionysius, suprepdfavro auro  couvvelov rot rvpdvvov, took the opportunity to give a brief sketch of the great
ness of so famous a man. But Diodorus must
have left out something in the middle of the
passage, and joined the end with the beginning
with most extraordinary carelessness; h1 rabrs
never could have referred to rey r6Av reyv voacoivv Asteav, but, as I should suppose, to Syracuse, such as it was when Dionysius first became tyrant. Some mention of Syracuse must
have preceded the description of the docks and
walls, and the expression, r- i7r6A, as at present
the sentence is either wholly ungrammatical, o
is mere nonsense. Mitford really supposes that
E rabrns refers to Lissus and talks of the advantages derived from this colony giving Dionysius the means of building docks, &c., at Syracuse; an interpretation equally at variance
with grammar and with history.
3 Hist. Natural. III. 13. Numana a Siculia
condita; ab iisdem colonia Ancona. Etymologic. Magn. in "Adpiaf.
3s Strabo, V. 1, Â~ 4, p. 212.
7 V. 4, Â~ 2, p. 241.




ï~~168

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Oa.P. XXI

the Etruscans, he appeared with a fleet of sixty triremes"' on the coast of Etruria,
passed the mouth of the Tiber almost within sight of Rome, landed on the territory of Caere, defeated the inhabitants who came out to resist him, sacked their
sea-port of Pyrgi, and carried off from the plunder of the temple of Leucothea,"
or Mater Matuta, a sum computed at no less than a thousand talents.
The mention of this eminent man leads me naturally to Sicily, to take some
notice of the heart and root of that mighty dominion which spread out its arms
so widely and so vigorously. Besides, the Roman history has hitherto presented
us with nothing but general pictures, or sketches rather, of the state of the commonwealth as a whole: individuals have been as little prominent as the figures
in a landscape: they have been too subordinate, and occupied too small a space
in the picture, to enable us to form any distinct notion of their several features.
But Dionysius outtopped by his personal renown the greatness of the events in
which he was an actor; he stood far above all his contemporaries, as the most
remarkable man in the western part of the civilized world. We may be allowed,
then, to overstep the limits of Italy, and to consider the fortunes and character
of a man who was the ruler of Syracuse and of Sicily, during a period of nearly
orty years in the middle of the fourth century of Rome.
CHAPTER XXI.
DIONYSIUS THE ELDER, TYRANT OF SYRACUSE.
I6dr Xeov EKItrwtovd fbacrt lpu ei vra, rtvac broapldvet payparTLKt rdrovTO  vpac 7yeyTovlvat a o.   yv
ro pL pordrovc)pe To eiv, roes 7repi 'Ayaoa ia 'c Aietovtov ros EtKeXAt ra;.-Kai 7repL tv r vrotobrw,.vpov E' his rao,ayta v roi)craytvo'ricovra... ctiKad6 ov 7rpoert &vat rv, V tlcdoacovra AyovAp6t.-POLYBIUs, XV. 35.
THE history of colonies seldom offers the noblest specimens of national charState of Syracuse be- acter.  The Syracusan people, made up, in the course of a long
fore the tyranny of alternation of tyrannies and factions, out of the most various eleDionysius.     ments, had been bound together by no comprehensive code of
laws, and, from their very circumstances, they could not find a substitute for
such a code in the authority of ancient and inherited rites of religion, and of the
manners and customs of their fathers.
The richer citizens, who often possessed very large fortunes, were always susermocrate and Di.- pected, and probably not without reason, of aiming at making
dxes.         themselves tyrants; whilst the people, possessing actual power,
yet feeling that its tenure was precarious, were disposed to be suspicious, even
beyond measure, and were prone to violence and cruelty. The Athenian invasion, by obliging the Syracusans to fit out a great naval force, had increased, as
usual, the power of the poorer classes,' who always formed the great mass of
the seamen in the Greek commonwealths: while, on the other hand, although
IHermocrates, one of the most eminent of the aristocratical leaders, had personally displayed great courage and ability, and although the cavalry in which the
28 Diodorus, XV. 14. Pseudo-Aristotle, (Eco- Aristotle. "Leucothee Graecis, Matuta vocan
norn. II. p. 1349. Ed. Bekker.         bhere nostris."  Ovid, Fasti, VI. 545.
a v'EAa(3etv be r~i    AsveeOtas ~po,. Pseudo-  ' Aristotle, Politic. V. 4.




ï~~CHAP. XXI.]

CODE OF DIOOLES.

richest citizens se rved had always acquitted itself well, yet the heavy-armed infantry, which contained the greatest proportion of the upper classes, had gained
little credit; and the victory over the invaders had been won by the seamen of
Syracuse far more than by its soldiers. Thus the popular party became greatly
strengthened by the issue of the invasion: Hermocrates and some of his friends
were banished," while Diocles, the head of the popular party, a man somewhat
resembling the" tribune Rienzi, a sincere and stern reformer, but whose zealous
imagination conceived schemes beyond his power to compass, endeavored at
once to give to his countrymen3 a pure democracy, and to establish it on its only
sure foundation, by building it upon a comprehensive system of national law.
Of the details of this code we know nothing. Diodorus ascribes to it the high
merits of conciseness and precision, and while he speaks of it as
code of Diocles.
severe, he praises it for its discrimination in proportioning its punishments to the magnitude of the crime. But its best praise is, that it continued
to enjoy the respect, not only of the Syracusans, but of other Sicilian states
also, till the Roman law superseded it. This was the law of Syracuse, and Diocles was the lawgiver: while others, who in the time of Timoleon, and again in
the reign of Hiero, either added to it, or modified it, were called by no other
title than expounders of the law;4 as if the only allowed object for succeeding
legislators was to ascertain the real meaning of the code of Diocles, and not to
alter it.
But democracy and law, when first introduced amongst a corrupt and turbulent people, require to be fostered under the shelter of profound Efforts of the aristocrat.
peace.   Unluckily for Diocles, his new constitution was born to ica partyagainst it.
stormy times; its promulgation was coincident with the renewal of the Carthaginian invasions of Sicily, after an interval of nearly a century. "War," says
Thucydides,5 "makes men's tempers as hard as their circumstances."          The
Syracusan government was engaged in an arduous struggle; the power of its
enemy was overwhelming, while every failure in military operations bred an increase of suspicion and disaffection at home. Then the aristocratical party began, as they are wont to do, to use popular language, in order to excite the
passions of the multitude, and thus make them the instruments of their own
ruin. They encouraged the cry of treason and corruption against the generals
of the commonwealth; and personal profligacy was united with party zeal.
Hipparinus was a member of the aristocratical party; he was also a desperate
man, because he had ruined himself by his extravagance;s both these causes
united made him anxious to overthrow the popular government; and looking
about for a fit instrument to accomplish his purpose, he found and brought forward Dionysius.
There must have been no ordinary promise of character in Dionysius to lead to
such a choice. He was a young man under five-and-twenty,? not Early character of Dieodistinguished for his birth or fortune, and his personal condition nyou"
was humble; he was a clerk' in some one of the departments of the public business. But he had been a follower of Hermocrates, and had accompanied him in
his attempt to effect his return from exile by force, and had been wounded' in
the conflict which took place on that occasion, and in which Hermocrates was
killed. He was brave, active, and eloquent; the wealth"0 and influence of a
2 Xenoph. Hellenic. I. i. Â~ 27. Thucydides,  10 It is said that at the beginning of his career,
VIII. 85.                                when he was fined, on one occasion, by the mag3 Diodorus, XIII. 84, 85.             istrates for addressing the people irregularly,
4 'E fryrpv rou vopoOrov. Diod. XIII. 85.  Philistus, the historian, a man of large property,
SIll. 82. Biatos idaderaos, Kca ipf Ta 7rrapora paid the fine for him, and told him to go on
-as  T  yis  otv7?Xwv!qooi.           speaking as much as he pleased, and that as
6 Aristotle, Politica, V. 6.           often as the magistrates fined him, so often
SCicero, Tusculan. Disputat. V. 20.    would he continue to discharge the fine for him
s Demosthenes, Leptines, prope finem.  Diodorus, XIII. 91.
Diodorus, XIII. 75.




ï~~170

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXI

powerful party supported him, and he came forward when men's minds were
wrought up to the highest pitch of alarm and irritation; for Agrigentum, after
a seven months' siege, had been taken and sacked by the Carthaginians, and the
fugitives who fled to Syracuse for shelter, ascribed the loss of their city to the
misconduct of the Syracusan generals, who had been sent to its relief, and had
allowed it to fall unprotected.
The popular party was no longer headed by Diocles. We do'not know the
eatoDioes.  exact time or occasion of his death, but the circumstances attendDetofDiocl. ing it are most remarkable. One of the laws of his code had denounced the penalty of death against any man who came into the market-place
armed. This was especially directed, no doubt, against the aristocratical party,
who were apt to resort to violence,1 in order to break up or intimidate the assemblies of the people, or to revenge themselves on any of the more obnoxious
popular leaders. It happened that Diocles had marched out of the city on an
alarm of some hostile inroad, perhaps that very attempt" of Hermocrates to get
back to Syracuse by force, which has been already noticed. But he was suddenly recalled by the news that the enemy were in the city, and, armed as he
was, he hastened back to meet them, and found them already in possession ot
the market-place. A private citizen, most probably after the fray was over,
when the death of so eminent a citizen as Hermocrates would be deeply felt,
even by many of his political adversaries, called out to Diocles, in allusion to his
having appeared in arms in the market-place, "Ah, Diocles, thou art making
void thine own laws!" " Nay rather," was his reply, " I will ratify them thus;"
and he instantly stabbed himself to the heart. Such a spirit, so sincere, and so
self-devoted, might well have been the founder of freedom and of legal order for
his country, and saved her, had his life been prolonged, from the selfish ambition of Dionysius.
His place at the head of the government was supplied, inadequately, as it apestoraof theari- pears, by Daphneus and Demarchus."3 Dionysius played the
tocraticexiles.  demagogue ably; inveighing against the incapacity of the generals, representing them as men of overweening influence,4 and urging that the
people would do well to choose in their place men of humbler means, whom they
would be able more effectually to control. Accordingly the assembly deposed
their actual generals, and elected others in their room, and amongst these was
Dionysius. Thus far successful, he ventured on a more decisive measure, a general recall of exiled citizens."  It should be remembered, that in the continual
struggles between the aristocratical and popular parties throughout Greece, the
triumph of one side was accompanied by the banishment of the most forward
supporters of the other. Every state had thus always its exiles, like the fuorusciti of the Italian republics, whose absence's was essential to the maintenance
of the existing order of things, and whose recall was equivalent to a revolution.

21 As the aristocrats at Corcyra broke into the
council-lhouse with daggers, and murdered the
heads of the popular party to the number of
about sixty, partly to escape from the payment
of a fine which they had lawfully incurred, and
partly to prevent the passing of a decree for an
alliance with Athens. Thucyd. III. 70.
12 It is true that, according to Diodorus, Diocles had been banished some time before [XIII.
75]; but his account of the affairs of Syracuse,
between the Athenian expedition and the tyranny of Dionysius, is exceedingly fragmentary,
and observes no chronological order. It may
be, then, that Diodcles had been recalled previously to the final attempt of Hermocrates; at
least the circumstances of that attempt, and of
the affray which led to the death of Diocles, bear
a remarkable resemblance to each other. See
Diodorus, XIII. 3388 and 75.

13 Diodorus, XIII. 96. Daphnoeus had commanded the Syracusan troops which had been
sent ineffectually to the relief of Agrigentum.
Diodorus, XIII. 86. Demarchus was one of the
generals sent to supersede Hermocrates in the
command of the auxiliary force which was cooperating with the Peloponnesians, on the coast
of Asia Minor, against the Athenians. Thucyd.
VIII. 85.
14 Diodorus, XIII. 91. Aristotle, Politica, V.
5. ALovOto KaTlyopw(v Aacvaiov c  w riv rovaieov
iq Or 7;N rvavvioet6t rhjv ExOpav rs'revOt6 dg
I5pOTLKSdci v.
5 Diodorus, XIII. 92.
16 Thus it was one of the clauses in the oath
taken by every member of the court of Helinea,
at Athens, " that he would not recall those citizens who were in exile." Demosthenes, Timocrates, p. 746.




ï~~CHAr. XXI.]

GENERAL POLICY OF DIONYSIUS.

171

The Syracusan exiles were the youth of the aristocratical party, the friends and
comrades of Hermocrates, bold and enterprising, proud and licentious, the counterparts of Kaeso Quinctius and of the supporters of the decemvir Appius; men
whose natural hatred and scorn of the popular party was embittered by the
recollection of their exile.  An obdurate spirit is not the vice cf a democracy;
the kindly feelings of the people, their sympathies with youth and high birth,
their hopes andtheir fears were alike appealed to; the tide was already setting
towards aristocracy; the assembly decreed a general recall of the exiles, and the
revolution from that moment became inevitable.
The overthrow of the constitution of Diocles and of the popular party was
sure; but it was owing to the terror of the Carthaginian arms, and  inysi   ointed
Dionysius  appointed
the personal ascendency of Dionysius, that there was set up in its. captain-general of th
place the despotism   of a single man, instead of an aristocracy. commonwealth.
Dionysius continued to attack his colleagues,'1 no less than the generals who had
preceded them; "they were selling Syracuse to the Carthaginians," he said;
"they were withholding the soldiers' pay, and appropriating the public money to
themselves; he could not endure to act with such associates, and was resolved
therefore to lay down his office." A dictatorship is the most natural government
for seasons of extraordinary peril, when there appears a man fit to wield it. The
terror of the coalition drove the French, amidst the full freshness of their enthusiasm for liberty, to submit to the despotism of the committee of public safety;
and Dionysius, bowing all minds to his ascendency by the mighty charm of superior genius, was elected sovereign commander of the commonwealth."      It is said
that Hipparinus, who first brought him forward, was appointed as his nominal
colleague; with as much of real equality of power as was enjoyed by Lebrun and
Cambaceres when they were elected consuls along with Napoleon.
From this time forward Dionysius retained the supreme power in Syracuse till
his death, a period of nearly forty years.  When he first assumed
the government, the Peloponnesian war was not yet ended: and Length ofhisreign.
one of his latest measures was to send aid to his allies the Lacedemonians, when
Sparta itself was threatened with conquest by an army of the Theban confederacy, headed by Epaminondas. In the course of this long reign he had to contend
more than once with domestic enemies, and was always more or less engaged in
hostility with Carthage. The first hlie crushed, and from the last, although reduced on one occasion to the extremest jeopardy, he came forth at last triumphant. Without entering into a regular account of his life and actions, it will be
enough to take a general view of his government in some of its most important
relations at home and abroad.
Dionysius owed his elevation, as we have seen, to the ascendency of his own
genius acting upon minds agitated by suspicion of their own gov- Internal ffairs. State
ernment, and by intense fear of the progress of the Carthaginians. ofparties.
The recall of the exiles gave him a number of devoted partisans, and the war led
to the employment of a large body of mercenary soldiers, who both from inclination and interest would be disposed to support an able and active general. These
remained faithful to him9 when his ill success against the Carthaginians, in the
27 Diodorus, XII.L 94.                 also should be invested with these All powers,
ias V9ur#7yk aironpdrwp. It is not to be sup- and that the people should take the oath which,
posed that this title conferred that unconstitu- in fact, conveyed them, namely, "that they
tional and absolute power which the Greeks would let their generals exercise their command
called " tyranny." It implied merely an unre- at their discretion." See Thucydides, VI. 26,
stricted power of conducting the operations of '72. But as the perpetual dictatorship at Rome
the war, and released the general from the ne- was equivalent to a tyranny, so Dionysius, by
cessity of consulting the government at home retaining his command for an unlimited time,
as to his measures, and of commlunicating his and abusing the military power which it gave
plans to them. It was the title conferred on Ni- him for purposes wholly foreign to its proper
cias and his colleagues by the Athenians, when objects, did, in fact, convert it into a political
they sent their great expedition to Sicily; and despotism.
at'ter the Syracusans had sustained their first  1 Diodorus, XIII. 112,113.
defeat, Hermocrates urged that their generals




ï~~172

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXI

very first year of his government, had shaken his popularity amongst the Syracusans, and encouraged them to attempt an insurrection. Nor was it the old
popular party to whom he was most obnoxious, but the citizens of the richer
classes, who as they would have rejoiced in the overthrow of the democracy, so
were no way pleased to see it succeed by the despotism of a single man, under
which they were sure to be the greatest sufferers. And partly, perhaps, from
this very reason the poorer classes began to be better affected to his government,
and he showed a desire to win their attachment. The knights, or richest class,
fled from Syracuse in great numbers, or were banished, or put to death;20 a great
mass of landed property was thus placed at his disposal; and there was, besides,
as in every state of the ancient world, a considerable amount also of public land,
of which wealthy individuals had ordinarily a beneficial occupation. With all
these means in his power, he put in practice the two grand expedients of revolutionary leaders, a large admission of new citizens, and a division of the public and
confiscated land amongst them. The new citizens were many of them enfranchised
slaves, to whom he assigned houses in Syracuse, as well as portions of land in the
country. Thus the state of parties had assumed a new form; the better part of
both the old aristocratical and popular interests were drawn together by their
common danger, while Dionysius was supported by a few individuals of the richest class who shared in the advantages of the tyranny, by the mercenary soldiers,
and by the lowest portion of the whole population, who owed to him their political existence.
Accordingly, as the knights had shown their hostility to his government, so
Fruitless tept to also did that large body of citizens of the middle classes, who in
overthrow the power of the ancient commonwealths composed the heavy-armed infantry.
Dionysius.    When Dionysius led them into the field to make war against the
Sikelians (the old inhabitants of Sicily, whom the Greek colonies had driven from
the coast into the interior of the island), they openly rose against his authority,"
and invited the exiled knights to join them. This was one of the greatest dangers
of his life; he fled to Syracuse, and was there besieged; but the strength of the
walls protracted the siege, and time led to divisions and quarrels amongst the
besiegers. Meantime Dionysius engaged the services of a body of those Campanian mercenaries," whose reputation for valor was so high at this period in
Sicily, and by their aid he defeated his antagonists.  But, wishing to break effectually so formidable a combination, he offered an amnesty3 to all who would return and live quietly in Syracuse; and finding that few on y of the exiled knights
accepted this offer, and feeling that the class of heavy-armed citizens was no less
hostile to him, he took advantage of the ensuing harvest, when the citizens were
engaged in getting in their corn in the country, and sent parties of soldiers"4 to
their houses in Syracuse to carry off their arms. After this he began to increase
his navy, the seamen being now the class of citizens on whom he could most rely,
and further strengthened himself by raising an additional force of mercenaries.
From this time till his death, a period of nearly thirty-seven years, the governCauses of the perma- ment of Dionysius met with no further disturbance from any donence of his govern- mestic enemies. Eight years afterwards, indeed, when the great
moent.        Carthaginian armament under Imilcon was besieging Syracuse, an
attempt was made5 by some of the knights to excite the people against him, and
Theodorus is said to have attacked him in the public assembly as the author of
all the calamities of his country. But the influence of the commander of a Lacedemonian auxiliary force6 then at Syracuse was exerted strongly in his favor; his
2 Diodorus, XIII. 113, XIV. 7.        known expedients of the Greek tyrants to oh2 Diodorus, XIV. 7.                   tain or to secure their power. Tv rrapalpert
" Diodorus, XIV. 8.                   Troovrac rev 'roeov (scil. s repavvot) says Aris2 Diodorus, XIV. 9.                   totle, implying that it was their ordinary man' Diodorus, XIV. 10. This is the irapapeatnr  ner of proceeding. Politica, V. 10.
rev 1wrsov, the disarming of these classes which  u5 Diodorus, XIV. 64, 65.
asually possessed arms, one of the most well-  2 Diodorus, XIV. 70.




ï~~CHAr. XXI.]

TYRANNY OF HIS GOVERNMENT.

173

own mercenaries were formidable; and in a season of such imminent danger from
a foreign enemy, many even of those who disliked his government would think
it inexpedient to molest it. On this occasion he tried all means to win popularity,
mixing familiarly with the poorer citizens, gratifying some by presents, and admitting others to those common tables or messes of the soldiers, which were kept
at the public expense.27 But the permanent security of his dominion rested on
his mercenary troops, who were ever ready to crush the beginnings of a tumult,
on his own suspicious vigilance, on the ascendency of his firm and active character, and on the mutual jealousies and common weakness of the old aristocratical
and popular parties, among whom there seems to have been no eminent man capable of opposing so able a tyrant as Dionysius. It should be remembered that
the far weaker government of the second Dionysius was only overthrown, in the
first instance, by the defection of a member of his own family; and when he was
expelled a second time, the Syracusans could find no competent leader amongst
themselves; they were obliged to invite Timoleon from Corinth.
All the ancient writers, without exception, call the government of Dionysius a
tyranny2  This, as is well known, was with them no vague and Hins government was a
disputable term, resting on party impressions of character, and thus tyranny.
liable to be bestowed or denied according to the political opinions of the speaker
or writer. It describes a particular kind of government, the merits of which
might be differently estimated, but the facts of its existence admitted of no dispute. Dionysius was not a king, because hereditary monarchy was not the constitution of Syracuse; he was not the head of the aristocratical party, enjoying
supreme power, inasmuch as they were in possession of the government, and he
was their most distinguished member: on the contrary, the richer classes were
opposed to him, and he found his safety in banishing them in a mass, and confiscating their property. Nor was he the leader of a democracy, like Pericles and
Demosthenes, all powerful, inasmuch as the free love and admiration of the people made his will theirs; for what democratical leader ever surrounded himself
with foreign mercenaries, or fixed his residence in the citadel," or kept up in his
style of living and in the society which surrounded him the state and luxury of a
king's court?  He was not an hereditary constitutional king, nor the leader of
bne of the great divisions of the commonwealth: but he had gained sovereign
power by fraud, and maintained it by force; he represented no party, he sought
to uphold no ascendency but that of his own individual self; and standing thus
apart from the sympathies of his countrymen, his objects were essentially selfish,
his own safety, his own enjoyments, his own power, and his own glory. Feeling

27 Diodorus, XIV. 70. TLva    hrl r  vaaira
TrafpJd3lave. That this institution of syssitia,
or common tables, was not peculiar to the Lacednmonians, is well known. It was practised
at Carthage, and even its first origin was ascribed, not to any Greek people, but to the
(Enotrians of the south of Italy. See Aristotle,
Politic. II. 11, VII. 10. Aristotle blames the
Lacediemonians for altering the character of the
institution by making each individual contribate his portion, instead of causing the whole
expense to be defrayed by the public. The object of the common tables was to promote a social and brotherly feeling amongst those who
met at them; and especially with a view to their
becoming more confident in each other, so that
in the day of battle they might Stand more firmly
together, and abide by one another to the death.
With Dionysius, these common tables would be
confined to his guards, or to such of the soldiers as he could most rely on; they would be
maintained at his expense, and would be used
as a means of keeping up a high and exclusive
feeling amongst their members, as belonging to

a sort of privileged order. And thus the offer
of admission to such a society would be an effectual bribe to many, as being at once a benefit
and a distinction.
28 Even Xenophon calls him "Dionysius the
tyrant."  (Hellenic. II. 2, Â~ 24.) It is remarkable, however, and confirms Niebuhr's opinion
that the Hellenics contain two distinct works,
and that the five last books were written many
years later than the two first, when Xenophon's
feelings were become more completely aristocratical or antipopular, that in the latter books
Dionysius is not called tyrant, but is spoken of
simply as "Dionysius," or as  "the first Dionysins." The offensive appellation was not to be
bestowed on the ally of Lacedmmon and Agesilaus.
29 Mitford's mistake in supposing that the
island at Syracuse was not the citadel; and arguing that Dionysius was not a tyrant, because
he resided amongst the " nautic multitude,"
and not on the heights of Epipole, which Mitford imagines to have been the citadel, will be
shown in a subsequent note.




ï~~174

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXI.

that he had no right to be where he was, he was full of suspicion and jealousy,
and oppressed his subjects with taxes at once heavy and capriciously levied, not
only that he might enrich himself, but that he might impoverish and weaken them.
A government carried on thus manifestly for the good of one single governor,
with an end of such unmixed selfishness, and resting mainly upon the fear, not
the love, of its people; with whatever brilliant qualities it might happen to be
gilded, and however free it might be from acts of atrocious cruelty, was yet called
by the Greeks a tyranny.
It was no part of the policy of such tyrants to encourage trade or agriculture,
nHi taxes and spoa_ that their own wealth might be the legitimate fruit of the general
ti...        wealth of their people.  On the contrary, their financial expedients were no other than blind and brute exactions, which satisfied their immediate
wants; it mattered not at what cost of future embarrassment. Aristotle names
Dionysius' government,35 as exemplifying the tyrant's policy cf impoverishing his
people by an excessive taxation. The direct taxes were at one time so heavy,3"
that it was computed that in the course of five years, they equalled the entire
yearly value of the property on which they were levied: then there was the old
fraud of debasing the coin," the oppression of forced loans, which he paid in a
depreciated currency, direct robbery of his people under the pretence of ornamenting the temples of the gods, and an unscrupulous sacrilege, which appropriated the very offerings to the gods, so made, to his own individual uses. With
such a system, it is not wonderful that plunder should have been one of his favorite resources. The sale of prisoners taken in war, one of the most important
of the ways and means of the first Ciesar, was so much a matter of ordinary
usage in the ancient world, that it brought no peculiar obloquy on Dionysius.
But the sack of the wealthy temple of the Mater Matuta on the Etruscan coast,
was considered as little better than piracy,33 and it was reported that his settlement at Lissus, on the coast of Epirus, was mainly intended to further his design
of plundering the very temple of Apollo at Delphi.34 We read of his colonies up
the Adriatic; but the only notice of any commerce carried on with those countries, mentions merely the importation of horses35 from the country of the Veneti,
in order that they might run in the chariots of Dionysius at the great games of
Greece and of Sicily.
Every strong and able government, however oppressive, is yet sure to accomHe fortifies and enlarg- plish some works at once magnificent and useful; and thus the exSSyracuse.    tended walls of Syracuse, which included the whole slope of Epipolm to its summit, in addition to the older city which the Athenians had bo
so Politica, V. 11.
n Aristotle's expression is, ifv rivre yap Erecnv
Fri.eovvfiov 74)v obutav ara av eiaeevrvo vac vvi/lavLe. This can only mean, I suppose, one of
two things: either, as I have explained it in the
text, that Dionysius imposed a property tax of
twenty per cent., so that in five years a man
might be said to have paid taxes to the amount
of his whole income, or else that a man's property was valued much below its real worth; so
that twenty per cent. on the rated amount of
his property, not of his income merely, would
be very much less than a fifth part of what he
really possessed. It might be thus possible
that a man might have paid in five years a sum
equal to the rated amount of his whole property; but that he should literally have paid a
sum equal to his whole real property seems to
me an absurdity. To notice no other objections,
was it ever known that the money in any country bore such a proportion to the value of the
property in it as to render it possible in five
years to convert all property into cash? For
the rest, the period of five years here mentioned

is remarkable, as it seems to indicate that the
official valuation of property at Syracuse, as at
Rome, took place every five years.
3 This, and the following instance of Dionysins' exactions, are taken from the second chapter of the second book of the (Economica, conmmonly ascribed to Aristotle. This chapter,
however, is clearly not Aristotle's, but, as Niebuhr has shown (Kleine Historische Schriften,
p. 412), must have been a later work, written
mn Asia Minor, and is a collection of all sorts of
financial tricks and extortions, which are recommended to the imitation of the satraps and officers of the monarchies of Alexander's successors. And whoever reads the whole of the col
lection will find no reason to doubt the truth of
the stories about Dionysius, as being unprecedented or unworthy of him.
3 Diodorus, XV. 14. Strabo calls it the ternple of Ilithyia, or Lucina; and adds, that Dionysius plundered it in the course of an expedition to Corsica. V. 2, Â~ 8, p. 226.
4 Diodorus, XV. 18.
32 Strabo, V. 1, Â~ 4, p. 212.




ï~~CHAP. XXI.]

WARS WITH CARTHAGE.

175

sieged, were the work of Dionysius. These were built" und(er the terror of a
Carthaginian invasion; and his docks for two hundred ships, or, according to
other accounts, for a far greater number, were constructed at once for defensive
and offensive war against the same enemy. His works in the island of Ortygia
had an object more directly selfish. This oldest and strongest part of the city
of Syracuse, which had originally constituted the whole city, was now, since the
town had spread over the adjacent parts of the mainland of Sicily, come to be
regarded as the citadel.  Here Dionysius fixed his residence," and built a strong
wall to cut off its communication with the rest of Syracuse; he also appropriated
it exclusively to his own friends and his mercenary soldiers, allowing no other
Syracusan to live in it. For the same reasons under the Roman government, the
island was the residence of the Roman prietor and his officers,3" and the Syracusans were still forbidden to inhabit it.
Dionysius had owed his elevation to the terror inspired by the arms of Carthage; and the great service which he rendered to Greece and to        Fre    a.
Ir. Foreign  affairs.
the world, was his successful resistance to the Carthaginian power, Ware w ith Carthage
and opposing a barrier to their conquest of Sicily. The very diffi-ndhetaar
culty of his task, and the varied fortune of his wars, shows plainly that had Syracuse been under a less powerful government, it must have shared the fate of
Selinus and of Agrigentum. We do not know the causes which seem to have
roused the Carthaginians to such vigorous activity against the Sicilian Greeks,
immediately after the destruction of the Athenian armament. Had that great
expedition been successful at Syracuse, it was designed to attempt the conquest
of the Carthaginian dominions,"9 and even of Carthage itself; and the Carthaginians are represented by Hermocrates4t as living in constant dread of the power
and ambition of Athens. Yet four or five years afterwards we find them sending out to Sicily so large a force, that they might well have defied the hostility
of the Athenians; and the conquest of Selinus, Himera, and Agrigentum, proved
to the Syracusans that they were again incurring the danger, from which they
had been delivered about eighty years before by Gelon's great victory of Himera.
In his first attempts to check the progress of the Carthaginians, Dionysius was
unsuccessful.  He was glad to conclude a peace with them, by First treaty of Dlno.
which they were to retain possession of their own colonies, and of t. with Carthage.
the Sicanian tribes in the west of Sicily. The survivors4' of the people whom
they had recently conquered, of Himera, Selinus, and Agrigentum; as also the
inhabitants of Gela and Camarina who had abandoned their homes during the
war, and had fled first to Syracuse, and afterwards to Leontini, might now, it
was stipulated, return to their own countries and live in peace; but they were to
pay a tribute to the Carthaginians, and were to live only in open villages; their
cities were to remain dismantled and desolate. In the east of the island, Messana,
Leontini, and all the Sikelian tribes were to be independent; these last were the
old enemies of the Syracusans, and the Carthaginians naturally, therefore, made
this stipulation in their favor. Thus Dionysius was left master of Syracuse alone;
stripped of its dominion over the Sikelians, stripped of its old allies, the other
Dorian cities of Sicily; while the dominion of Carthage, which a few years before had been confined to three settlements at the western corner of the island,
was now advanced almost to the eastern coast, and by means of the Sikelian
oe Diodorus, XIV. 18, 41, 42.          may be sure that it was at no time the residence
SDiodorus, XIV. 7. Those who understand of the poorest classes, such as composed the
uhe nature of the Greek citadels, that they al- seamen of the state, but was appropriated to the
ways contained the temples of the peculiar gods oldest and wealthiest families.
of the people, and therefore were always the  38 Cicero, Verres, V. 32. He calls the island,
oldest part of the city, will understand that Epi- " Locus quem vel pauci possint defendere."
pole could not have been, according to Greek  39 So Alcibiades told the Spartans; Thucyd.
notions, the citadel of Syracuse. On the other VI. 90, and added, rocaera pl0 orapaTroS aKpc3
hand, the strength of the island of Ortygia well erara i6,ro', <o acvoirOgsr, &K?/icK6aTS.
fitted it for purposes of security, and although  40 Thucyd. VI. 34.
its walls were washed by both harbors, yet we  4 Diodorus, XIII. 114.




ï~~176

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXL

tribes, whose independence had been just secured, it hemmed in, and in a manner overhung, the scanty territory which was still left to Syracuse.
This treaty was concluded in the last year of the Peloponnesian war, according
He preparestobreakit. to the chronology of Diodorus. It was virtually no more than a
truce, delaying the decision of the quarrel between the two contracting parties, till one of them should be in a better condition to resume it.
Dionysius had been crippled by his military disasters, and the Carthaginians were
suffering from a pestilence which was at this time fatally raging in Africa. No
sooner, then, was the peace concluded, than Dionysius began to undo its work.
It had declared the Sikelian tribes independent; he found, or made a pretence
for attacking them:42 it had stipulated for the independence of Leontini; he compelled the inhabitants to leave their city,43 and to come and dwell as citizens in
Syracuse. He also destroyed the Chalcidian cities of Naxos and Catana,44 and
sold their inhabitants for slaves. He cultivated the friendship of Messana, Rhegium,45 and the Greek towns of Italy; with Locri in particular he established a
right of intermarriage, and he availed himself of it to take a Locrian lady as his
own wife. He was busy in making arms and artillery46 for the use of his armies,
and in building ships, and arsenals to receive and fit them out becomingly. And
after all his preparations were completed, finding that the pestilence was still
raging in Africa,4 he determined to declare war against Carthage. This was in
the fourth year of the ninety-fifth Olympiad, about eight years after the conclusion of the last treaty.
Dionysius had chosen his own time; the plague had weakened the CarthaginiHe suddenly declares ans, and the declaration of war against them, unexpected as it
w,'ar en the Carthaginigar    ar gi towas, was preceded by a general plundering of their property,43
Motya.        and a massacre of their citizens in all the Greek cities of Sicily.
Dionysius marched immediately towards the Carthaginian territories; the forces
of the several Greek cities joined him as he advanced; and he laid siege to the
city and island of Motya,49 one of the three settlements which Carthage possessed
in Sicily"5 before her conquest of Selinus. Motya was one of a group of small
islands which lie off the western coast of Sicily, immediately to the north of Marsala or Lilybaeum. It is about a mile and a half in circumference,5' and about
three-quarters of a mile from the main land, with which it was connected by a
narrow artificial causeway. Like Tyre and Aradus in point of situation, it was
like them flourishing and populous: and its inhabitants, being themselves of
Phoenician blood, were zealous in their resistance to the Greek invader. Attacked
by an overwhelming force,5" and seeing their walls breached, and their ramparts
swept, by engines and an artillery such as had never before been equalled, they
did not yield even when the enemy had forced his way into their city, but availed
themselves of their narrow streets and lofty houses to dispute every inch of his
progress. The Greeks then brought up their movable towers, which had been
built to match the height of the houses, and from these they threw out bridges
to the roofs, and thus endeavored to board the enemy. Day after day this bloody
struggle continued; the Greek trumpets regularly sounding a retreat when night
fell, and calling off their combatants; till at length Dionysius turned this practice
to his account, and as soon as the trumpets sounded as usual, and the Phoenicians supposed that the contest was at an end till the next day, he sent in a party
of picked men, who, before the enemy suspected their design, had established
themselves in a commanding situation from which they could not be dislodged
again. Then the whole Greek army poured into the town by the moles or dykes
42 Diodorus, XIV. 7, 14.              4 Diodorus, XIV. 46.
43 Diodorus, XIV. 15.                 4 Diodorus, XIV. 47.
SDiodorus, XIV. 15.                   1 Thucydides, VI. 2.
4e Diodorus, XIV. 44.                 51 See Captain Smyth's Memoir on Sicily.
46 Diodorus, XIV. 41.                  2 Diodorus, XIV. 48-53.
47 Diodorus, XIV. 45.




ï~~CHAP. XXI.]

SIEGE OF SYRACUSE.

177

which they had thrown across from the main land to the shore of Motya, and the
place was taken by storm. Neither age nor sex were spared by the conquerors;
a few only of the inhabitants saved their lives by running to the temples of those
gods whom the Greeks honored in common with the Carthaginians, and these
were afterwards sold for slaves. The whole plunder of the town was given to
the victorious soldiers.
While the siege of Motya was going on, Dionysius had employed a portion of
his army in endeavoring to reduce the remaining colonies or allies ions att  h
Dionysius attacks the
of Carthage. The Sicanian tribes,3 who were the principal inhab- siciian allies. of c aritants of the interior in the west of Sicily, submitted without oppo-age.
sition. But five places held out resolutely: Soloeis and Panormus, both of them,
as well as Motya, Phoenician settlements; Egesta, whose quarrel with Selinus
first brought the Athenians into Sicily, and afterwards the Carthaginians; Entella,
and Halicym. It was in vain that Dionysius ravaged their lands, destroyed their
fruit-trees, and attacked their towns; they remained unmoved in their fidelity;
and even after the fall of Motya, when the Greek power seemed so irresistible
that the people of Halicym then at last submitted to it, yet the other four still
held out; and when Dionysius again ventured to besiege Egesta, the inhabitants
sallied by night and set fire to his camp, and obliged him to abandon his enterprise with loss.
Here ended the circle of Dionysius' glory. The Carthaginians," provoked by
the suddenness of his attack, by his having taken advantage of their Great Carthaginian x.
distressed condition, and by the inveteracy with which the Greeks peditiontoSicily.
were pursuing all of their name and race, were roused to extraordinary exertion.
An immense army was raised of Africans and Spaniards; but the Gauls, so constantly employed in the Punic wars, had not yet crossed the Alps, or become
known to the civilized nations of the south; so that there were none of them in
the armament now collected for the invasion of Sicily. As it was, however, the
Carthaginian force was estimated by Timmus at 100,000 men, and it was commanded by Imilcon, the supreme military chief of the commonwealth. The expedition landed at Panormus, and every thing gave way before it. Motya was
instantly recovered; the Sicanians left Dionysius to join their old friends, the Carthaginians; Dionysius himself retreated upon Syracuse; and the seat of war was
removed almost instantaneously from the western to the eastern extremity of the
island, from Motya and Egesta to Syracuse.
Imilcon advanced55 along the northern coast towards Messina, being anxious to
possess that important place, and so intercept any succors which The Carthaginians be-o.
might be sent to the aid of Dionysius, either from the Greek states siege syyracse.
of Italy, or from Greece itself. He took Messina, defeated the Syracusans in a
sea fight off Catana, and then, being completely master of the field, he proceeded
to lay siege to Syracuse by sea and land; his ships occupied the great harbor,
while with his armny he held all the most important points on shore: the headland of Plemyrium, which forms the southern side of the great harbor, the temple of Olympian Jupiter on the right bank of the Anapus, and the suburb of
Neapolis, just without the walls of Acradina, and under the cliffs of Epipole.
The position of Epipole itself, which the Athenians had at first occupied with so
much effect, and which they afterwards neglected to their ruin, was now secured
against the enemy by the walls lately carried round its whole extent by Dionysius.
Thus the Greek power in Sicily was reduced, as it were, to one little spark,
which the first breath seemed likely to extinguish; but on its pres- Critical state of ta
ervation depended the existence of Rome and the fate of the world. reook Power inaSicily.
Had Carthage become the sovereign of all Sicily, her power, in its full and unde.
SDiodorus, XIV. 48-54.                 0 Diodorus, XIV. 57-68.
SDiodorus, XIV. 54, 55.
12




ï~~178

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XX1

cayed vigor, must have immediately come into contact with the nations of Italy;
and the Samnite wars of Rome might have ended in the destruction of both the
contending nations, when their exhausted strength had left them at the mercy of
a powerful neighbor. But this was not to be, and Dionysius was inspired with
resolution to abide the storm, that so he might fulfil that purpose of God's providence, which designed the Greek power in Sicily to stand as a breakwater against
the advances of Carthage, and to afford a shelter to the yet unripened strength
of Rome.
The condition of Dionysius seemed desperate. Blockaded by sea and land,
Dionysius proposes to with a people impatient of his despotism, with a force of merceescapeo from sicily.  naries, who, the moment that he became unable to pay them, might
betray him, either to the enemy without the walls or to his political adversaries
within; he held a council with his friends in the citadel, and expressed his purpose of leaving Syracuse to its fate, and attempting to effect his own escape by
sea.  One of them boldly answered,56 "A king's robe is a noble winding-sheet."
At these words the spirit of Dionysius rose within him, and he resolved to live or
die a king.
But his deliverance was effected by another power than his own. The spots
where the small Sicilian rivers make their way into the sea are,
The Corthoginiano oramen ripp ldby n during the summer, notoriously unhcalthy: a malaria fever is alide...... most the certain consequence of passing a single night in any village so situated. The shore near the mouth of the Anapus, and the marshy plain
immediately behind it, would be absolutely pestilential to an army quartered
there during the heats of summeir; and the Athenians, when besieging Syracuse
seventeen years before, had severely suffered from its influence.57 But now the
season was unusually hot, and from the prevalence of epidemic disease in Africa
about this period, it is likely that the constitutions of many of the Carthaginian
soldiers would be more than usually susceptible of infection. Accordingly,5" the
disorder which broke out in the besieging army more resembled the most malignant
pestilence than any ordinary form of marsh or malaria fever. The patients were
commonly carried off in five or six days; and the disease was either really so contagious, or was imagined to be so, that no one dared to visit the sick, or to pay
them the most necessary attentions: and thus all who were taken ill were left to
die without relief.
This visitation broke both the power and the spirit of the Carthaginians. DioDionysiudoestroystheoir nysius59 now made a sally, and attacked them both by sea and land.
eest.         He carried their post at the temple of the Olympian Jupiter, and
that at Dascon, at the very bottom of the harbor, on the right of the Anapus,
where the Athenians first effected their landing. Here he found their ships drawn
up on the beach, and he instantly set fire to them. Meanwhile the Syracusan
fleet advanced right across the harbor, and surprised the enemy's ships before
they could be manned and worked out from the shore to offer battle. Thus taking them at a disadvantage, the Greeks sunk or shattered them without resistance,
or surrounded them and carried them by boarding. And now the flames began
to spread from the ships on the beach to those which lay afloat moored close to
the shore.  These were mostly merchant ships, worked by sails like ours, and
consequently, even while at anchor, they had their masts up and their standing
rigging. As the flames caught these and blazed up into the air, the spectacle
afforded to the Syracusans on their walls was most magnificent. The crews of
the burning ships leaped overboard, and left them to their fate; their cables were
burnt, and the blazing masses began to drift about the harbor, and to run foul of
one another; while the crackling of the flames, and the crashing of the falling
masts and of the sides of the ships in their mutual shocks, heard amidst volumes
S Kav Farv vrdqitov s rvpavvst. Isocrates.  50 Diodorus, XIV. 70, 71.
A rehidamus, Â~ 49, p. 125.              6 Diodorus, XIV. 72-75.
7 Thucydides, VII. 47.




ï~~CRP. XXI.]

RETREAT OF THE CARTHAGINIANS.

179

of smoke and sheets of fire, reminded the Syracusans of the destruction of the
giants by the thunder of Jove, when they had assayed in their pride to storm
Olympus."Â~
Thus called, as they thought, by the manifest interposition of heaven to finish
the work, the very old men and boys of Syracuse could bear to look Rejoicings o f the Syron idly from their walls no longer, but getting into the large punts ac....
or barges,6' which were ordinarily used for ferrying men and cattle across the harbor, they put out to sea, to save and capture such of the enemy's ships as the
fire had not yet destroyed. But the walls were crowded with fresh spectators,
for as the report of the victory became more and more decided, the women, children, and slaves, all poured out from their houses, and hastened to enjoy with
their own eyes the sight of this wonderful deliverance. When the day was over,
the Carthaginian naval force was almost utterly destroyed, while Dionysius encamped on the ground which he had won near the temple of Olympian Jupiter,
having the remnant of the besieging army shut in between his position on one
side, and the walls of Syracuse on the other.
But Imilcon had no hope of continuing the contest with success any further.
He offered all the treasure in his camp, amounting to three hun- Retreat of the Carthadred talents, to purchase the unmolested retreat of the remainder ginians.
of his armament.   "This," said Dionysius, "cannot be granted; but I will consent that the native Carthaginians shall be allowed to escape by night to Afr'ca,"
stipulating nothing for their subjects and allies. He foresaw that if the head were
thus taken from the body, the body would instantly fall into his power; and he
was not sorry to impress the Africans, Iberians, and Sikelians, with a strong sense
of the selfish arrogance of the Carthaginians, who, thinking only of themselves,
abandoned their allies to destruction without scruple. Accordingly, when the
Carthaginians had escaped, the rest of the armament attempted to provide as
they could for their own safety. The Sikelians and Africans were obliged to lay
down their arms, after the former had endeavored in vain to make good their
retreat to their own country; but the Iberians held together, and made so formidable a show of resistance, that Dionysius readily listened to their proposals of
entering into his service.  They became a part of his mercenary army; and while
they helped to secure his power against his domestic enemies, they also added to
the glory of his arms abroad: and in the strange vicissitudes of human fortune,
these same Iberians, who had been enlisted in Spain, taken thence to. frica, and
afterwards had crossed the sea to Sicily as invaders, were some years later sent
over from Sicily to Greece,62 as a part of the  auxiliary force sent by Dionysius
to aid the Lacedemonians; and fought with distinction in Laconia under the eye of
Agesilaus, against the invading army of Epaminondas.
Thus was Dionysius saved from imminent ruin, and the Greek power in Sicily
was preserved. His subsequent wars with Carthage were of no State of the Carthaginimportance, for amidst much variety of fortune ihi particular en- tin power in Sicily.
gagements, the relations of the two states were never materially altered; the
Carthaginians remained masters of all the western part of the island, while the
eastern part continued to be under the dominion of Dionysius.
After the destruction of this great armament, Dionysius felt himself able to
carry on his plans of conquest against the Greeks of Italy.  One of  eoyi pr    t
his first measures was to people the important city of Messana. ottaek the Itali
The remains of the old citizens, who had been driven out by the Greeks.
6o Diodorus, XIV. 73. This whole description  6' T ropOpeia. Diodorus, XIV. 74. This is one
seems to have been taken from the history of of the touches which seem to argue that the
Philistus, who was probably an eye-witness of writer of the description was at any rate a Syrathe scene: so that the comparison is not to be cusan, familiar with the harbor of Syracuse. No
regarded as the mere flourish of a writer, far explanation is given by him, because the use of
emoved in time and space from the action which these ropOpera was to him so familiar, that ho
suggested it, but as one which really arose in could not fancy that any was requisite.
the minds of the Syracusans, amidst the excite-  62 Xenophon, Hellenic. VII. 1, Â~ 20.
ment and enthusiasm of the actual spectacle.




ï~~180

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP XXI.

Carthaginians, returned to their home after Imilcon's defeat; but their numbers
were so thinned, that Dionysius added to them a large body of new citizens from
Locri on the Italian coast, his old and firm ally, and from a Locrian colony,6" Medama, on the Tyrrhenian sea, which had probably been lately conquered by the
Lucanians: With these there were at first joined some exiles from old Greece,
of the race of the old Messenians; but afterwards, to satisfy the jealousy of Lacedemon, they were removed from Messana, and founded for themselves the
new city of Tyndaris.64
The principal object of Dionysius' hostility among the Greek cities of Italy
was Rhegium.    The Rhegians had favored his political adversaBattle of the Hellepo-, and conquest of ries, and had personally affronted him by refusing to allow him
hoegm....      the right of intermarriage with their citizens.  But his ambition
led him to desire the dominion of all the coast of Italy on the Ionian sea; and
he entered into a league with the Lucanians, as has been already mentioned,
hoping that they might exhaust the Greek cities, by their constant plundering
warfare, and that he might then step in to reap the harvest. His defeat of the
combined army of the Italian Greeks on the banks of the Helleporus,66 and his
conquest of Rhegium,65 Caulon,6' and Hipponium,65 are the principal events of
this contest. He enlarged Syracuse, by removing thither the whole, or a great
part, of the population of the conquered cities; and his increased power and influence on the Italian coast facilitated those further plans of aggrandizement which
have been already noticed, his settlements at Issa and Lissus, and on the coast
of Picenum, his alliance with the Illyrians, and his trade in the Adriatic.
Thus powerful at home and abroad, and possessing a far greater dominion than
Dionysiussendschariots any prince or state in old Greece, Dionysius yet felt that Greece
t   the oago was, as it were, the heart and life of the civilized world, and that
tragedy at Athens.  no glory would be universal or enduring unless it had received its
stamp and warrant from the genius of Athens. He sent chariots to Olympia, to
contend for the prize at the Olympic games;69 he sent over also rhapsodists most
eminent for the powers of their voice and the charm of their recitation to rehearse
his poems; and he Was repeatedly a candidate for the prize of tragedy at Athens.
Alexander, indeed, scorned to contend for victory at the Olympic games unless
kings could be his competitors; but in such matters there was a wide difference between a king and a tyrant, between the descendant of a long line of princes,"
sprung from Hercules, the son of Jove, and the humble citizen of Syracuse, whom
his fortune had unexpectedly raised to greatness. There is a story that the public feeling at Olympia was so strong against Dionysius as a tyrant," that the tents
of his theori, or deputies to the Olympic assembly, were plundered, and the recitation of his verses drowned amidst the clamor and hisses of the multitude. But
whether this be true or false, we know that at Athens his tragedies were by no
means regarded as contemptible; he gained on different occasions the second and
third prizes, and at last his tragedy, entitled "Hector Ransomed,""' was judged
worthy of the highest prize.
This evident desire of intellectual fame, united with the powers of earning it,
tempted the philosophers of Greece to believe that they should find in Dionys63 Diodorus, XIV. 78. The present reading  '6 Diodorus, XIV. 3.
In the text of Diodorus is Mt&6qvatovg, for which  " Diodorus, XIV. 106.
Cluverius has conjectured Me patov. Msla-  68 Diodorus, XIV. 107.
ualovie would be still nearer the present reading,  69 Diodorus, XIV. 109.
and Mi3ata is the name of the city in Strabo,  70 In an earlier age, however, an ancestor of the
VI. 1, Â~ 5, p. 256, and, it is said, on one of its great Alexander, the Macedonian king of the
coins. Medama, or Mesma, is described as a same name, who reigned during the Persian inLocrian colony by Strabo, in the passage above vasion, was anxious to be admitted as a competquoted, and by Seymnus Chius, V. 807.   itor for the prize at the Olympic games, even in
64 Diodorus, XIV. 78.                  the foot race, and he ran accordingly in the sta' Polybius calls the river." Elleporus," I. 6. dium. See Herodotus, V. 22.
Diodorus calls it " Helorus," XIV. 104. I sus-  " Diodorus, XIV. 109.
pect that the true reading in Polybius would be  ' Diodorus, XV. 74.
tO n11  ner,,e7




ï~~Cea. XXI.]

MANNER OF LIVING OF DIONYSIUS.

181,

ius a man who could sympathize with them in spite of his political i.ierc.our.e with
greatness, and would rejoice to associate with them on equal terms. Isocrates and Plato.
Plato visited Syracuse,3 and Isocrates,4 at a safer distance, addressed to Dionysius a letter of compliment from Greece. As long as they remained on the opposite shores of the Ionian sea, the philosopher and the tyrant might correspond
with each other without offence. But many are the stories which show the folly
of supposing that an equality of mind can triumph over the differences of rank
and power. No man can associate freely with another, when his life is at the
mercy of his companion's caprice. Plato soon returned to Greece, with a lesson
from some of the philosophers of Syracuse, "that men of their profession would
do well either to shun the society of tyrants,75 or else in their intercourse with
them, to study how they could please them most." This advice is said to have
been occasioned by a practical lesson given to Plato by Dionysius,*which ought
to have rendered it superfluous; the story ran, that the tyrant was so offended
with something that Plato had said, that he sent him forthwith to the slavemarket, and had him sold as a slave, but that the philosophers immediately redeemed him by a general subscription amongst themselves, and then urged him
to quit Sicily. A similar story is told of the poet Philoxenus, whom Dionysius
is said to have sent from his own table to his prisons in the quarries, because he
had expressed an unfavorable opinion of the tyrant's poetry. These stories may
deserve but little credit for the particular facts; yet the intercourse between
Frederick of Prussia and Voltaire was interrupted in a similar manner, and the
presumption of literary men on the one hand, and the pride of rank and power
on the other, are likely to lead to such results.
That the despot of Syracuse should not scruple to send a poet to the quarries
and to sell a philosopher in the slave-market, is nothing wonder- His private fe.
ful. We may be more unwilling to believe the reports of the
state of miserable fear to which suspicion could reduce one so able and so daring
as Dionysius.  "He could trust no man," it was said,"16 "but a set of miserable
freedmen, and outcasts, and barbarians, whom he made his body-guard. He
fenced his chamber with a wide trench, which he crossed by a draw-bridge; he
never addressed the Syracusan people but from the top of a high tower, where
no dagger could reach him; he never visited his wives without having their
apartments previously searched, lest they should contain some lurking assassin;
nay, he dared not allow himself to be shaved by any hands except his own
daughters'; and even them he was afraid to intrust with a razor; but taught
them how to singe off his beard with hot walnut-shells." Much of this is probably exaggeration, but the Greek tyrants knew that to kill them was held to be
no murder; and it is no shame to Dionysius, if his nerves were overcome by the
hourly danger of assassination, a danger which appalled even the iron courage of
Cromwell.
The Greeks had no abhorrence for kings: the descendant of a hero race, ruling over a people whom his fathers had ruled from time imme- Peculiar character of
morial, was no subject of obloquy, either with the people, or with the ancient tyrannies.
the philosophers. But a tyrant, a man of low or ordinary birth, who by force
or fraud had seated himself on the necks of his countrymen, to gorge each prevailing passion of his nature at their cost, with no principle but the interest of his
own power, such a man was regarded as a wild beast that had broken into the
fold of civilized society, and whom it was every one's right and duty by any
means, or with any weapon, presently to destroy. Such monsters of selfishness
Christian Europe has rarely seen. If the claim to reign by "the grace of God"
73 Diodorus, XV. 7.                   though the fact of his having corresponded
74 Whether the letters professing to be writ- with them may be true notwithstanding.
ten from Isocrates to Dionysius and Philip of  75 Diodorus, XV. 7. Ae rav oebv ro Ls rpadvMacedon, and published at the end of his ora- vots Je  scgcwra  s $  wra bltXriv.
tions, are genuine, may well be doubted; al-  76 Cicero, Tusculan. Disputat. V. 20.




ï~~182

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXI].

has given an undue sanction to absolute power, yet it has diffused at the same
time a sense of the responsibilities of power, such as the tyrants, and even the
kings of the later age of Greece, never knew. The most unprincipled of modern
sovereigns would yet have acknowledged that he owed a duty to his people, for
the discharge of which he was answerable to God; but the Greek tyrant regarded
his subjects as the mere instruments of his own gratification; fortune, or his own
superiority, had given him extraordinary means of indulging his favorite passions,
and it would be folly to forego the opportunity. It is this total want of regard
for his fellow-creatures, the utter sacrifice of their present and future improvement, for the sake of objects purely personal, which constitutes the guilt of Dionysius and his fellow-tyrants. In such men all virtue was necessarily blighted;
neither genius, nor courage, nor occasional signs of human feeling, could atone for
the deliberate wickedness of their system of tyranny. Brave and able as Dionysius was, active, and temperate, and energetic, he left behind him no beneficial
institutions; he degraded rather than improved the character of his countrymen;
and he has therefore justly been branded with infamy, by the accordant voice of
his own and of after ages; he will be known forever as Dionysius the tyrant.
CHAPTER XXII.
CARTHAGE-BARBARIANS OF WESTERN EUROPE-EAST OF EUROPE-GREECEMIACEDONIA-ILLYRIA.
"Caeterum-qui mortales initio coluerint, indigenace an advecti, parum compertum."-TAcITus
Agricola, XI.
THE enlarged researches of our own times, while they make us more sensible
Diffclties of ancient of the actual extent of our ignorance, yet encourage us with the
history.      hope that it will gradually be diminished. But he who attempts
to write history in the interval between this awakened consciousness of the defects
of our knowledge, and that fuller light which may hereafter remove them, labors
under peculiar disadvantages. A reputation for learning was cheaply gained in
the days of our fathers, by merely reading the works of the Greek and Roman
writers, and being able to repeat the information which they have communicated.
But now we desire to learn, not what existing accounts may have recorded of
a people or a race, but what that people or race really was, and did; we wish
to conceive a full and lively image of them, of their language, their institutions,
their arts, their morals; to understand what they were in themselves, and how
they may have affected the fate of the world, either in their own times, or in
after ages. These, however, are questions which the ancient writers were often
as unable to answer as we are; happier, it may be thought, than we in this, that
they had no painful consciousness of ignorance. To repeat what the Greek and
Roman writers have left on record of Carthage, and its dominion in Spain and
Africa, would be an easy task, but at the same time most unsatisfactory. We
look around for other witnesses, we question existing languages, and races, and
manners, in the hope of gleaning from them some fuller knowledge of extinct nations, than can be gained from the scanty accounts of foreigners or enemies.
The internal state of Carthage may fitly be reserved for a later period of this
carthage.    history. It will be enough now to fill up, so far as I can, that




ï~~CHAP. XXII.]

DOMINION OF CARTHAGE.

183

sketch of her dominion and foreign relations, which has been begun in some
measure in the two preceding chapters.
In the middle of the fourth century before the Christian era, the Carthaginians
possessed the northern coast of Africa, from   the middle of the
Extent of the Carthagreater Syrtis to the pillars of Hercules, a country reaching from  ginian dominion in Af19 degrees, east longitude, to 6 degrees, west; and a length of C.
coast which Polybius' reckoned at above sixteen thousand stadia. But unlike
the compactness and organization of the provinces of the Roman empire, this long
line of coast was, for the most part, only so far under the dominion of the Carthaginians, that they possessed' a chain of commercial establishments along its
whole extent, and with the usual ascendency of civilized men over barbarians,
had obliged the native inhabitants of the country, whether cultivators of the soil
or wandering tribes, to acknowledge their superiority. But in that part where
the coast runs nearly north and south, from the Hermean headland, or Cape
Ben, to the lesser Syrtis, they had occupied the country more completely. This
was one of the richest tracts to be found;3 and here the Carthaginians had planted
their towns thickly, and had covered the open country with their farms and villas.
This was their sspoixgo, the immediate domain of Carthage, where fresh settlements were continually made as a provision for the poorer citizens;4 settlements
prosperous, indeed, and wealthy, but politically dependent, as was always the
case in the ancient world; insomuch that the term sregiexiS, which in its origin
expressed no more than "men who dwelt not in, but round about a city," came
to signify a particular political relation, theirs, namely, who enjoyed personal
freedom, but had no share in the government of their country.
Distinct from these settlements of the Carthaginians themselves were the sister
cities of Carthage, founded immediately, like herself, by the Phoeni- Phoenicia colonies i
cians of Tyre and Sidon, although her fortune had afterwards so Africa.
outgrown theirs. Amongst these Phoenician colonies were Utica,5 more famous
in Roman than in Carthaginian history, Adrumetum,' the two cities known by
the name of Leptis, situated, the one near the western extremity of the great
Syrtis, and the other on the coast between the lesser Syrtis and the Hermman
headland; and Hippo, a name so closely connected in our minds with the piety
and energy of its great bishop, Augustine. These were the allies of Carthage,
and some of them were again at the head of a small confederacy of states,7 who
looked up to them for protection, as they in their turn looked up to Carthage.
They enjoyed their own laws, and were independent in their domestic government; but in their foreign relations they found, in common with all the weaker
states of the ancient world, that alliance with a greater power ended sooner or
later in subjection.
The Phoenician colonists, who founded Carthage, at first paid' a tribute to the
native Africans on whose land they had settled, as an acknowl- Condition of the African
edgment that the country was not their own.     But in process of subjoetsof carthage.
time they became what the Europeans have been in later times in India, no longer
dependent settlers, but sovereigns; and the native Africans, driven back from the
coast and confined to the interior, were reduced to the condition of strangers on
SPolybius, III. 39.                    of Basel; and the disputes between the citizens
S"Ocra yiyparrat ro&opara tlyr6pta ivrj Ast36b of Basel and the inhabitants of Lieehstal, and
aro 7rs Edopro 7 rta p 'Ea  lila IdXhpt 'Hlpa- the other countrytowns, seemed, to those familcXsiwv urrAwv ir Atird raa ETrl Kapijoviav. Jiar with ancient history, like a revival of the poScylax, Periplus, p. 51, 52. Ed. Hudson.  litical relations of Lacedmmon and Carthage.
Polybius, III. 23. Diodorus, XX. 8. Scy-  " Justin, XVIII. 4.
lax, p. 49.                                6 Sallust, Bell. Jugurth. 22, 80.
Aristotle, Politica, VI. 5. Within the last  ' In the second treaty between Rome and
ten years an exact image of the relation of the Carthage, the contracting parties on the one
ancient rspiouot to their r6ieg, and of the irrita- side are, "the people of Carthage, the people of
tion occasioned by it, has been exhibited to the Tyre, and the people of Utica, with their allies."
notice of Europe on more than one occasion in Polybius, III. 24.
*witzerland. Liechstalwas one of the TfpoteLKilsc  Justin, XVIII. 5.




ï~~184

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CIAP. XXII

their own soil. They understood and practised agriculture, but we know not
how far they were allowed to retain the property of the land, or to what extent
the rich Carthaginians had ejected them, and employed them as tenants and cultivators of the soil of which they had been once proprietors. At any rate, the
Africans were in the condition of a Roman province; they9 were ruled despoti
cally by the Carthaginian officers sent amongst them, and were subject to taxes,
and to a conscription of their youth to serve as soldiers, at the discretion of their
governors. In the first Punic war, they were taxed to the amount of fifty per
cent. on the yearly produce of their land, and the oppression to which they were
subjected made them enter readily and zealously into the quarrel of the mercenary soldiers, during their famous war with the Carthaginians.
The contrast between Carthage exercising absolute dominion over her African
Differences between the subjects, and Rome surrounded by her Latin and Italian allies,
situation of carthage and gradually communicating more widely the rights of citizen,
and Rome with respect
tot iretao1al- ship, so as to change alliance into union, has been often noticed,
ies.          and is indeed quite sufficient to account for the issue of the Punic
wars.  But this difference was owing rather to the good fortune of Rome and.to
the ill fortune of Carthage, than to the wisdom and liberality of the one and the
narrow-mindedness of the other. Rome was placed in the midst of people akin
to herself both in race and language; Carthage was a solitary settlement in a
foreign land. The Carthaginian language nearly resembled the Hebrew; it belonged to the Semitic or Aramaic family. Who the native Africans were, and to
what family they belonged, are among the most obscure questions of ancient history. But it is one of the consequences of that wider view of the connection of
races and languages, which we have learnt of late to entertain, that the statements to be found in the traditional or mythic reports of the origin of nations,
appear in some instances to contain in them a germ of truth, and we do not venture, as formerly, to cast them aside as mere fables. Thus in that strange account of the peopling of Africa, which SallustÂ~ copied from Carthaginian books,
the stream of migration is described as having poured into northern Africa at its
western, not at its eastern extremity, by the straits of Gibraltar, not by the isthmus of Suez and by Egypt. And we read that the invaders were Medians and
Persians, who had marched through Europe into Spain, as a part of the great
army of Hercules. They found the north of Africa possessed by an older race
of inhabitants, the Gaetulians and Libyans, of whose origin no account is given.
But the story of the expedition of Hercules, and of the Medians and Persians'
following in his army, and entering Africa by crossing over thither from Spain,
may at least lead us to inquire whether any affinity can be traced between the
language of the Berbers, the descendants of the ancient Mauritanians, and that
of the Basques, the descendants of the old Iberians; and whether the languages
of the native tribes of north Africa, whether agricultural or wandering, may not
be supposed to have belonged either wholly or in part to the Indo-Germanic
family, rather than to the Semitic. These are the points in which we are standing half way between the equally extreme credulity and skepticism of the last
two centuries, and that fuller knowledge which may be the portion of our posterity. But whatever may be discovered as to the African subjects of Carthage,
they were become so distinct from their masters, even if they were originally
sprung from a kindred race, that the two people were not likely to be melted
together into one state; and thus they remained always in the unhappy and
suspicious relation of masters and of slaves, rather than in that of fellow-citizens,
or even of allies.
SPolybius, I. 72.                    that is, in what is now Hungary, were said by
o10 Bell. Jugurthin. 20. Uti ex libris Punicis, some, he tells us, to have been a colony of the
qui regis Hiempsalis dicebantur, interpretatum  Medes, at which he naturally wonders. It is so
nobis est.                             difficult, in these stories, to distinguish what is
1 The Sigynne, a people whom Herodotus mere confusion or invention from what contains
describes, V. 9, as living beyond the Danube, a germ of truth, under more or less of disguise.




ï~~CHAr. XXII.]

THE HALF-CASTE AFRO-PH(ENICIANS.

185

The dominion of Carthage in Africa, as it resembled in many other respects
that of the British in India, had produced also, as in our Indian Colonies of the Afro
empire, a numerous half-caste population, sprung from intermar- Phenicians, or people
riages between the Carthaginians and the native Africans.  This of hlfct.
mixed race was known by the name of Liby or Afro-Phoenicians;12 but whether
they were regarded by Carthage as a source of strength, or suspected as dangerous enemies, we have no sufficient information to determine. Perhaps they were
thought to be dangerous at home, but useful aid trustworthy abroad; and thus
they were sent as colonists to Spain,' and to the more remote parts of the coast
of Africa, without the Pillars of Hercules, just as the poorer citizens of Carthage
itself were sent, as we have seen, to settlements nearer home. If we can trust
the text and the authenticity of the Greek version now existing of the voyage of
Hanno, these Afro-Phoenician colonies were planted on a very large scale; for
that voyage was undertaken for the purpose of settling no fewer than thirty
thousand Afro-Phoenicians14 along the shore of the Atlantic southward of the
straits of Gibraltar.
In the seventh century before the Christian era, % Samian ship5 bound for
Egypt was caught in a violent storm, with the v ind blowing Iberia, o Spoin: Ph.
strongly from the east. The ship was carried altogether out of nician colony of Gadir,
her course, the wind continued to blow from the east, and at last or Gades.
she was actually driven through the Pillars of Hercules, and the first land which
she succeeded in making was the coast of Tartessus or Tarshish, the southwestern coast of Spain. The Samians found that the storm had proved their best
friend; they returned home enriched beyond all their hopes, for the port of Tarshish, says Herodotus, was at that time fresh' and undisturbed; the gold of its
neighboring mines was a treasure not yet appreciated by its possessors; they
bartered it to the Samian strangers in return for the most ordinary articles of civilized living, which barbarians cannot enough admire. This story makes us feel
that we are indeed living in the old age of the world. The country then so fresh
and untouched has now been long in the last stage of decrepitude: its mines,
then so abundant, have been long since exhausted; and after having in its turn
discovered and almost drained the mines of another world, it lies now like a forsaken wreck on the waves of time, with nothing but the memory of the past to
ennoble it. In the middle of the fourth century of Rome, the coast of Spain,",
both on the ocean and on the Mediterranean, was full of Carthaginian trading
settlements, but these were mostly small, and of no great celebrity. Gadir, or
Gades, on the other hand, a colony founded directly from Tyre,"8 had been long
since famous. Here was one of the most celebrated temples of the Tyrian Hercules, and its trade and wealth were considerable; the neighboring country
being rich in mines, while the sea yielded an inexhaustible supply of fish, which
was commonly sold in the Athenian markets as early as the Peloponnesian war.'9
But except Gades, the Greek seamen knew of no other place of importance on
the coast of Spain at this period, till they came north of the Iberus, to the country which was then inhabited by the Ligurians. Here there was the Greek settlement of Emporion,0 an offshoot from the Phocman colony of Massalia.  If Saguntum was really a city of Greek or Tyrrhenian origin, founded by colonists
from Zacynthus and Arden, it seems to have retained no marks of the Greek
character; it had no seaport, and though it was itself near the coast, yet it was
not of sufficient importance to attract the notice of the Greek navigators.;
The great Spanish peninsula itself, and its original inhabitants, the various tribes
of the Iberian race, were as yet but little known to the rest of the world. Sicil12 Polybius, III. 33.                  17 Scylax, Periplus, p. 1.
1 Scymnus Chius, V. 195, 196.          's Strabo, III. prope finerm.
4 IIanno, Periplus, p. 1. Ed. Hudson.  1 Pollux, VI.48. Eupoli, quoted by Stop'.1b Herodotus, IV. 152.                nus Byzant. in rd3rpa.
S 'A rnamTOv.                          20 Scylax, Periplus, p. 1.




ï~~186

IISTORY OF ROME

[CHAP. XXIL

Native Iberians; their ia, antiquarians21 derived the oldest part of the population of their
race and character,  island, the Sicanians, from the northeastern coast of Spain.  The
Iberians had for some time been accustomed to serve in the Carthaginian armies;
their name occurs amongst the various nations who composed the great host of
Hamilcar25 when he invaded Sicily in the time of Gelon, and was defeated in the
famous battle of Himera. The Iberians were known to the Athenians23 as amongst
the most warlike of the barbarians of the west, whom they purposed to employ
in conquering their Peloponnesian enemies, had success at Syracuse enabled them
to fulfil their more remote designs; and we have seen Iberians distinguished above
all the other soldiers in the same service, in the great Carthaginian expedition
which Imilcon led against the tyrant Dionysius. Another circumstance removed
them even more than their remarkable courage from the common mass of barbarians.  Writing was common among them; and some of their tribes4 possessed
written records of their past history, not composed in verse, besides numerous
poems, and large collections of laws and institutions in a metrical form, amounting, it was said, to about six thousand lines. We ourselves have, in some degree,
a national interest in the Iberians, if it be true that colonies of their race crossed
the Bay of Biscay, and established themselves on the coast of Cornwall. But
their memory has almost utterly perished; we know not with what race of mankind they were connected; and although the Basque dialect, still spoken on both
sides of the Pyrenees, is supposed to be a remnant of their language, yet its relation to other languages appears to have been not yet ascertained, so as to inform
us to what family it belongs. It may be hoped that this, as well as the deciphering of the Etruscan monuments, may be amongst the discoveries reserved for
our own generation, or for that of our children.
From the Pyrenees to the frontiers of Etruria,"5 the coast of the Mediterranean
The Li grians  was occupied by the Ligurians, a people distinguished by the
Greeks both from the Iberians and from the Kelts, although they
are supposed to have been connected with the latter nation in their race and
language. As the Ligurians dwelt on the coast, they became known to the Carthaginians; and thus Ligurians26 are named together with Iberians amongst the
soldiers of Hamilcar's expedition to Sicily, at the beginning of the fifth century
before the Christian era. In the time of Scylax, a few years later than our present period, the Ligurians and Iberians were mixed together on the coast, between
the Pyrenees and the Rhone, and the exclusive dominion of the Ligurians only
extended from the Rhone to Etruria. But Thucydides mentioned it as an ascertained fact,"7 that at a very remote period they had dislodged the Sicanians from
their land on the Sicanian river in Iberia, and that these, 'flying before their conquerors, went over and settled in Sicily. We cannot certainly tell what river is

21 Thucydides, VI. 2, following Antiochus.
22 Herodotus, VII. 165.
23 Thucydides, VI. 90.
24 Strabo, III. p. 189. Here again Niebuhr's
sagacity has corrected the common reading,
v6pov~e 4jpovr faKtvXtX[v irWv, which, as he
observes, would not be Greek, into v6pove ~faxLeXLtwi Werv.
When this page was written, I had not seen
the excellent work of the lamented William Von
Humboldt,     on the earliest inhabitants of
Spain," although I was aware generally of its
character, and of the conclusionwhich it endeavored to establish. He considers it to be certain that the present Basque language is substantially the same with the ancient Iberian:
the names of places in the ancient geography
of Spain being, for the most part, not only significant in Basque, but exhibiting in their sound,
and in their omission of some letters, and their
combinations of others, the peculiarities of the
existing language. It appears that in the Basque

country there are three distinct dialects, and
that with regard to one of these nothing satisfactory had been pullished when Von Humboldt wrote, while the lexicon or vocabulary of
another was far from perfect. I notice this, because words may exist in these dialects which
may go far to establish the resemblance of the
Basque language to others, or to prove its diversity; and may explain those names in the
ancient geography of Spain which have hot been
hitherto interpreted. The Iberians, in Humboldt's judgment, were a people quite distinct
from the Kelts; but they may have had the
same degree of connection with them which subsisted between all the nations of the great IndoGermanic family. He does not believe in the
Iberian extraction of any part of the inhabitants
of the British Islands.
25 Scylax, p. 2. Herodotus speaks of "the
Ligurians who live above Massalia."  V  9.
2 Herodot. VII. 165.
7 Thucydides, VI. 2.




ï~~CHAP. XXII.]

THE KELTS, OR GAULS.

187

meant, nor what limits Thucydides assigned to Iberia; but a migration to Sicily,
rather than to Corsica or Sardinia, becomes probable, in proportion as we place
the Sicanians further to the south, and nearer to the trading settlements of the
Carthaginians or Phoenicians. Perhaps the Ligurians advanced along the coast
from east to west, expelling or conquering the Iberian tribes; till at last, when
the force of their irruption was spent, the Iberians recovered their former country, wholly between the Iberus and the Pyrenees, and partially between the Pyrenees and the Rhone.    At any rate, it should be remembered that, the Iberians,
and not the Kelts, were the inhabitants of the country between the Pyrenees and
the Garonne and the Cevennes, as is shown even to this day, by the existence of
the Basque language in the south of France no less than in Spain.
It may be true, indeed, that the Kelts or Gauls had long before the fourth century of Rome crossed the Alps, and established themselves in that The Kelts, orGaul
country, which now forms the Lombard portion of the Austrian why they were ans yet
dominions in northern Italy. It may be true also that Keltic tribesso little known.
were to be found in the heart of Spain; for, before civilization has asserted its
power, nations, like rivers, are. continually changing their boundaries, and take
their own course almost at pleasure. But as the Kelts had most certainly neither crossed the Apennines, nor reached as yet the shores of the Adriatic, they
had no connection with the civilized world; the Carthaginians had no opportunity
of 'enlisting them into their armies, nor had the Greek traders acquired any direct:.knowledge of them. Their name was known only through the reports of those
Phoenicians5 who navigated the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay, on their way to
the tin mines of Britain. And this explains the strange description of their position
given by Herodotus,25 "that the Kelts dwell without the Pillars of Hercules, and
that they border on the Kynesians, who live the farthest to the west of all the
people of Europe."    This is clearly the language of some Phoenician Periplus of
the western coasts of France and Spain: the KynesiansÂ~ must have lived on the
coasts of Portugal, Gallicia, and Asturias; perhaps on that of Gascony and Guienne: beyond these, as the voyager pursued his course along the land, he came
to the country of the Kelts who occupied the whole coast north of the Garonne,
and were, very probably, intermixed with the Iberian Kynesians on the coasts of
Gascony and Navarre. The Greeks, when they read this account, little suspected
that these same Kelts reached from the shores of the ocean inland as far as the
Alps, and, possibly, nearly to the head of the Adriatic; and that while they heard
of them only as dwelling without the Pillars of Hercules, they were advanced in
the opposite direction, almost within the ordinary horizon of Greek observation,
and in a very short time would unexpectedly appear like a wasting torrent in the
heart of Italy. The narrow band of coast occupied by the Ligurian and Venetian
tribes was as yet sufficient to conceal the movements of the Kelts from the notice
of the civilized world. Thus immediately before that famous eruption which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii, the level ridge31 which was then Vesuvius excited no suspicion; and none could imagine that there were lurking close below
that peaceful surface the materials of a fiery deluge, which were so soon to burst
forth, and to continue for centuries to work havoc and desolation.
We can trace with great distinctness the and character in different parts of his philosophperiod at which the Kelts became familiarly ical works.
nown to the Greeks. Herodotus only knew    29 II. 33, IV. 49.
of them from the Phoenician navigators: Thu-  ' There is no mention of these Cynesians, so
cydides does not name them at all: Xenophon far as I remember, in any ancient writer, except
only notices them as forming part of the aux- in the two passages of Herodotus quoted above.
iliary force sent by Dionysius to the aid of La- Niebuhr places them to the north, rather than
cedemon. Isocrates makes no mention of them. to the west, of the Kelts (Kleine Histor. SchrifBut immediately afterwards, their incursions ten, p. 142); but I do not see why this is necesinto central and southern Italy on the one hand, sary. The account in the text seems sufficiently
and into the countries between the Danube to explain the description in Herodotus.
and Macedonia on the other, had made them  3 Vicina Vesevo orajugo. Since the erupobjects of general interest and curiosity; and tion no one would ever have called the top of
Aristotle notices several points in their habits Vesuvius a "jugum."




ï~~188

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXIL

From the countries:f western Europe, on which the first faint dawn of histor-... Supremacy of ical light had as yet scarcely broken, we turn to the heart of the
Lacfeda mon. Olynthian civilized world, to those republics of Greece which had already
confederacy.  reached their highest point of glory and advancement, and were
now feeling the first approach of decay, like a plant when its seed is almost ripe,
and ready to be shed or wafted by the winds to a distance, there to multiply the
race of its parent. According to the synchronism of Polybius,32 the invasion of
Rome by the Gauls took place in the same year with the conclusion of the peace
of Antalcidas, that is, in the second year of the ninety-eighth Olympiad. Probably it should be placed a few years later; but at any rate, it falls within the
period of the Lacedmmonian supremacy in Greece, after the humiliation of Athens
by the result of the Peloponnesian war, and before the rise of the power of
Thebes. Never was dominion wielded by such unfit hands as those of the Spartans. Living at home under an iron system, which taught each successive generation that their highest virtue was to preserve and not to improve the institutions of their fathers, the Lacedremonians were utterly unable to act the part of
conquerors; for conquest, being the greatest of all possible changes, can only be
conducted by those who know how to change wisely;33 a conqueror who is the
slave of existing institutions, is no better than a contradiction. Thus the Spartans
had no idea of turning their triumph over Athens to any other account than that
of their own pride and rapacity; neither the general intercourse between nation
and nation, nor commerce, nor intellectual nor moral excellence, derived any benefit
from their ascendency. It was therefore unnatural, and fulfilled no object of
God's providence, except that of being an instrument for the chastisement of others;
so that it could only sow the seed of future wars, till, having heaped up the measure of insult and oppression, it at last drew down its just judgment. But the
growth of that spirit of organization and self-government, which the high intelligence of the Greek mind could not but foster, was seen in the formation of the
Olynthian confederacy.34 Among the Chalcidian and Bottimean towns of the peninsula of Pallene and its neighborhood, places whose fate it had been hitherto to be
the mere subjects of some greater power, we now witness the growth of an independent political system, of which the head was not to be Sparta nor Athens,
but Olynthus. This was a proof that the vigor of the Greek character was de.
veloping itself in a wider circle than heretofore, and prepares us for the change
so soon to be effected by the genius of Philip and Alexander, when the centre of
the power and outward activity of Greece was to be found in Macedon, while
Athens still remained the well-spring of its intellectual vigor.
The eastern coast of the Adriatic is one of those ill-fated portions of the earth
Eastern coast of the which, though placed in immediate contact with civilization, have
Adriatic. Molossians remained perpetually barbarian. Unvisited, and indeed almost
and Therotan.  inaccessible to strangers from the robber habits of the population,
the Dalmatian provinces of Austria, no less than those of Montenegro and Albania, which are not yet reunited to Christendom, are to this hour as devoid of
illustrious names and noble associations, as they were in the fourth century before the Christian era. From the gulf of Ambracia, the northwestern boundary
of Greece, up to the head of the Adriatic, the coast was occupied by the Molossians, Thesprotians, Chaonians, and beyond these, by the various tribes"5 of
the great Illyrian nation, amongst whom Herodotus included even the Henetians
or Venetians, at the northern extremity of this whole region. In remote times,
before the Hellenic race began to assume a character so distinct from all its
3 I. 6.                              ians, pp. 6, 7. And so also does Livy, X. 2.
3 'Havxagoa pplv r6\ c ra Aivra vptpa But Herodotus, as I have said, reckons even
ipLara" 'rpos roAAd i avayKcajorvo liva 7roAAfs the Venetians as Illyrians, I. 196, and Strabo
rai rEs irtrc X scos. Thucyd. I. 'Ti.  calls the whole eastern coast of the Adriatic,
3 Xenophon, Hellenica, V. 2, Â~ 12, et seqq. Illyricum, as far as the very head of the gulf.
" Scylax distinguishes the Venetians, as well VII. pp. 313, 314.
as the Istrians and Liburnians, from the Illyr



ï~~CHAP. XXII.]

MOLOSSIANS, THESPROTIANS, ETC.

189

kindred nations, the Molossians, Thesprotians, and Chaonians, all of them, it is
probable, Pelasgian tribes, were both, in their religion and in their traditions of
their heroes, closely connected with the Greeks. The ancient temple of Dodona,
once no less famous than Delphi became afterwards, belonged to the Thesprotians; the son of Achilles was said to have reigned over the Molossians; and
even within historical memory, the names of Molossian kings and chiefs are of
Greek origin, such as Alcon, one of the suitors of the fair Agariste, the daughter of Clisthenes of Sicyon, and still later, Admetus, the protector of Themistocles in his disgrace, and Alcetas, the ally of Dionysius of Syracuse. But the
mass of the people were considered to be barbarian, and their fortunes were distinct from those of Greece, till the brilliant reign of Pyrrhus, more than a century after our present period, for a time united them.
The Illyrians were already notorious for their piracies, and it was remarked of
them, that some of their tribes were governed- by queens." Their Illyrians.
queen Teuta, and her wars with the Romans, will give me an opportunity of noticing them more fully hereafter; and so rapidly is our knowledge increasing, that ere long we may possibly gain some clue to assist us in
discovering the race and language of the Illyrians, points which at present are
involved in the greatest obscurity.
We are within five-and-twenty years of the accession of Philip to the throne
of Macedon, but so entirely was the Macedonian greatness his
Macedon. Reign of
own personal work, that nothing as yet gave sign of what it was Amynt athe father of
so soon to become.   His father, Amyntas, was at this time king, Philip.
and unable even to cope with the Olynthian confederacy, which had lately grown
up in his neighborhood. Many of the cities of Macedonia were won by the
Olynthians,7 and Amyntas was most rejoiced to obtain the aid of Lacedmmon
to establish him on his throne by putting down this formidable enemy. The
Macedonians3t were not allowed to be Greeks, although they were probably of
a kindred stock, and although the Greek language was now in universal use
among them. But their kings were of the noblest Greek blood, being Heraclidm from Argos, claiming descent from Temenus, one of the three hero chiefs of
the race of Hercules, who had established themselves in Peloponnesus by the aid
of the Dorians. The people were stout, brave, and hardy, and more numerous
than the citizens of the little Greek commonwealths; so that Philip afterwards
found no difficulty in raising a considerable army, when he began to aspire to
the honor of making himself the first power in Greece. But as yet, though
Archelaus had made roads through the country,9 and had collected large supplies of arms to arm his people, the friendship and the enmity of Macedon were
of little value, and none could have imagined that the fatal blow to the independence of Greece was to come from a kingdom which as yet scarcely belonged
to the Greek name, and in the struggles for dominion between Athens and Lacedemon, had been only a subordinate auxiliary.
Further to the east, the great Persian monarchy still existed unimpaired in
the extent of its visible dominion, although ready at the first state o f theo Pesian
touch to fall to pieces.  All of Asia, of which the Greeks had any monarchy.
knowledge, from the shores of the Egean to the Indus and the Araxes, from
the Erythrmean sea southwards to the Caspian and the chain of Caucasus, obeyed,
to speak generally, the great king. In Africa, however, it was otherwise: Egypt
s AtLfpvot yvvatxOsparovrat. Scylax, Periplus, saying, that he himself was of Greek origin, alp. 7. This is on the assumption that the Libur- luding to his supposed descent from Temenus
nians were either Illyrians, or, at any rate, of a the Heraclid. This would have been needless,
kindred stock.                          had his birth as a Macedonian made him a
3 Xenophon, Hellenica, V. 2, Â~ 18, 8, Â~ 9.  Greek. Again, Thucydides distinguishes the
s Alexander, the son of Amyntas, when he Macedonians from the Greeks who were settled
went over with some secret information to the on their coast, and even expressly includes
Greek camp before the battle of Platiea, is them amongst the barbarians, IV. 124, 126.
represented by Herodotus (IX. 45) as account-  3Thucydides, II. 100.
ing for his interest in the welfare of Greece by




ï~~190

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XXIII

had been for some years in revolt, was again governed by a dynasty of its native princes, and had defied the efforts of the Persian kings to reconquer it.
And this example, together with the long war carried on against the Persians by
Evagoras, the tyrant of the little state of Salamis, in Cyprus, and the belt of
Greek cities encircling the whole coast of Asia Minor, from Trapezus on the
Euxine to Cnidus by the Triopian cape, was tending gradually to dissolve the
Persian power. The great king's hold on Caria and Cilicia was loosened, and
when Isocrates wrote his Panegyrical Oration, in the beginning of the hundredth
Olympiad,4" Tyre was in the possession of the king's enemies, and its naval force
strengthened for a time the arms of Evagoras.
Such was the state of the civilized world, when the Kelts or Gauls broke
Conclusion,   through the thin screen which had hitherto concealed them from
sight, and began, for the first time, to take their part in the great
drama of the nations. For nearly two hundred years they continued to fill Europe and Asia with the terror of their name; but it was a passing tempest, and
if useful at all, it was useful only to destroy. The Gauls could communicate no
essential points of human character in which other races might be deficient;
they could neither improve the intellectual state of mankind, nor its social and
political relations. When, therefore, they had done their appointed work of
havoc, they were doomed to be themselves extirpated, or to be lost amidst nations of greater creative and constructive power; nor is there any race which has
left fewer traces of itself in the character and institutions of modern civilization.
CHAPTER XXIII.
MISCELLANEOUS-PHYSICAL HISTORY.
" Postrema vero partitio historin civilis ea sit, ut dividatur in merainm nut mixtam. Mixturse:elebres dune: altera ex scientia civili; altera pruecipue ex naturali."-BAcoN, De Augmentis
Scientiar. II. 10.
A GREAT work might be written on the connection between the revolutions of
nature and those of mankind: how they act each upon the other;
Imperfection of the matorials of physical hi- how man is affected by climate, and how climate is again altered
tory.         by the labors of man; how diseases are generated; how different
states of society are exposed to different disorders, and require different sorts of
diet; how, as all earthly things are exhaustible, the increased command over
external nature given by increased knowledge, seems to have a tendency to
shorten the period of the existing creation, by calling at once into action those
resources of the earth which else might have supplied the wants of centuries to
come; how, in short, nature, no less than human society, contains tokens that
it had a beginning, and will as surely have its end. But, unfortunately, the
physical history of ancient times is even more imperfect than the political history; and in the place of those exact and uninterrupted records of natural phenomena, from which alone any safe conclusions can be drawn, we have only a
few scattered notices; nor can we be sure that even these have recorded what
was most worthy of our knowledge. Still, these scanty memorials, such as they

40 Isoerates, Panegyric. 188, p. 74.




ï~~OHAr. XXIII.]

CHANGE IN THE CLIMATE OF ITALY.

191

are, must not be neglected; and as we gain a wider experience, even these may
hereafter be found instructive.
The first question with regard to the physical state of ancient Rome is, whether the climate was such as it is at present. Now here it is impos- To olmate of taly
sible not to consider the somewhat analogous condition of America was anciently colder in
at                                     ~winter than itisow
at this day. Boston is in the same latitude with Rome; but the wtthat.
severity of its winter far exceeds not that of Rome only, but of Paris and London. Allowing that the peninsular form of Italy must at all times have had its
effect in softening the climate, still the woods and marshes of Cisalpine Gaul,
and the perpetual snows of the Alps, far more extensive than at present, owing
to the uncultivated and uncleared state of Switzerland and Germany, could not
but have been felt even in the neighborhood of Rome. Besides, even on the
Apennines, and in Etruria and in Latium, the forests occupied a far greater space
than in modern times: this would increase the quantity of rain, and consequently
the volume of water in the rivers; the floods would be greater and more numerous, and before man's dominion had completely subdued the whole country,
there would be large accumulations of water in the low grounds, which would
still further increase the coldness of the atmosphere. The language' of ancient
writers, on the whole, favors the same conclusion, that the Roman winter, in
their days, was more severe than it is at present. It agrees with this, that the
olive, which cannot bear a continuance of severe cold, was not introduced into
Italy till long after the vine: Fenestella asserted that its cultivation was unknown as late as the reign of Tarquinius Priscus; and such was the notion entertained of the cold of all inland countries, even in the latitude of Greece, that
Theophb.rastus3 held it impossible to cultivate the olive at the distance of more
than four hundred stadia from the sea. But the cold of the winter is perfectly
consistent4 with great heat in the summer. The vine is cultivated with success
on the Rhine, in the latitude of Devonshire and Cornwall, although the winter at
Coblentz and Bonn is far more severe than it is in Westmoreland; and evergreens will flourish through the winter in the Westmoreland valley far better
than on the Rhine or in the heart of France. The summer heat of Italy was
probably much the same in ancient times as it is at present, except that there

' It is by no means easy to know what weight
i, to obe given to the language of the poets, nor
how far particular descriptions or expressions
nay have been occasioned by peculiar local cirmnstances. Pliny's statement, Epistol. II. 17,
that the bay-tree would rarely live through the
winter without shelter, either at Rome, or at
his own villa at Laurentum, if taken absolutely,
would prove too much; for although the bay is
less hardy than some other evergreens, yet how
can it be conceived that a cliniate in which the
olive would flourish, could be too severe for the
bay? There must either have been some local
peculiarity of winds or soil, which the tree did
not like, or else the fact, as is sometimes the
case, must have been too hastily assumed; and
men were afraid, from long custom, to leave
the bay unprotected in the winter, although, in
fact, they might have done it with safety. Yet
the elder Pliny, XVII. 2, speaks of long snows
being useful to the corn, which shows that he
is not speaking of the mountains; and a long
snow lying in the valleys of central or southern
Italy would surely be a very unheard-of phenomenon now. Again, the freezing of the rivers, as spoken of by Virgil and Horace, is an
image of winter, which could not, I think, naturally suggest itself to Italian poets of the present day, at any point to the south of the Apennines. Other arguments, to the same effect,
may be seen in a paper by Daines Barrington,

in the 58th volume of the Philosophical Transactions. Gibbon   also, after stating the arguments on both sidces of the question, comes to
the same conclusion. Miscellaneous Works,
Vol. III. p. 246. He quotes, however, the Abbe
de Louguerue, as saying that the Tiber was
frozen in the bitter winter of 1709.
2 Pliny, Hist. Natur. XV. 1.
s Pliny, Hist. Natur. XV. 1.
4 It is a common notion that climate follows
latitude, and that a northern country will be
cold, and a southern one warm, as compared
with each other throughout the year. But this
is by no means a universal rule; on the contrary, climate in England is more affected by
the longitude of a place, than by its latitude;
and the winters are often mildest in those parts
where the summers are least genial. The whole
eastern coast, from Kent to Caithness, is much
colder in winter than the western; and this to
such a degree, that Kent is not only colder than
Cornwall, but colder than Cumberland, or Argyleshire. On the other hand, the eastern coast
in summer enj Sys a much greater share of steady
fine weather and sunshine than the western.
Wall-fruit will ripen in the neighborhood of Edinburgh far more surely than in Westmoreland,
and wheat grows luxuriantly as far north as
Elgin, while it is a rarity onr. the coast of Argyleshire.




ï~~192

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXIII.

were a great number of spots where shade and verdure might be found, and
where its violence would, therefore, be more endurable. But the difference between the temperature of summer and winter may be safely assumed to have
been much greater than it is now.
It then becomes a question whether the greater cold of the winter, and the
This perhaps hadan ef- greater extent of wood and of undrained waters which existed in
feet en tire healthiness
ofo the horh   the times of the Romans, may not have had a favorable influence
at the aeighhorhood attef ie
Rome.         in mitigating that malaria which is now the curse of so many parts
of Italy, and particularly of the immediate neighborhood of Rome. On a subject
so imperfectly understood, even by those who have had the fullest experience, it
were most unbecoming in a foreigner to speak otherwise than with the greatest
diffidence.  We know, however, that the Campagna at Rome, which is now
almost a desert, must, at a remote period, have been full of independent cities;
and although the greater part of these had perished long before the fourth century of Rome, yet even then there existed Ostia, Laurentum, Ardea, and Antium
on one side, and Veii and Caere on the other, in situations which are now regarded
as uninhabitable during the summer months; and all the lands of the Romans, on
which they, like the old Athenians, for the most part resided regularly, lie within
the present range of the malaria.
Some have supposed that, although the climate was the same as it is now, yet
The range the mathe Romans were enabled to escape from its influence, and their
a less etensive for- safety has been ascribed5 to their practice of wearing woollen next
merly than at present. to the skin, instead of linen or cotton.  But not to notice other
objections to this notion, it is enough to say that the Romans regarded unhealthy
situations with the same apprehension as their modern descendants; it is one
of the first cautions given by Cato' and Varro7 to a man going to purchase land,
that he should buy only where the air is healthy; "otherwise," says Varro,
farming is nothing else than a mere gambling with life and property."  The truth
seems to be, that the malaria, although well known and extremely fatal, was
much more partial than at present, and that many spots which are now infected
were formerly free from it.  "The whole of Latium," says Strabo,8 "is a flourishing and very productive country, with the exception of a few spots near the
coast, which are marshy and unhealthy." And again, when speaking expressly
of the Campagna between the Alban hills and Rome,9 he says, "that the parts
towards the sea are not so healthy; but that the rest is a good country to live
in, and well cultivated accordingly." Now, although this is probably going too
far, for the unhealthy spots could not have been confined altogether to the seacoast, yet with every allowance for exaggeration and careless writing, this is a
description of the Campagna which no man in his senses would think of giving
now.
On the other hand, Cicero'0 and Livy" both speak of the immediate neighborRome itself, then as hood of Rome as unhealthy, but at the same time they extol the
neow, wag leidan ael
thy than itsu  positive healthiness of the city itself; ascribing it to the hills, which
neighborhood.  are at once airy themselves, and offer a screen to the low grounds
from the heat of the sun.   Bunsen, also, from  an experience of many years,
gives a favorable account of the healthiness of the city itself.  "The site of
Rome," he says, "taken generally, may be called healthy."  It is true, that one
of the most unhealthy parts of modern Rome, the Piazzi di Spagna and the
slope of the Pincian hill above it, was not within the limits of the ancient city.
Yet the praise of the healthiness of Rome must be understood rather comSBy Brocchi, in his "Discorso sulla condi-  9 V. 8, Â~ 12, p. 239.
zione dell' aria di Roma negli antichi tempi,"  De Republica, II.  6. " Locum  delegit
printed at the end of his work on the Geology (Romulus) in regione pestilenti Salubrem."
of Rome.                                 11 Compare VII. 38.  "In pestilente atque
6 Cato, de Re Rustics, II.           arido circa urbem solo;" and V. 54. " Salou' Varro, de Re Rustics, II. 4.        berrimos colles."
8 V. 8, Â~ 5, p. 281.




ï~~CHAP. XXIII.]  SUPPOSED CAUSES OF THE MALARIA.

193

paratively with that of the immediate neighborhood than positively. Rome,
in the summer months, cannot be called healthy, even as compared with the
other great cities of Italy, much less if the standard be taken from Berlin or from
London.
Again, the neighborhood of Rome is characterized by Livy as a " pestilential
and parched soil."  The latter epithet is worthy of notice, because The cmpahe
the favorite opinion has been that the malaria is connected with hpsebecome es healthy from the winters
marshes and with moisture.   But it is precisely here that we may having beco me milder,
and from  the diminufind, I think, the explanation of the spread of the malaria in mod- tio n in the quantity of
ern times.  Even in spring, nothing can less resemble a marsh than i.
the present aspect of the Campagna. It is far more like the down country of
Dorsetshire, and as the summer advances it may well be called a dry and parched
district. But this is exactly the character of the plains2 of Estremadura, where
our soldiers suffered so grievously from malaria fever in the autumn of 1809. In
short, abundant experience has proved, that when the surface of the ground is
wet, the malaria poison is far less noxious than when all appearance of moisture
on the surface is gone, and the damp makes its way into the atmosphere from a
considerable depth under ground. After a wet and cold summer in 1799, when
the whole face of the country was nearly flooded with water, the British army
remained the whole autumn in one of the most unhealthy parts of Holland, without suffering in any remarkable degree from malaria fever. But in 1809, when
the summer had been hot and fine, every one remembers the deadly effect in the
autumn fevers on the soldiers who were holding Walcheren. If, then, more rain
fell in the Campagna formerly than is the case now; if the streams were fuller
of water, and their course more rapid; above all, if, owing to the uncleared state
of central Europe, and the greater abundance of wood in Italy itself, the summer
heats set in later, and were less intense, and more often relieved by violent storms
of rain, there is every reason to believe that the Campagna must have been far
healthier than at present; and that precisely in proportion to the clearing and
cultivation of central Europe, to the felling of the woods in Italy itself, the consequent decrease in the quantity of rain, the shrinking of the streams, and the
disappearance of the water from the surface, has been the increased unhealthiness
of the country, and the more extended range of the malaria.
It must be observed also, that the present desolation of the Campagna, and
even that comparative want of population which prevailed in it causeso f its gradual
during the later times of the Roman republic and under the em- desolation.
pire, are not wholly to be attributed to physical causes. The aguish districts of
England continue to be inhabited, nor have the terrors of the yellow fever driven
men away from the unhealthiest situations of the West Indies, or from Vera Cruz,
Acapulco, or Carthagena. The old cities of the Campagna would have continued
to defy the malaria; their population would have been kept down, indeed; many
of their children would have died young, and the average length of human life
would have been far short of threescore years and ten; but men do not readily
leave their country, and they would have continued, as their fathers had done
before them, to struggle with disease and death. When, however, political causes
had destroyed the cities of the Campagna one after the other, and the land became the property of Roman citizens; when again, at a later period, the small properties disappeared, and whole districts fell into the hands of a few individuals;:
then it was natural that those who could afford to live where they chose, should
2 The view here given of some of the phe- of his description of Rome. An unprofessional
nomena of marsh or malaria fevers was obtained man's judgment of a medical work is worth litfrom a paper by Dr. Ferguson of Windsor, "' on tle; but the subject of Dr. Ferguson's paper is
the nature and history of the Marsh Poison," one in which I have long felt a lively interest
which was read before the Royal Society of Edin- and all that I have observed myself, or heard
burgh in 1820. I directed Bunsen's attention from medical men, in answer to my,inquiries as
to it, and he has made much use of it in his own to matters of fact, has been in agreement with
paper on the "Aria Cattiva," in the first volume his statements.
13




ï~~194

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXIII.

not fix themselves in a spot of even partial unhealthiness, and thus a great part
of the Campagna was left only to the slaves by whom it was cultivated. In
modern times, when slave labor was no longer to be had, and there were no attractions strong enough to induce a free population to migrate from their homes to
an unhealthy district, the Campagna has remained a wilderness, and its harvests
are reaped by a temporary immigration of laborers from other parts of the country. To repeople it under such circumstances is far more difficult than to keep
up a population already existing; and if, as I believe, the physical state of the
Campagna has become more and more unfavorable, it seems likely, without some
extraordinary advances in our knowledge of the malaria, and in our ability to
combat it, to remain a wilderness forever.'3
The disorders produced by malaria, whether more cr less fatal, so regularly
Various      accompanied the return of hot weather, that they were not likely
order noticedi ean- to be recorded in the annals. The diseases which were noticed
nals.         there were of a very different character, and belonged rather to
another class of phenomena, those extraordinary sicknesses which, in obedience to a
law hitherto undiscovered, visit the earth at different periods, prevail more or less
extensively, and acting independently, as it seems, of any recognized causes of
disease, are also beyond the reach of all known remedies. The first half of the
fourth century of Rome was one of these calamitous periods, and the pestilences
which occurred at the beginning of it have already been noticed. Seven others
are recorded between the years 318 and 365; that is to say,'4 in 319, 320, 322,
327, 343, 356, and 363. They are described in general terms, with the exception of those of the years 327 and 363, which are ascribed to unusual droughts;
and said also to have nearly resembled each other in their symptoms. The epidemic of 327 first, as we are told, attacked the cattle, the herdsmen, and others who
tended the cattle, and lastly it became general. It appears to have been wholly
inflammatory, and to have shown itself particularly on the skin; first, in the form of
a violent rash,15 accompanied with extreme irritation, and afterwards in the shape of
erysipelas of a very malignant kind. This visitation took place just after the conclusion of the peace of Nicias, and we do not hear of any coincident prevalence
of pestilence in Greece. The epidemic of 36316 is described in similar terms; it
was brought on by the same causes, an exceedingly hot and dry summer; and
the symptoms were the same, an eruption terminating in large and painful ulcers,
accompanied with such irritation, that their patients tore their flesh even to the
bone. The date of this disorder falls about the beginning of the ninety-ninth
Olympiad, that is to say, it coincides with the Olynthian war; and as it arose

1 This opinion should be expressed with the
greatest hesitation and diffidence, because Bunsen believes that the Campagna is reclaimable
by encour aing human habitation in it; and he
thinks thatif thegreatlandholders were to let out
their property on leases to a number of small
farmers, who would thus naturally create a resident population, the unhealthiness of the air
would, in a great measure, be obviated. It is said
that the breaking up of the surface of the ground
is found to lessen the virulence of the malaria;
and the fires which necessarily accompany human dwellings, are another known antidote to
it. As a proof of this, Bunsen appeals to the
great improvement thus effected by the duke
of Zagarolo in the neighborhood of that little
town, which stands on the edge of the Campagna, a few miles fromPalestrina, about a mile
on the left of the road coming from Rome. The
air, which was decidedly unhealthy, has been
purified; and the whole district, by having
been peopled, has become actually capable of
supporting a population in health and prosperity. However, without reckoning on the moral
improbability of finding the great body of pro
prietors disposed to follow a new system, at
variance with their old habits, it must be allowed
that the duke of Zagarolo's experiment was made
under circumstances unusually favorable. The
country round Zagarolo is high ground; it
forms a sort of shoulder, connecting the Alban
hills with the Apennines, and forms the divortium aquarum, or water-shed, of the feeders of
the Tiber on the one hand, and of the Garigliano on the other. Its character also is wholly
different from the general aspect of the Campagna; it is not a country of long swelling slopes,
notched as it were here and there with deep
narrow stream beds; but a succession of nearly
parallel ridges, rising to a considerable height,
with valleys rather than gorges between them.
To all appearance, therefore, it was more easily
reclaimable than the great mass of the Campagna.
SLivy, IV. 21, 25, 30, 52. V. 18, 81.
5 Dionysius, XII. 3. Fragm. Mai.
16 Dionysius, XIII. 4.  Fragm. Mai. Livy,
V. 31. Dionysius appears to put this epidemio
a year earlier than Livy, namely, 362.




ï~~CHAP. XXIII.]

VOLCANIC LAKES-LAKE OF ALBA.

195

from local causes, we cannot be surprised that we hear no mention of its having
extended into Greece. But the epidemic of 322 and of the years almost immediately preceding it, was contemporary with the great plague of Athens: and that
of 356 coincided, according to the chronology of Diodorus, with the violent sickness which destroyed Imilcon's army before Syracuse, and had been preceded by
three or four years of epidemic disease in Africa.
If from diseases we turn to the phenomena of the weather, with which they are,
in all probability, closely connected, we find the years 327 and 363 Phenomena ofthe weamarked, as has already been observed, by excessive droughts; and ther. Great frost of tha
the summer of 356 is said by Diodorus17 to have been of the same year 355.
character. On the other hand, the winter of 355 had been one of unusual severity;8 the Tiber was choked up with ice, the snow lay seven feet deep, where
it was not drifted; many men and cattle were lost in it, and many of the cattle
were killed by the extreme cold, or starved from want of pasture, the resources by
which we now provide for their subsistence during the winter being then little
practised. It is added that'the fruit-trees, by which are meant the figs and olives
in particular, either perished altogether, or suffered so severely that they did not
bear for a long time afterwards; and that many houses were crushed by the
weight of snow which lay on them, or carried away by its melting when the frost
at last broke up. There is also a notice in Diodorus of the winter of 321,'9 which
is described as having been excessively wet, so that the fruits of the following
season never ripened properly, and the corn was considered unwholesome.
The period about the year 322 was remarkable in Greece for the frequency
and severity of earthquakes; the numerous earthquakes which, volcanic  eenomena.
from their occurring so nearly together, were remembered afterwards Earthquakes.
as an epoch, happened, says Thucydides,Â~ at this time. In the same way the
Romans were alarmed in the year 319 by reports2' of frequent earthquakes in
the country immediately adjoining Rome, and many houses were thrown down
by the shocks. It is probable some phenomenon of this sort occasioned also the
great overflow of the Alban lake during the war with Veii; an event remarkable
in itself, and still more so as having led to the famous work existing to this day;
the tunnel by which th9 water of the lake is carried through the range of hills
which encircle it, and from theice is discharged into the Campagna.
The lakes of Alba and Nemi, like others in the neighborhood of Rome, are of
a peculiar character. In their elevation, lying nestled as it were The volcanic lakes of
high up in the bosom   of the mountains, they resemble what in heneighborho of tdo
Cumberland and Westmoreland are called tarns; but our tarns, lake of Aia.
like ordinary lakes, have their visible feeders and outlets, their head which receives the streams from the mountain sides, and their foot by which they discharge themselves, generally in a larger stream, into the valley below. The
lakes of Alba and Nemi lie each at the bottom of a perfect basin, and the unbroken rim of this basin allows them no visible outlet. Again, it sometimes happens that lakes so situated have their outlet under ground, and that the stream
which drains them appears again to the day after a certain distance, having made
its way through the basin of the lake by a tunnel provided for it by nature.
This is the case particularly where the prevailing rock is the mountain or metalliferous limestone of Derbyshire, which is full of caverns and fissures: and an instance of it may be seen in the small lake or tarn of Malham in Yorkshire, and
another on a much larger scale in the lake of Copais in Boeotia.  But the volcanic
rocks, in which the lake of Alba lies, do not afford such natural tunnels, or at
7 XIV. 70.                           or since, down to his time. I cannot find any
13 Livy, V. 13. Dionysius, XII. 8. Fragm. particulars of the freezing of the Tiber in 1709,
Mal. Bunsen observes that ice in the Tiber is already noticed in note 1.
now as unknown a phenomenon as it would be  19 XII. 58.
beteen the tropics. The winter of 355 is in-  2o III. 89.
deed described by Dionysius as one altogether  21 Livy, IV. 21.
unparalleled in the Roman annals, either before




ï~~196

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHr XXIII

least they are exceeding small, and unequal to the discharge of any large quantity of water; so that if any unusual cause swells the lake, it can find no adequate
outlet, and rises necessarily to a higher level. The Roman tradition reported
that such a rise took place in the year 357; it was caused probably by some
volcanip agency, and increased to such a height, that the water at last ran over
the basin of hills at its lowest point,2 and poured down into the Campagna.
Traces"3 of such an outlet are said to be still visible; and it is asserted that there
are marks of artificial cutting through the rock, as if to enlarge and deepen the
passage. This would suppose the ordinary level of the lake ia remote times to
have been about two hundred feet higher than it is at present; and if this were
so, the actual tunnel was intended not to remedy a new evil, but to alter the old
state of the lake for the better, by reducing it for the time to come to a lower
level. Possibly the discharge over the edge of the basin became suddenly greater,
and so suggested the idea of diverting the water altogether by a different channel. But the whole story of the tunnel, as we have it, is so purely a part of the
poetical account of the fall of Veii, that no part of it can be relied on as historical. The prophecy of the old Veientian, and the corresponding answer of the
Delphian oracle, connecting the draining of the lake with the fate of Veii, must
be left as we find them; only it is likely enough that any extraordinary natural
phenomenon, occurring immediately after the visitation of pestilence, and in the
midst of a long and doubtful war, should have excited unusual alarm, and have
been thought important enough to require an appeal to the most famous oracle
in the world. But other questions of no small difficulty remain: the length of
the tunnel, according to the lowest statement given, exceeds two thousand one
hundred yards;24 according to others it exceeds two thousand six hundred;25 and
one estimate makes it as much as two thousand eight hundred:26 its height varies
from seven feet and a half to nine or ten feet; and its width is not less than four
feet. Admitting that it was wholly worked through the tufo,27 which is easily
wrought, still the labor and expense of such a tunnel must have been considerable; and in the midst of an important war, how could either money or hands
have been spared for such a purpose?   Again, was the work exclusively a Roman one, or performed by the Romans jointly with the Latins, as an object of
common concern to the whole confederacy?    The Alban lake can scarcely have
been within the domain of Rome; nor can we conceive that the Romans could
have been entitled to divert its waters at their pleasure without the consent of
the neighboring Latin cities. But if it were a common work; if the Latins entered heartily into the quarrel of Rome with Veii, regarding it as a struggle between their race and that of the Etruscans; if the overflow of the waters of their
national lake, the lake which bathed the foot of the Alban mountain, where their
national temple stood and their national solemnities were held, excited an interest
in every people of the Latin name, then we may understand how their joint labor
and joint contributions may have accomplished the work even in the midst of
war; and the Romans, as they disguised on every occasion the true nature of
their connection with the Latins, would not fail to represent it as exclusively
their own.
SDionysius, XII. 11. Fragm. Mai.       2 Westphal says it is worked through lava.
2 Sir W. Gell, Topography of Rome, &c. Vol. Sir W. Gell says it is excavated generally in the
I. j. 43.                              tufo. Mr. Meason, whose authority is considSWestphal. Rmische Kampagne, p. 25.  erable, as he had had much practical acquaint2 Sir W. Gell, Topography of Rome, p. 89.  ance with mining, and went into the tunnel for
2 Mr. Laing Meason, quoted by Sir W. Gell about 180 yards from the lake, speaks of the
in a note to p. 53 of his Topogr. of Rome, Vol. I. work as cut in the tufo.




ï~~CHAPTER XXIV.
THE GAULS INVADE CENTRAL ITALY-BATTLE OF THE ALIA-BURNING OF
ROME-RANSOM OF THE CAPITOL AND OF THE CITY-RETREAT OF THE
GAULS.
"Hark! the Gaul is at her gates!"
COWPER.
' Aurea ensaries ollis, atque aurea vestis:
Virgatis lucent sagulis; tumrn lactea colla
Auro innectuntur: duo quisque Alpina coruscant
Gasa manu, scutis protecti corpora longis."
Vmut, Â~En. VIII. 658.
THE fourth century before the Christian sera brought the Gauls, as we have
seen, for the first time within the observation of the civilized world.
Common account of
They then crossed the Apennines, and overran central and south- t settlements of t
ern Italy; they then also broke in upon the Illyrian' tribes, estab- Gaulish tribes in Italy.
lished themselves between the Danube and Greece, and became known to the
kings of Macedon.2 But whether it was in this same century that they had first
crossed the Alps as well as the Apennines, is a question much more difficult to
answer. If we follow the well-known account of Livy,3 we must fix their passage
of the Alps two hundred years earlier: it was about six hundred years before the
Christian tera, according to this statement, that there happened a vast emigration
of the inhabitants of central Gaul; one great multitude, said the story, crossed
the Rhine, and sought a home amidst the wilds of the Hercynian forest; another
made its way over the Alps, descended into the plain of the Po, encountered and
defeated the Etruscans, who were then the masters of the country, near the river
Ticinus, and founded the city of Mediolanum. After this other tribes of central
Gauls, entering Italy by the same course, and finding their countrymen already
in possession of all to the westward of the Adda, penetrated still deeper, and extended the Gaulish settlements as far as the Adige. Again, at a later period,
but how much later we are not told, the Boii4 and Lingones set out from the east

' Justin, XXIV. 4. This is the great expedition which Scylax alludes to, when he describes
the Gauls on the northwestern coast of the
Adriatic, as " men who had stayed behind from
their expedition;" aroXestOivrce rnf. The following words, rit ereviv, appear to mc to be
corrupt.
2 In the very beginning of the reign of Alexander, when a Gaulish embassy came to congratulate him on his victory over the Getse.
Arrian, Exp. Alex. I. 4.
3 Livy, V. 84, 85.
4 The Lingones came from the neighborhood
of Langres, that high table-land which looks
down on the infant Marne to the north, and on
the streams which feed the Saone to the south.
The situation of the Boii in Gaul is not known;
their nation is only to be traced in the countries
to which it had emigrated, in Germany and
Italy. It is remarkable that the story speaks of
a simultaneous migration into Germany and
Italy; and we find Boil in both of these countries. Again, the Senones, who are mentioned

as having entered Italy last of all the Gauls, are
also included amongst the tribes of the first
swarm who founded Mediolanum. Both these
circumstances seem to show, that in the view
of the author of this account, all the migrations
into Italy took place nearly continuously, and
were the result of one and the same cause.
This also seems to agree best with the fact, that
the last comers, instead of attempting to dislodge those who had arrived before them, passed
on quietly to a more distant settlement. This
is very conceivable, if all had left their country
from one and the same impelling cause, and in
the course of one generation; but had the Boil
and Lingones entered Italy a century or a century and a half later than the founders of Mediolanum, and from causes wholly unconnected
with their migration, they would, in all probability, have tried to establish themselves between the Ticinus and the Adda, and would
have paid little regard to the tie of a common
extraction, when distance of time and place had
done so much to weaken it.




ï~~198

HISTORY OF ROME.

[ClAr. XXIV

and northeast of Gaul, made their way to the lake of Geneva, ascended the valley of the Rhone, crossed the Alps by the pass which now bears the name of the
Great St. Bernard, and as the whole country on the north of the Po was already
occupied, these new adventurers passed that river, and drove out the Etruscans
and Umbrians from their possessions between the Po and the Apennines, from
the neighborhood of the modern cities of Parma, Modena, and Bologna. Last of
all, but again the time is not specified, came the Senones from the same quarter.
of Gaul, and following the track of the Boii and Lingones, crossed as they had
done both the Alps and the Po, reached the coast of the Adriatic, and finally
spread themselves along its shores from the neighborhood of Ravenna to that of
Ancona.
The geographical part of this account appears to deserve our full belief; but
Its chronologyis.uspi- it does not follow that its chronology is equally trustworthy. The
cios.        narrative itself seems to imply that all these migrations were nearly
continuous, and it is for many reasons most probable5 that they were so; yet it is
not credible that the Senones should have been settled on the coast of the Adriatic6 for two hundred years before they crossed the Apennines; and there is a
preponderance' of evidence to prove that their inroad into Etruria followed close
upon their first establishment in north Italy. It is impossible to say at how early
a period tribes of Gauls may have passed over the Cottian Alps, and settled in
the valleys and plains of Piedmont. But the general overthrow of the Etruscan
power between the Alps and the Apennines has every appearance of having been

Â~ Partly for the reasons given in the preceding note, and also, because a general burst of
migration at one particular period is more probable amongst a barbarian people than a succession of migrations to the same quarter, during
a term of two hundred years.
6 They crossed the Apennines, according to
Diodorus and the author of the little work,
" De Viris Illustribus," because their settlement on the Adriatic was parched and barren:
they surely would have discovered this in less
time than a hundred years. Niebuhr notices
the general rapidity of barbarian incursions;
they advance further and further till they meet
with some invincible obstacle. And those who
had exterminated the Etruscans from the north
of the Apennines, would have had nothing to
deter them from attacking the same enemies in
their southern possessions in Etruria Proper. '
SDiodorus, XIV. 113. Dionysius, XIII. 14,
15. Fragm. Mai. P ay, Hist. Natur. III. 17,
where he says that:he Gauls destroyed the
Etruscan city of Melpum in northern Italy in
the same year and day on which the Romans
took Veil. Justin, XXIV. 4, and XX. 5, and
even Livy himself, in two passages referred to
by Niebuhr, V. 17, and 87, where he makes the
Etruscans speak of the Gauls as a people whom
they had never seen, who were recently become
their neighbors, and with whom they knew not
whether they were to have peace or war; and
where in the same way he speaks of the Gauls
as a new enemy to the Romans, who were come
upon them from the shores of the ocean and the
extremities of the earth. The only plausible argument for the more ancient settlement of the
Gauls in Italy (for little stress is to be laid on
their pretended alliance with the Phoeman exiles
who were founding Massilia), is to be found in
the statement of Dionysius, VII. 3, which some
understand as saying that the Greek city of
Cuma in Campania was besieged in the reign
of Tarquinius Superbus by some Etruscans who
had dwelt on the shores of the Ionian gulf, and
who had been in the course of time driven from

their country by the Gauls. This is the interpretation of Dionysius' words, as Miller understands them. (Etrusker, Vol. I. p. 153, note
78.) Niebuhr, however, understands them differently; and the language is not sufficiently
precise to enable us to be certain as to the writer's meaning. The words are, Tvjijv v of rspl
TPv 'I6vmov KAirov KaroLuoivrms,  ieeiOv 0' a ri ri
Kearcv ifeaOI vrs ~av Xpdr6z, xa  by abrols 'O
/p/Kol rÂ~ aiai O KAvtotaTavxvoiT- ri v cwv (ap3dpos
irÂ~xdpreav &vpalv (nr'v Kibynv). Niebuhr think,
that this means, "those Etruscans who then.
were dwelling on the Ionian gulf, but who in
the course of time were afterwards driven from
thence by the Gauls." Muiller objects that if this
were the meaning, Dionysius must have written of rdre ph *KarooKvr4S, urepov  i i  aOvreg.
This would have been clearer, undoubtedly;
but Dionysius does not write with the perfect
clearness of Isocrates or Demosthenes, and the
words av xpe6vp are meant to express the same
thing as Muiller's iarspov. But after all, what
can be made of the passage under any interpretation? "The Etruscans on the Ionian gulf,"
that is, on the Adriatic, could not have been
driven out by the Gauls as early as the sixtyfourth Olympiad, for all allow that the Senones,
who expelled the Etruscans from the coast, entered Italy after all the other Gauls; and their
invasion was so recent, that Scylax speaks of
the Etruscans, as well as of the Umbrians and
Daunians, as still dwelling on the shores of the
Adriatic even in his time. Nor is there any
reason for considering the expedition against
Cuma as occasioned by the expulsion of the invaders from their own country by another enemy. The Umbrians and launians who took
part in it were certainly never driven out from
their country by the Gauls; and it is more
probable that the Etruscans, who are named as
the first people in the confederacy, were not a
band of fugitives  but were rather attempting,
in conjunction with their dependent allies, to
extend their dominion still further over Italy;
for this was the period of their greatest power,




ï~~CHAP. XXIV.]

DIVISIONS OF THE KELTIC RACE.

19.

effected suddenly, speedily, and not earlier than the middle of the fourth century
of Rome, when some causes, to us unknown, set the whole Keltic or Gaulish nation in motion, and drove them southward and eastward to execute their appointed work of devastation and destruction.
Another question next presents itself. Can we recognize these Gaulish invaders of Italy as belonging to either of the existing divisions of the To what Keltic rac
Keltic race?  Were they Gael, or were they Kymry? or did they did the Goals, whoin.
belong to some third division, distinct from each of these, whichaetlybeog
has since utterly perished? Much has been written upon the subject of the Kelts
and their language; but we seem as yet unable to connect our knowledge of the
existing Keltic races with the accounts which we have received of them from the
writers of antiquity.
Diodorus$ tells us that the Romans included under one common name of Gauls
two great divisions of people: the one consisting of the Keltic iodos'dititioe
b,cnssigDiodonm  di tintionbe.
tribes of Spain, of the south and centre of Gaul, and of the north t wen the Gauls and
of Italy; the other embracing those more remote tribes which Kelts.
lived on the shores of the ocean, and on the skirts of what he calls the Hercynian mountains, and eastward as far as Scythia. This last division, he says, were
the proper Gauls, while the others were to be called Kelts. Niebuhr supposes
that Diodorus learnt this distinction from Posidonius, and it is undoubtedly well
worth noticing. Diodorus further says, that to these more remote tribes belonged
the Kimbri, whom some writers identified with the old Kimmerians; and that
these Kimbri were the people who took Rome, and sacked Delphi, and carried
their conquests even into Asia.
It may be doubted, however, whether there be not in this statement a show
of knowledge greater than the reality. Keltse and Galate are Kelt and Gaul are but
Kelt and Gaol are hut
undoubtedly only different forms of the same name; the first was difoferent forms of the
the form with which the Greeks were earliest acquainted, at a a name.
time when their knowledge of the Kelts was confined to the tribes of Spain and
Gaul. The great Gaulish migration of the fourth century before Christ, introduced the other and more correct form "Galatae;" yet many writers9 continued
to use the old orthography, and in fact, with the exception of the Galatians of
Asia Minor, the other Gauls, in all parts of the world, are generally called by the
Greeks according to their old form of the name, not Galate, but Keltm.  These
names, therefore, would in themselves rather show that the invaders of Italy and
Greece were the same people with the old inhabitants of the west of Europe,
than establish any diversity between them.
But when we find from Caesar,"0 that the Gauls on the shores of the ocean,
that is, on the coasts of the British channel and the North sea, the Yet the distinction of
Gauls whom he calls Belgians, were distinguished both in language Diodorus is partly true,
and customs from the Gauls of the interior; when we consider that these more
remote Gauls included, according to Diodorus, the people called Kimbri, and
when we see that the people now calling themselves Kymry, namely, the Welsh,
do actually differ in language and in customs from the Keltic tribes in Ireland
and Scotland, the statement of Diodorus does appear to contain a real truth, and
we begin to recognize in the Keltm and Galatm of his geography two great divisions of the same race, analogous to the Gael and Kymry existing at this day
in Great Britain.
Yet the gleam of light thus gained is almost instantly overclouded. The Gauls
of the north of Italy appear, according to every testimony," to have been the
Diodorus, V. 32.                    is, of the Galate of Diodorus, and not of the re9 Aristotle ascribes to the Keltse a peculiarity mote inhabitants of Gaul and Spain.
in national manners, which Diodorus reports of  00 De Bello Gallico, I. 1.
the Galata. And in those notices of Keltic  1 Polybius, II. 15. TpavadA rtvol yE pi1v ov d
manners and character which occur in several rev roi yvovs a aA 3L Timi roO r6rrov acaopav upa
places of his works, he must have been speak- eayoperovrai.
mong of the Kelts of Panuonia and Thrace, that




ï~~200

HISTORY OF ROME.

'[HAr. XXIV

but involved in much same people with the Gauls of the centre of France, or in the landifficulty.    guage of Diodorus, with the Keltae. The names of their tribes, the
Senones,12 Lingones, Insubres, Cenomani, can be connected at once with particular districts of Keltic Gaul, which bore, it may almost be said which bear to this
day, the same names, and from which their origin is distinctly traced. We find
among them no traces of Belgian or Kimbrian names, or of their having come
from the shores of the Northern ocean,13 or the Hercynian mountains.   How then
can it be said that the invaders of central Italy were not Keltae, but Galatme; not
Gael, but Kymry?
It has been maintained, indeed, that14 the Boii, Lingones, and Senones, the
The Gaulswhoinvaded tribes which were the last to enter Italy, and which crossed the
thaul mhfom tiA lps nt
Italy came from Ketic Alps, not by the passes to the west of Turin, but by the Great
Gaul.         St. Bernard, were of a different race from the earlier invaders, and
that while those were Gael, these who came last were Kymry. But the Roman
writers, and Polybius, who was well acquainted with the Cisalpine Gauls, acknowledged no such diversity. And though we cannot ascertain the country
of the Boii, yet the Lingones and Senones both fall within the limits assigned by
Caesar to Keltic Gaul, as distinguished from the country of the Belgre or Kymry.
If, however, we are disposed to rely on the statement of Diodorus and Appian,
But possibly the Kim- that the Gauls who invaded Greece were Kimbri, it may be very
e, or Kymr yart y possible that there was a more general movement among the
have token rt" in the             wsamr
invasion wit them.  Keltic tribes in the fourth century of Rome, than the Greek or
Roman writers were aware of. The Kymry, breaking in upon the Gael from the
east and north, may have persuaded or forced some of their tribes to join them
in their march southwards; the two nations may have poured into Italy together,
and while the Gaelic tribes settled themselves on the Po or on the coast of the
Adriatic, the mass of the Kymrians may have pressed forward round the head of
the gulf, and so penetrated into Pannonia and Thrace.    Not could we deny the
possibility of some Kymrians having remained in Italy with the Gael; and if we
believe that the name of Brennust was really borne by the leader of the attack
on Rome, and that this word is no other than the Kymrian "Brenhin,"'1 which
signifies king or leader, then we must conclude that although the mass of the
invaders were Gael, yet that not only were there Kymrians joined with them,
but that a Kymrian chief commanded the whole expedition.     This may have been
so, but I can hardly think that there is sufficient evidence to require us to believe
that it was so.
Again, though I have called the Gauls of north Italy Gael, and have supDifficulty ofidentyi  posed that those who passed on to Illyricum and Thrace may have
the language of the been Kymry, yet I am far from concluding that in the language
Gauls who invaded
Ily with,ny existing of the former we snruld have recognized the exact Erse and Gaelic
Ieltic dialect  of Ireland and the Scotch Highlands, or in that of the latter the
2 The Senones came from the neighborhood mentioned the attack on Rome, as we know,
of Sens on the Yonne, the Lingones from that but not with its details; and it is not likely that
of Langres: the Insubres came from a district they should have given the name of the Gaulish
in the country of the 2Edui, between the Loire leader. In fact, Diodorus, whose narrative, as
and Saone; and the Cenomani from the neigh- Niebuhr supposes, is copied from Fabius, does
borhood of Le Mans.                      not give it at all. It is very likely that the name
13 The expression in Livy already referred to, of Brennus was borrowed from the story of the
"that the Gauls came from the shores of the Gaulish attack on Delphi, as so many of the emocean," must not be alleged here, inasmuch as bellishments of the Roman history have been
the ocean is there used merely in opposition to taken from the famous stories of the history of
the Mediterranean, and may quite as well be Greece.
understood of the Bay of Biscay as of the Ger-  11 Dr. Pritchard, whose authority in such
man Ocean or the Baltic.                 questions is of the highest order, believes that
1 By Thierry in his Histoire des Gaulois, Vol. Brennus is not the Welsh "Brenhin," but raI. p. 44, &c.                            ther the proper name Bran, which occurs in
It must be remembered always that Fabius, Welsh history. I know not whether this name
the oldest Roman historian, wrote about two ever prevailed amongst the Irish or the Gael of
hundred years after the Gaulish invasion, and Scotland.
borrowed largely from the Greek writers. They




ï~~CHAP. XXIV.]

THE KELTIC LANGUAGES.

201

exact form of the modern Welsh. The Keltic languages, which still exist in these
islands, are in all likelihood the solitary survivors out of the multitude of languages or dialects, once spoken by the various branches of the great Keltic family, from the Atlantic to the sources of the Danube, from the Mediterranean to
the northern extremity of the British isles. Length of time and remoteness of
place introduce wonderful changes in a language; so that no one could expect to
find an exact resemblance between the Keltic spoken in the fourth century before
the Christian aera, by the Gauls of France and Italy, and the actual language of
the inhabitants of Ireland and the north of Scotland. We may, therefore, find
names of places and persons17 among the ancient Gauls, which no Keltic language
in its present state will enable us to interpret. Much more may it be impossible
to trace such words in the written Welsh, or Erse, or Gaelic; although an exact
acquaintance with the various spoken dialects in the several parts of Ireland or
Wales might even now enable us to discover them. There are many German
words" lost in our written English, which either exist in the names of places or
in some of our provincial dialects; and doubtless the converse of this might be
observed by any one who was familiar with the spoken dialects of Germany. For
the language of the civilized nation was once no more than the dialect of some
particular tribe, till some intellectual or political superiority of those who spoke
it, caused it to be adopted in writing in preference to its sister dialects, and thus
made its peculiarities from henceforth the common rule. Now, it may well happen in two nations speaking a common language, that the dialects19 which shall

17 Dr. Pritchard tells me that he cannot trace'
the terminations magus, briga, and briva, in
any of the existing Keltic languages. Although
I am myself ignorant of those languages, yet I
can see that Thierry's pretended explanations
of Keltic names of places are often quite extravagant. Bodencus, according to Polybius, was
the name given by the people of the country to
the river Po (Polyb. II. 16); and this word, according to Pliny, Hist. Natur. III. 16, signifies
bottomless, "fundo carens."   Metrodorus of
Scepsis, from whom Pliny borrowed this accountt said indeed that Bodencus, or Bodincus,
as it is in our copies of Pliny, was a Ligurian
word; but there was a town, Bodincomagus,
which has evidently a Keltic termination. Can
Bodincus, or Bodencus, be reasonably explained
by the present Welsh or Irish languages? Again,
the same Metrodorus derived Padus from the
Gaulish Pades, which, he said, signified a pinetree. Can this be traced in modern Keltic? It
shouldbe observed, that in explaining the names
of places, and especially of terminations, it is
not enough to produce Welsh or Irish words of
similar sound, and capable of forming something of a significant word; but their combination must be agreeable to the usages of the
language; and with regard to terminations, it
should be shown either that they are common
in names of places in Keltic countries now, or
that some word of similar signification is so
used. Attempts have been made within these
few years by Welsh and German antiquaries to
explain the names of ancient towns in Italy from
the Keltic and Teutonic languages; and in
either case it has not been difficult to find words
of similar sound both in Welsh and German,
which when combined give a possible signification. But in all these cases we see at once that
of two different derivations one must be wrong;
and it mostly happens, I think, that both are so.
Von Humboldt notices the terminations of
magus, briga, and briva, as undoubtedly Keltic.
The first and last of them do not occur in Spain;
out Briga is frequently met within the limits

occupied by the Keltiberians. Humboldt refers
to the termination bria, which is met with in
the geography of Thrace, as in the town of Selymbria and Mesembria. He thinks that the
Basque "iri" and "uri" are connected with
both; and that we can go no further than to
say that there was an old root bri or bro, expressing land, habitation, settlement, with
which also the Teutonic burg and the Greek
ryoc may have been originally connected. In
the Welsh and Breton languages " bro" is still,
he says, not only a cultivated field, but generally a country or district; and the Scholiast on
Juvenal, Sat. VIII. 234, explains the name of
Allobrogm as signifying strangers, men from
another land, "quoniam brogu Galli agrum
dicunt, alla autem aliud." Briva is supposed
to mean bridge; but Von Humboldt agrees with
Dr. Pritchard in saying, that there is no similar word of a like signification known to exist
in any of the surviving Keltic languages.
I find brog and brug in O'Brien's Irish Dictionary as signifying "a grand house or building, fortified place, a palace or royal residence."
O'Brien connects it with briga and the Thracian
Bria. I also find the substantive " brugaide"
in O'Brien's Dictionary, as signifying "a husbandmen, ploughman, or farmer."
s Dorf,   a village," is a well-known instance;
a word which now exists in English only in the
form of " thorpe," a common termination of the
names of places in several counties, and sometimes a name by itself.  Again, the German
" bach," a stream or brook, is in common use
in the north of England, where the brooks or
streams are invariably called becks.
19 Many curious instances of this might be
given. Horse and pferd are the classical English and German words for the same animal;
but horse exists in German under the form ros,
and is to be met with in poetry, and also sometimes on the signs of inns, as if it were now
either an old or a merely provincial or familiar
word. And, on the other hand, the English
form of pferd, which is pad, has sunk still lower,




ï~~202

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHar. XXIV

ultimately prevail in each, shall not be those which most nearly resemble one
another; and thus, at an advanced period of their history, their languages shall
present a far greater dissimilarity than existed between them in their infancy.
Thus, as we follow the stream of time backwards towards its source, it is natThe difference  e ural that the differences, not of dialect only, but even of language,
tween dlanguages were should become less and less; so that what are now distinct main
anciently less marked
thanthe ve e~m. branches of one great stock, may at a very remote period have
in later inlee.  formed the as yet undivided elements of one common trunk. There
must have been a time when the KelticsÂ~ and Teutonic languages were parted far
less widely than we find them now; even within historical memory, when the
Keltic and Teutonic tribes were intermixed with each other, within the limits of
what is now Germany, and when they were so confounded together in the eyes
of the Greeks and Romans, as to be regarded only as one great people,2' the real
differences of manners and language may have been much less than they became
afterwards, when their limits were more distinctly marked. What was working
in the wide extent of central Europe during so many centuries of which no memorial remains, we should vainly seek to discover. Accident, to use our common
language, may have favored the growth of improvements in some remote tribe,
while the bulk of the people, although nearer to the great centre of human civilization, may have remained in utter barbarism; and thus Caesar's statement may
be perfectly true, that druidism, of which we find no traces amongst the Cisalpine
Gauls, was brought to its greatest perfection in Britain, and that the Gauls in his
own time were in the habit of crossing over thither as to the best and purest
source of instruction in its mysteries.
There is one point, however, in which the difference between the Keltic race
Physical character of in ancient and modern times has been unduly exaggerated. The
the Gaus.     Greek and Roman writers invariably describe the Gauls"2 as a tall
and light-haired race in comparison with their own countrymen; but it has been
maintained that there must be some confusion in these descriptions between the
Gauls and the Germans, inasmuch as the Keltic nations now existing are all darkhaired. This statement was sent to Niebuhr by some Englishman; and Niebuhr,
taking the fact for granted on his correspondent's authority, was naturally much
perplexed by it. But had he travelled ever so rapidly through Wales or Ireland,
or had he cast a glance on any of those groups of Irish laborers, who are constantly to be met with in summer on all the roads in England, he would have at

and is merely a cant or ludicrous word in our
present language.
20 It is quite manifest from Dr. Pritchard's
excellent work on the origin of the Keltic nations, that the Keltic and Teutonic languages
belong to one common family, which is commonly called the Indo-Germanic. This appears
not only from their containing a multitude of
common words, but from a surer evidence, the
analogy in their grammatical forms.
In order to judge of the connection between
one language and another, something more is
necessary than the being merely able to write
and to speak those two languages. Sir W. Betham, in his work called " the Cymry and the
Gadel," gives a list of Welsh and Irish pronouns,
to show that the Welsh language has no connection with the Irish. Whereas that very list
furnishes a proof of their affinity to any one
who has been accustomed to compare the various forms assumed by one and the same original word, in the several cognate languages of the
same family.
21 Dionysius divides the country of the Kelts,
KcArtOer, into two great divisions, which he calls
Gaul and Germany, XIV. 2. Fragm. Mai. Strabo describes the Germans as the most perfect

and genuine specimens of the peculiarities of
the Gaulish race, and says that the Romans
called them  Germani, "true," "genuine," to
intimate that they were genuine Gauls: g lv
yv~ritovs radra 0pd;stv lovX6pevot. VII. 1, Â~ 2,
p. 290.
2 Diodorus calls them sCPIKes, Xeaviot and ral
K6paq avOoi. V. 28.   Ammianus Marcellinus
calls them "candidi et rutili," XV. 12. Virgil
speaks of their " aurea cesaries," and "lactea
colla," En. VIII. 658, 9. Strabo says that the
"Germans differ a little from the Gauls in being
more tall and more light haired," ri woeavaepj
roS peyiOovs Kai rig fsavOGrrog. VII. p. 290; and
again he describes the Britons as "less light
haired than the Gauls," IV. p. 200. Polybius
also speaks of their " great stature," II. 15; and
Livy mentions their " procera corpora, promisse et rutilate come," XXXVIII. 17. Now after
such multitudes of Gauls had been brought into
the slave market by the conquests of the dictator Caesar, the writers of the Augustan age,
even though they might never have crossed the
Alps, must have been as familiar with the appearance of a Gaul as the West Indians are with
that of a negro. A mistake so general on a point
so obvious is utterly impossible.




ï~~CHAr. XXIV.]  ACCOUNTS OF THE GAULISH INVASION.

203

once perceived that his perplexity had been needless. Compared with the Italians, it would be certainly true that the Keltic nations were, generally speaking,
both light-haired and tall.23 If climate has any thing to do with the complexion,
the inhabitants of the north of Europe, in remote times, may be supposed to have
been fairer and more light-haired than at present; while the roving life, the plen
tiful food, and the absence of all hard labor, must have given a greater development to the stature of the Gaulish warrior who first broke into Italy than can be
looked for amongst the actual peasantry of Wales or Ireland.
The Gauls then from beyond the Alps were in possession of the plain of the
Po, and had driven out or exterminated the Etruscans, when in
The Gauls cross the
the year of Rome 364, they for the first time crossed the Apen- Apentne, and attack
nines, and penetrated into central Italy.  On the first alarm   of alexam.
this irruption4 the Romans sent three of their citizens into Etruria to observe their
movements; and these deputies arrived at Clusium      just at the time when the
Gauls appeared before its walls, and began, after their usual manner, to lay waste
the country. The citizens made a sally, and the Roman deputies went out with
them; they engaged with the Gauls, and one of the deputies encountered and
slew a Gaulish chief. Roman patricians, said the Roman story,'5 could not be
confounded with Etruscans; the Gauls instantly perceived that there were some
strangers of surpassing valor aiding the citizens of Clusium; they learned that
these strangers were Romans, and they forthwith sent deputies to Rome to demand that the man who had thus fought with them, and slain one of their chiefs,
when there was no war between the Gauls and the Romans, should be given up
into their hands, that they might have blood for blood. The senate thought that
the demand of the strangers was reasonable, and voted that the deputy should be
given over into their hands; but his father, who was one of the military tribunes
for the year, appealed to the people from the sentence of the senate, and being
a man of much influence, persuaded them to annul it.    Then the Gauls, finding
their demand rejected, broke up in haste from Clusium, and marched directly
against Rome.6
Thus the very outset of this Gaulish invasion, even as related by Diodorus
who gives the story in its simplest form, is disguised by the na-   ncertain o e s
tional vanity of the Romans.   It is impossible to rely on any of counts of tho antea
the details of the narrative which has been handed down to us; war.
the Romans were no doubt defeated at the Alia; Rome was taken and burnt;
and the Capitol ransomed; but beyond this we know, properly speaking, nothing.
We know that falsehood has been busy, to an almost unprecedented extent, with
the common story; exaggeration, carelessness, and honest ignorance, have joined
more excusably in corrupting it. The history of great events can only be preserved by contemporary historians; and such were in this case utterly wanting.
But as we have an outline of undoubted truth in the story, and as the particulars
which are given are exceedingly striking and in many instances not improbable, I
shall endeavor at once to present such a view of the events of the Gaulish war
as may be clear from manifest error, and to preserve also some of its most reSI should not have ventured to speak so con- points. According to Livy, the three deputies
fidently merely from my own observation; but were all demanded by the Gauls; nothing is said
Dr. Pritchard, who has for many years turned of their father being military tribune, but it i
his attention to this question, assures me that said that they themselves were immediately
he is perfectly satisfied as to the truth of the elected military tribunes for the ensuing year.
fact here stated. To me it is only surprising Diodorus does not name them; according to
that any one should have thought of disputing Livy they were three brothers, sons of M. Fait.                                      bius Ambustus. Now no Fabius appears in the
24 Diodorus, XIV. 118.                 list of military tribunes for the year 864, either
2 Livy, V. 86. Nec id clam esse potuit, quam  according to Diodorus or Livy; and though the
ante signa Etruscorum tres nobilissimi fortis- list for 865, as given by Diodorus, is very corsimique Romancejuventutis pugnarent; tantum rupt, yet there are no traces of its ever having
eminebat peregrina virtus.               contained the names of more than two Fabii at. 2 Diodorus, IV. 118, 114. This story, it the most.
will be observed, differs from Livy's in several




ï~~204

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XXIV

markable details, which may be true, and are at any rate far too famous to be
omitted.
We know that the Gauls needed no especial provocation to attack Clusium, or
The Gaulso advance up. to penetrate beyond Rome into the south of Italy. Wherevei
on Rome.       there was a prospect of the richest plunder, there was to them a
-sufficient cause for hostility. But the cities of Etruria, surrounded by their massive walls, were impregnable except by famine; so that after the open country
had been once wasted, the Gauls would naturally carry their arms elsewhere.
From Clusium the valley of the Clanis would conduct them directly to the Tiber;
that river, so far from its mouth, would be easily fordable; and then all the plain
of Latium lay open to their attack.  The season was now the middle of summer;
the new military tribunes, who at this period came into office on the first of July,
had just been elected; and expecting the Gauls to advance upon Rome, and
supposing that they would approach by the right bank7 of the Tiber, they summoned to the field the whole force of the commonwealth, they called on their
Latin and Hernican5 allies to aid them, and having thus collected all their strength,
they marched out of Rome on the road to Etruria, intending to receive the enemy's attack in the neighborhood of Veii, which was now a sort of frontier fortress of the Roman territory, and which might serve as the base of their operations. The whole army thus assembled amounted, according to the statement
of Plutarch,"9 to forty thousand men.
But the Gauls meantime had crossed the Tiber into Umbria, and were moving
They cross the Tiber, along the left bank of the river, through the country of the Saand enter the country of bines, towards the plain of Latium. The Roman writers, who prethe Sabines.   tend that their only object was Rome, and that as soon as they
heard that their demand for satisfaction was rejected they hastened from Clusium
to attack the Romans, forget that this is inconsistent with another part of their
story, namely, that the deputies who had gone to Clusium were, as if in mockery
of the Gauls, elected military tribunes immediately after the refusal to give
them up. For as the tribunes did not enter on their office till the first of July,
and the battle of the Alia was not fought till the sixteenth, the pretended hasty
march of the Gauls from Clusium to Rome, a distance of about a hundred miles,3"
must have taken up more than a fortnight. But in all likelihood the Gauls went
on plundering the country before them, without aiming exclusively at Rome:
according to Diodorus, they had waited in Etruria before they began their march
southwards, long enough to receive large reinforcements31 from beyond the Apennines; and the provocation given them by the Romans was, we may suppose,
gladly seized as a pretence for extending their attacks from the country of their
old enemies, the Etruscans, to that of the other nations of central Italy.
When it was discovered that the Gauls were already on the left bank of the
Tiber, and advancing by the Salarian road, which was the old communication beSDiodorus states positively that the Roman and did not serve in war; m at is, of proletariarmy marched out across the Tiber. It is true ans and urarians. According to Diodorus, the
that he seems to have supposed the Alia to have left wing of the Roman army, consisting of the
been on the right bank of the Tiber; but this bravest soldiers, amounted to 24,000: that is,
confusion arose probably from his finding no it contained the four regular legions spoken of
notice of the Romans recrossing the river before by Dionysius, which amounted together to
the battle. His first statement is probable, and 12,000 men, and of an equal number of the alseems to me to explain the extreme suddenness lies. This would leave about 16,000 men for
with which the battle on the Alia took place.  the raw and inferior troops, ros daOsVsardrove,
2 "The Gauls," says Polybius, "defeated the who in the battle formed the right of the RoRomans and those who were drawn up in the man army.
field along with them." 'Pw atovs Kai roi3sepres  Polybius underrates the distance at a three
raoiroy waparafeajvyovu. II. 18. These could have days' journey. II. 25. Strabo calls it eight
been no other than the Latin and Hernican al- hundred stadia. V. p. 226. The itineraries as
lies.:                                   corrected make it one hundred and two, and
3 Camillus, 18. According to Dionysius, one hundred and three miles, and it cannot be
XIII. 19, there were four legions of picked and much less.
experienced soldiers, and a still more numerous  3 XIII. 114.
free of those who commonly stayed at home




ï~~CHA. XXIV:]

BATTLE OF THE ALIA.

205

tween the land of the Sabines and Rome, then the Romans were The Romans take post
naturally thrown into the greatest alarm.    The Tiber, for many on the Aa.
miles above Rome, is not fordable; as there were no towns on the river there
were probably no bridges, and boats could not be procured at such short notice
for the passage of so large an army. The Romans therefore were obliged to go
round by Rome, and without an instant's delay march out by the Salarian road,
in order to encounter the enemy at as great a distance from the city as possible.
They found the Gauls already within twelve miles of Rome; the little stream of
the Alia; or rather the deep bed through which it runs, offered something like a
line of defence;32 and accordingly the Romans here awaited the attack of their
enemy.   Their right was posted on some high ground," covered in front by the
deep bed of the Alia, and with a hilly and wooded country protecting its flank;
while the left; consisting of the regular legions, filled up the interval of level
ground between the hills and the Tiber, and its extreme flank was covered by
the river.
There seems in all these dispositions nothing of overweening rashness or of
folly; it is doubtful what was really the disproportion of numbers Battle of theia.
between the two armies; if the Gauls had but recently been reinforced, the Roman generals may have supposed the enemy's numbers to have
been no greater than they were at Clusium; and to fight was unavoidable, if
they wished to save their country from devastation. But the Gaulish leader
showed more than a barbarian's ability. With the bravest of his warriors he assailed the right of the Roman position: the soldiers of the poorer classes, unused
to war, and untrained in the management of their arms, were appalled by the
yells, and borne down by the strength of their enemies; and their wooden shields
were but a poor defence against the fearful strokes of the Keltic broadsword.
The right of the Romans was broken and chased from its ground; the course of
the river had obliged the left of the army to be thrown back behind the right, so
that the fugitives in their flight disordered the ranks of the regular legions; and
the Gauls pursuing their advantage, the whole Roman army was totally routed.
The vanquished fled in different directions; those on the left4 plunged into the
Tiber, in the hope of swimming across it and escaping to Veii; but the Gauls
slaughtered them in heaps on the banks, and overwhelmed them with their javelins in the river, so that a large part of the flower of the Roman people was here
destroyed.   The fugitives on the right fled towards Rome; some took refuge in
a thick wood5 near the road, and, there lay hid till nightfall; the rest ran without stopping to the city, and brought the tidings of the calamity.
The Gauls did not pursue the fugitives far: we hear as yet nothing of that
cavalry for which they were afterwards so famous; probably be- The Gaul pass the
cause they had not yet been long enough in Italy to have supplied ight o n the fielda of
themselves with the horses of that country; and the breed ofbtt
Transalpine Gaul, like that of Britain, was too small to be used except for the
2 It is well known that to identify the famous cigliana Vecchia is placed about two miles nearer
Alia with any existing stream is one of the hard- to Rome. Both descriptions are given in such
est problems of Roman topography. Virgil and detail that this diversity is rather perplexing.
Livy agree in placing it on the left bank of the  3 Livy, V. 38. Diodorus, XIV. 114.
Tiber; and Livy's description seems as precise  34 Livy, V. 38. Diodorus, XIV. 114, 115.
as possible, for he says that the armies met, "ad  3 Festus in "Lucaria." The wood, accordundecimum lapidem, qua flumen Alia Crustu- ing to this statement, was between the Salarian
minis montibus prealto defluens alveo hand road and the Tiber. This shows that Sir W.
multum infra viam Tiberino amni miscetur." Gell has rightly marked the old Salarian road
V. 37. And Westphal accordingly says that on his map, where he makes it turn to the right
" something less then eleven miles from Rome, over the hills away from the Tiber, about two
there is a small brook with high banks," and miles beyond Castel Giubileo. Had the road
that "on the right of the road at this spot you followed the low grounds near the river, there
see the village of Marcigliana Vecchia." p. 127. could scarcely have been a wood between it and
But I cannot reconcile this with Sir W. Gell's the Tiber, for the ground must have been then
map, or with his description in his article on the as now, nothing but a great expanse ofmeadows,
Alia in his topography of Rome; for there Mar



ï~~206

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XXIV.

drawing of their war-chariots.  Besides, they were themselves wearied with their
march, and with their exertions in the battle; and it was of importance"6 to each
man to collect and exhibit his trophies, the heads of the enemies whom he had
slain; for these were the proof that the warrior had done his duty in the battle,*
and was entitled to his share of the spoil: these were to be carried home, and
preserved to after ages in his family, as a memorial of his valor. Thus, according to the account of Diodorus, the Gauls passed the night after their victory on
the field of battle.
But the Romans found it impossible to defend their city; as the flower of the
The Romans resolve to citizens of the military age, who had escaped from the battle, had
defend the CapitoL  retreated to Veii.  It is probable that a large proportion of these
were not sorry to have this opportunity of effecting what they had before attempted in vain, and wished to remain at Veii as their future country. Of the
remaining inhabitants of Rome, the greater part dispersed, as the Athenians had
done before the approach of Xerxes;37 they took refuge with their families, and
such of their effects as they could remove, in many of the neighboring cities.
But it was.resolved, as at Athens, to maintain the citadel," for this, as in all the
cities of the ancient world, was in a manner the sanctuary of the nation: it was
the spot in which the temples of the nation's peculiar gods were built; and to
this every feeling of patriotism, whether human merely or religious, was closely
connected. This was the home of the true gods of Rome, and the citadel of the
true Roman people, before the stranger commons, with their new gods, had pretended to claim the rights of Roman citizens; and many a patrician, indignant at
the retreat of the legions to Veii, and regarding this desertion as another proof
that the commons were no genuine sons of Rome, retired into the Capitol with a
resolution never to abandon that country and those gods, which he felt and might
justly claim to be indeed his own.
But the citadel might be taken; the genuine Romans who defended it might
The vbestal Virginse massacred; the temple of the three guardian powers of Rome,
with the eternal e Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, of the Capitol, might be profaned and
wthraw toC...  destroyed.  Still there had been a time when other gods had possessed the Capitol, and yet even then there was Rome, and there were Romans.
Other powers and other rites were the pledge of Rome's existence, and if they
failed, she must be lost forever. The flamen of Quirinus,9 the deified founder of
the city, and the Vestal Virgins, who watched the eternal fire, the type and assurance of its duration, must remove their holy things beyond the reach of the
enemy, or if all could not be removed, what was left must be so hidden that no
chance should ever betray it. Accordingly the Flamen and the Virgins of Vesta
buried some of theit holy things in the ground, in a spot preserved afterwards
with the strictest care from every pollution; and whatever they could remove,
they carried with them to Agylla or Care.     They went on their way, said the
story,40 on foot; and as they were ascending the hill Janiculum, after having
crossed the river and left the city, there overtook them on the ascent, a man of
the commons, L. Albinius by name, who was conveying his wife and children in
a carriage to a place of safety. But when Lucius saw them, he bade his wife
and children to alight, and he put into the carriage in their room the holy virgins and their eternal fire; " For it were a shame," said he, "that I and mine
should be drawn in a carriage, while the Virgins of Vesta with their holy things
were going on foot." So he conveyed them safe in the carriage to Caere.
* Diodorus, XIV. 115. V. 29. Strabo, IV. the heads of their enemies resemble what is rep. 197. The practice of cutting off the heads of lated of the Gauls, I have ventured to transfer
their enemies, and of preserving them in their to the latter people this custom also.
houses, is ascribed directly to the Gauls. The  a Diodorus, XIV. 115. Livy, V. 40.
presenting them to the general, as a title to a  s Diodorus, XIV. 115. Livy, V. 89. Florus
share of the spoil, is mentioned by Herodotus says that the force which garrisoned the Capitol
as a Scythian custom (IV. 64); but as in other did not exceed a thousand men, I. 13.
respects the Scythian customs with regard to  11 Livy, V. 40.   4o Livy, V. 40.




ï~~CHAPr. XXIV.]

THE GAULS ENTER ROME.

207

Meantime the Gauls, it is said, hesitated for one whole day4- to attack the city,
suspecting that the apparent absence of all preparations for de- The Gauls enter Rome
fence was but a snare to entice them to venture on an assault rashly.
Thus the Romans gained a respite which was most needful to them; and when,
on the third day after the battle, according to the ancient mode of reckoning, the
enemy did force the gates and enter the city, the mass of the population had already escaped, and the Capitoline Hill was, as well as circumstances would allow,
provisioned and garrisoned. When the Gauls entered, their chiefs it appears
established themselves on some of the houses on the Palatine Hill,42 exactly opposite to the Capitol; and in the rest of the city the work of plunder and destruction raged freely.
The mass of the commons had fled from Rome with their wives and children,
or having escaped from the route of the Alia had taken refuge The old ptrioane deat Veii. The flower of the patricians, and of the citizens of the vote themslves to
richer classes of an age to bear arms, had retired into the Capitol, deathfortheiuntry.
to defend to the last that sanctuary of their country's gods. The flamen of Quirinus and the Vestal Virgins had departed with the sacred things committed to
their charge out of the reach of danger. But there were other ministers of the
gods,43 whom their duty did not compel to leave Rome, whom their age rendered
unable to join in the defence of the Capitol, and who could not endure to be a
burden upon those whose strength allowed them to defend it. They would not
live the few remaining years of their lives in a foreign city, but as they could not
serve their country by their deeds, they wished at least to serve it by their deaths.
So they, and others of the old patricians who had filled the highest offices"4 in
the commonwealth, met together; and M. Fabius, the chief pontifex, recited a
solemn form of words, which they each repeated after him, devoting to the spirits
of the dead and to the earth, the common grave of all living, themselves and the
army of the Gauls together with themselves, for the welfare and deliverance of
the people of the Romans and of the Quirites.45 Then, as men devoted to death,
they arrayed themselves in their most solemn dress; they who had held curule
offices, in their robes of white with the broad scarlet border;46 they who had won

41 Diodorus makes them hesitate for two
whole days, and thus to enter the city on the
fourth day after the battle, according to the ancient manner of reckoning. The cause of the
delay may indeed be a little misrepresented
after so great a victory, the conquerors indulged
themselves for one whole day, as we can readily
suppose, in excess, and in plundering all the
surrounding country; and if their leader had
pushed on to Rome, yet the force which he
could induce to follow him might be so small,
as to make him afraid to commence an attack
upon so large a city. But it seems certain that
the delay was of one day only, and not of two.
Polybius says that the Gauls took Rome three
days after the battle; that is after the interval.
of one whole day., 18. And the statement
of Verrius Flaccus, preserved by Gellius, V. 17,
and which has all the precision of a quotation
from some official record, says, " post diem tertium ejus diei urbem captain esse."
* Diodorus, XIV. 115.
43 o  rdc v ' Xaaw  Ov lvpch, is Plutarch's expression, after mentioning the departure of the
Vestal Virgins. Camillus, 21.
"44 Qui curules gesserant magistratus. Livy,
V. 41.
4 Plutarch, Camillus, 21. Livy mentions this
account, though he does not expressly adopt it.
V. 41. I have borrowed the "carmen devotionis," the form in which the old men devoted
themselves, from the story of Decius in the
great Latin war. He who devoted himself to

death for his country, intended to offer himself
to the powers of death, as a willing victim on
the part of his own countrymen, that the other
victims required by fate might be taken from
the army of the enemy. To have prayed for
victory simply, without any sacrifice on the part
of the conquerors, was a tempting of Nemesis;
but if the sacrifice was first offered, then the
wrath of Nemesis would be turned against the
enemy, that they too might have their portion
of evil. The devoted offered himself "diis
manibus tellurique."  Livy, VIII. 9. Strictly,
the dii manes were the spirits of a man's own
ancestors, but they are addressed here as representatives of the powers of death generally.
Tellus is of course the notion of the grave.
40 The toga prntexta, or bordered toga. The
toga, it is well known, was rather a shawl than
a robe, but the word shawl would suit so ill
with our associations of ancient Rome, that it
would not be worth while to introduce it. The
triumphal toga, toga picta, was like a rich Indian shawl worked with figures of various colors; it was thrown over the tunica palmata, the
coat or frock worked with figures of palm
branches, probably in gold. The sella curulis
was, as its name imports, the seat or body of
the chariot, cippot, and when used by the curule magistrates at their tribunals, implied that
they shared in the imperium or sovereign
power held of old by the kings, one mark of
which was the being borne in a chariot instead
of walking on foot.




ï~~208

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXIV

triumphs, in their robes of triumph overlaid with embroidery of many colors
and with palm branches of gold, and took their seats each on his ivory chair of
magistracy in the gateway of his house. When the Gauls saw these aged men
in this array of majesty, sitting motionless amidst the confusion of the sack of
the city, they at first looked upon them as more than human,41 and one of the
soldiers drew near to M. Papirius, and began to stroke reverently his long white
beard. Papirius, who was a minister of the gods, could not endure the touch of
profane barbarian hands, and struck the Gaul over the head with his ivory sceptre. Instantly the spell of reverence was broken, and rage and the thirst of
blood succeeded to it. The Gaul cut down the old Papirius with his sword; his
comrades were kindled at the sight, and all the old men, according to their vow,
were offered up as victims to the powers of death.
The enemy now turned their attention to the Capitol. But the appearance of
Blockade of the capi- the Capitoline Hill in the fourth century of Rome can ill be judged
tol.          of by that view which travellers obtain of its present condition.
The rock, which is now so concealed by the houses built up against it, or by
artificial slopings of the ground, as to be only visible in a few places, formed at
that time a natural defence of precipitous cliff all round the hill; and there was
one only access to the summit from below, the clivus or ascent to the Capitol.
By this single approach the Gauls tried to storm the citadel, but they were repulsed with loss;48 and after this attempt they contented themselves with blockading the hill, and extending their devastations over the neighboring country of
Latium. It is even said that they penetrated into the south of Italy; and a
Gaulish army is reported to have reached Apulia,4" whilst a portion of their force
was still engaged in blockading the Roman garrison in the Capitol.
Meantime, the Romans who had taken refuge at Veii had recovered from their
Night assault on the first panic, and were daily becoming more and more reorganized.
Capitol repulsed by M. It was desirable that a communication should be opened between
Manlius.  them and the garrison of the Capitol; and a young man named
Pontius Cominius5Â~ undertook the adventure. Accordingly, he set out from Veii,
swam down the Tiber, climbed up the cliff into the Capitol, explained to the garrison the state of things at Veii, and returned by the same way unhurt. But
when the morning came, the Gauls observed marks on the side of the cliff, which
told them that some one had made his way there, either up or down; and the
soil had in places been freshly trodden away, and the bushes which grew here
and there on the face of the ascent had been crushed or torn from their hold, as
if by some one treading on them or clinging to them for support. So, being thus
made aware that the cliff was not impracticable, they proceeded by night to scale
it. The spot being supposed to be inaccessible, was not guarded; the top of the
rock was not even defended by a wall. In silence and in darkness the Gauls
made their way up the cliff; no sentinel perceived them; even the watch-dogs,
said the story,5" heard them not, and gave no alarm. But on the part of the hill
by which the enemy were ascending, stood the temple of the three guardian gods
of the Capitol and of Rome, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva; and in this precinct
there were certain geese kept, which were sacred to Juno; and even amidst their
distress for food, the Romans, said the old story, had spared the birds which were
protected by the goddess. So now in the hour of danger, the geese heard the
sound of the enemy, and began to cry in their fear, and to flap their wings; and
M. Manlius, whose house was in the Capitol hard by the temple, was aroused by
them; and he sprang up and seized sword and shield, and called to his comrades,
4 Primo ut deos venerati deinde Ut homines war with the Greeks of southern Italy. He endespicati interfecere. Auctor de viris illustr.. listed some of them, and these were perhaps
in Camillo.                           the very Gauls whom he afterwards sent into
48 Livy, V. 43.                      Greece to aid the Lacediemonians against itr,
4 Diodorus, XIV. 117. It was apparently minondas. Justin, XX. 5.
this portion of the Gauls which offered its serv-  5 Diodorus, XIV. 116.
ices to Dionysius while he was engaged in his  61 Livy, V. 47. Diodorus, XIV. 116.




ï~~CHAP. XXIV.]

RETREAT OF THE GAULS.

209

and ran to the edge of the cliff. And behold a Gaul had just reached the summit, when Marcus rushed upon him and dashed the rim of his shield into his
face, and tumbled him down the rock. The Gaul, as he fell, bore down those
who were mounting behind him; and the rest were dismayed, and dropped their
arms to cling more closely to the rock, and so the Romans, who had been roused
by the call of Marcus, slaughtered them easily, and the Capitol was saved. Then
all so honored the brave deed of Marcus Manlius, that each man gave him from
his own scanty store one day's allowance of food, namely, half a pound of corn,
and a measure containing five ounces in weight of wine.52 Historically true in the
substance, these stories are yet, in their details, so romantic, that I insensibly, in
relating them, fall into the tone of the poetical legends.
Six months,53 according to some accounts, seven or even eight months,54 according to others, did the Gauls continue to blockade the Capitol. The The Gaulsreceivesum
sickness of a Roman autumn did not, we are told, shake them from  of doneymro te o Retheir purpose; the plunder which might be gained in other yet blockade.
unwasted districts of Italy, did not tempt them to abandon it. But is it possible
to believe that barbarians could have shown such perseverance, or that in one
day of preparation, provisions could have been carried into the Capitol in sufficient quantities to hold out even for a small garrison, during a siege of six or eight
months?"   Thus much, however, may safely be believed, that the garrison of
the Capitol was at last reduced to extremity;56 they offered to ransom themselves
by the payment of a large sum of money, and the Gaiuls were disposed, it is said,57
to accept the offer, because they heard that the Venetians, that nation of Illyrian
blood who dwelt around the northern extremity of the Adriatic, had made an
inroad into their own country beyond the Apennines. They consented, therefore,
to the terms offered by the Romans; and a thousand pounds' weight of gold
were to be collected from the offerings in the Capitoline temple, and from the
treasures which had been carried into the Capitol before the siege from every
part of Rome, that for this ransom the blockade might be raised. Even in accepting these terms, the Gaulish leader felt that he was admitting to mercy enemies whom   he had wholly in his power.    His weights, said the Roman story,H
were unfair; the Roman tribune of the soldiers, Q. Sulpicius, complained of the
fraud, but the Gaul threw his heavy broadsword into the scale; and when the
tribune again asked what he meant, he replied in words which may be best represented by an analogous English proverb, "It means that the weakest must go
to the wall."''59
Thus, according to the true version of this famous event, the Gauls returned
from their inroad into Italy loaded with spoil and crowned with
Corruptions of the true
glory.  That as soon as they were known to be retreating, the na- story of the retreat of
tions whom they had overrun should have recovered their courage, the Gauls.
and have taken every opportunity to assail them on their march home, is perfectly probable; nor need we doubt that these attacks were sometimes successful, that many stragglers were cut off, and much plunder retaken. These stories were exaggerated, as was natural; and by degrees the Romans claimed the
glory of them for themselves. We can almost trace the gradual fabrication of
that monstrous falsehood which in its perfected shape so long retained its hold
on Roman history. After the retreat of the Gauls from Rome, their country6 "Quartarios vini."  Livy, V. 57. The  5 If the Gauls stayed in Rome for so long a
quartarius, or the fourth part of the sextarius, time, they must have left it in the middle of winwas the twenty-fourth part of the congius; and ter. Now it is said that they hastened on their
as the congius contained ten pounds' weight of way homewards, because their own country was
water, the quartarius contained five ounces. It invaded by the Venetians; but barbarians would
was a little more than the half of the Greek co- scarcely choose the depth of winter for an enter
tyle.                                    prise of this sort.
b3 Florus, I. 18.                        6 Diodorus, XIV. 116.
5 Polybius, II. 22, and Plutarch in Camill. 80,  a Polybius, II. 18.
say, "cseven." Servius, En. VIII. 652, says  50 Livy, V. 48.
" eight."                                 59" Vae victis esse."
14




ï~~210

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXV

men who had advanced into Apulia, returned from their expedition, and found
the Romans ia too weak a condition to do them any harm; but as they were on
their march through the Roman territory, the people of Caere, or Agylla, laid an
ambush for them, and cut off, it is said, the whole party.0 To enhance the merit
of this success, the Gauls who were cut off were next made to be the same party
who had besieged the Capitol;61 and it was added that the people of Caere recovered the very gold which had been paid for the ransom of Rome. But the
glory of such a trophy could not be left to strangers; the victory was soon transferred to the Romans; and it was Camillus who found the Gauls, a long time
after their retreat from Rome, employed in besieging a city2 in alliance with the
Romans, who defeated them utterly, and won from them all their spoil. Lastly,
the story was to be more entirely satisfactory to the Roman pride; Rome63 was
never ransomed at all; Camillus appeared with the legions from Veii just as the
gold was being weighed out; as dictator he annulled the shameful bargain, drove
the Gauls out of Rome at the sword's point, and the next day defeated them so
totally on their way home, eight miles from Rome, on the road to Gabii, that he
left not a single man alive to carry to their countrymen the tidings of their defeat.
Such a falsification, scarcely to be paralleled in the annals of any other people,
justifies the strongest suspicion of all those accounts of victories and triumphs
which appear to rest in any degree on the authority of the family memorials of
the Roman aristocracy.
What was the real-condition of Rome and the neighboring countries after this
first Gaulish tempest had passed away; how the second period of Roman history
begins in a darkness almost as thick as that which overhangs the beginnings of
the first, but a darkness peopled by few of those forms, so beautiful though so
visionary, which gave so great a charm to the times of the kings; how faintly we
can trace the formation of that great fabric of dominion and policy which, when
the light of day breaks, we find well-nigh in its complete proportions, it will be
my endeavor to make appear in the succeeding portion of this history.
CHAPTER XXV.
HISTORY, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC, FROM THE YEAR 865 TO 878-ROME AFTER
THE RETREAT OF THE GAULS-ITS WEAKNESS, AND THE GREAT MISERY OF
THE COMMONS-POPULARITY AND DEATH OF M. MANLIUS-WARS WITH THE
NEIGHBORING NATIONS.
'A9lvatwv 30 Tr KOLv6V, tuiurtc avroT1 01 dpi3apot Fa rijffsxtpac &7r1ov, tL0Ko/lLovro eiaS; 8
fi,Svro rraiaf kca yvvalKaf Ka2 r iv 7TpLoSuav aaraaoCvv, Kcal i, rdAiv,votzodo oh'v rapsg cTid ovro.
THUCYDIDES, I. 89.
Livv begins his history of the period after the invasion of the Gauls by conThe Roman history is trasting what he calls its greater clearness and certainty with the
Mill full of certainty. obscurity of the period which had preceded it.  True it is, that
6 Diodorus, XIV. 117.                  home till the first beginning of spring, Camillus
61 Strabo, V. p. 220.                  may then have obtained some advantages over
2 Diodorus, XIV. 117. The name of the city these last in their retreat, and may have obis wholly corrupt, Oedo ctov.           tained a triumph. In this case the exaggeration
1 Livy, V. 49. If the Gauls who were be- or confusion was easy, that the Gauls, after a
sieging the Capitol received their ransom, and stay of eight months in Rome, were atlast driven
withdrew from Rome before the end of the au- out by Camillus; the period of their stay in
turn, while others of their countrymen remained Italy being mistaken for that of their occupation
in Italy through the winter, and did not return of Rome.




ï~~CHAP. XXV.]

RESTORATION OF THE CITY.

211

there was no subsequent destruction of public records such as had been caused
by the burning of the city; and although many invaluable monuments perished
in the great fire of the Capitol in the times of Sylla, yet these might have been, and
in some instances we know that they had been, previously consulted by historians,
so that all knowledge of their contents was not lost to the writers of the Augustan age. Yet still no period of Roman history since the first institution of
the tribunes of the commons is really more obscure than the thirty years immediately following the retreat of the Gauls. And the reason of this is, that when
there are no independent contemporary historians, the mere existence of public
documents affords no security for the preservation of a real knowledge of men
and actions. The documents may exist, indeed, but they give no evidence: they are
neglected or corrupted at pleasure by poets and panegyrists; and a fictitious story
gains firm possession of the public mind, because there is no one to take the pains
of promulgating the truth. And thus it has happened that the panegyrists of
Camillus and of the other great patrician families, finding ready belief in many
instances from national vanity, have so disguised the real course of events, that
at no other period of Roman history is it more difficult to restore it.
The Gauls were gone, and the ruins of Rome were possessed again by the Romans.   The Flamen of Quirinus and the Vestal Virgins returned Theoromans roceed to
from Caere; and the eternal fire, unextinguished by the late ca- restoretheiresity.o ProS   posol for removi  to
lamity, was restored to its accustomed place in the temple of Vesta.  sui"nlopoesuades the people to soBut the fugitives who had fled to Veii from the rout at the Alia, main ait Rome.
and who formed a large proportion of the Roman people, were most unwilling to
leave the city which for several months had been their only country; at Veii
they had houses already built, and perhaps they were not sorry to escape from
the ascendency of the patricians, and to settle themselves in a new city of which
they would be the original citizens.' Thus Rome was threatened anew with the
dangers of a secession, with such a division of the strength of the commonwealth
as must have insured its ruin; for some of the patricians would, no doubt, have
removed to Veii, while others, with their clients, would as certainly have remained
at Rome. At this period the name and ability of Camillus were most effectual
in putting an end to the dissension, and in determining that the proposed secession to Veii should be utterly abandoned: but by what means or at what time his
exile was reversed we cannot discover.   It may be true," that while the Gauls
were in possession of Rome he had encouraged the people of Arden, where he
had become a citizen, to take up arms against the Gaulish plundering parties;
he, may also, in such a time of necessity, have been chosen commander by some
of the Romans who had fled from the city, and with them he may have done good
service, both in cutting off the enemy's stragglers, and, perhaps, in harassing their
rear after they began to retreat. And if after these exploits he had led back his
party to Rome rather than to Veii, and had thus proved that even in banishment
his heart was true to his old country, there is no doubt that he would have been
received as joyfully as the Athenians under similar circumstances received Alcibiades;' his exile would have been speedily reversed, and his entrance into Rome,
like Cicero's in after-times, would have been celebrated with general rejoicings.
Still more would this have been the case, had he really during his exile repaired
to Veii, and brought back to Rome after the retreat of the Gauls any considerThat is, they would be the burghers or pa- received. But a sense of his great services, and
tricians of Veil, and around them a new plebs of the necessities of the commonwealth, overor commons would, in process of time, be formed, powered all other considerations, and the peojust as they themselves had grown up beside pie did receive him with enthusiasm.-See Xenthe patricians of Rome.                  ophon, Hellenic. I. 4. How refreshing is it,
SSee Livy, V. 43, 44.                 after the vagueness and uncertainties of the Ro3 When Alcibiades returned to Athens in the man traditions to turn for a moment to the nar25thy ear of the Peloponnesian war, after his suc- rative of a contemporary historian, even when,
ceases in the Hellespont and in Thrace, he had like Xenrphon, he is far below the hig hest
never been formally recalled from exile, and standard of xcellence.
doubted, at first, it is said, how he should be




ï~~212

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXP

able pot tion of the soldiers who had made Veii their refuge. Then may have
followed the discussion whether these soldiers should return to their countrymen
at Veii, or whether all should unite once more at Rome. Then Camillus and the
patricians opposed to the secession would naturally appeal both in the senate4
and the forum to all the local attachments and religious feelings of which Rome
alone could be the object; and when the excitement was great, and the smallest
thing would incline men's wavering minds either the one way or the other, it may
be true5 that they received as an omen from heaven the casual words of a centurion, who, passing through the comitium with his century, and having occasion
to halt in front of the senate-house, called aloud to the standard-bearer, "Pitch'
thy standard here, for this is the best place to stop at."
The secession, in whatever manner, having been prevented, and the mass of
The remaining menu- the commons having consented to remain at Rome, although many
tent o aecoeted, and still refused to quit Veii, the senate proceeded to reconstruct, as
the city begins to be reo -  tthprced
built.         well as they could, the shattered fabric of the commonwealth.
The sites of the temples' were retraced as well as was possible amidst the ruins,
their limits were again duly fixed by the augurs, and ceremonies were performed
to expiate the pollution which they had undergone by having been profaned by
the barbarians. Some relics which it was impossible to replace, were said to
have been miraculously preserved; the lituust or augural crook of Romulus,
with which he was supposed to have marked out the quarters of the heavens,
when in answer to his augury the gods sent him the famous sign of the twelve
vultures, was discovered unhurt, so ran the tradition, under a heap of ashes. Then
the days in which the route of the Alia had taken place, the day after the ides
of July, or the 16th, according to our reckoning, was pronounced by the pontifices to be a day of ill-omen; and no sacrifice could acceptably be offered, nor
any business prosperously done, on that day forever.    All0 remaining records
were sought for; the laws of the twelve tables, some laws ascribed to the kings,
and some treaties with foreign nations, such as those with Carthage and with the
Latins, were found to be still in existence; and parts of the laws were again
fixed up in some place where they were accessible to the people at large; but
the sacred or religious law, it is said, was not made public; the pontifices alone
were to be acquainted with it. The city was to be rebuilt with all diligence; at
present even the walls had been partially broken down, and the streets were a
mere heap of ashes. There was no plan to show their old direction: men built
wherever they found a spot clear of rubbish, and the first houses so erected, determined in great measure the position of the rest. Each citizen, no doubt, built
upon his own hill, and, generally speaking, in his own quarter or parish, if I may
use the expression, according to the division of the city marked by the sacraria
or chapels of the Argei. But within these limits, the old distinctions of property
were not duly observed, and there was a sort of scramble for the ground; so that
the city was built irregularly, and the direction" of the cloacae did not correspond
with that of the streets.  Meanwhile the government offered to furnish" roofing
materials for the new houses at the public expense: and Niebuhr conjectures
that these were chiefly obtained by unroofing the houses of Veil, and thus rendering the proposed seat of the secession uninhabitable, while it was made to
4 See the speech ascribed to Camillus in Livy,  '" Livy, V. 55, tegula publice prtebita est. We
V. 51-54.                                know from Cornelius Nepos, quoted by Pliny,
SThe story is given by Livy, V. 55, and by Hist. Natur. XVI. 10,.Â~ 86, that the houses in
Plutarch, Camillus, 32.                  Rome were roofed with wood (shingles), down
6 Signifer, statue signum hic manebimus op- to the time of the war with Pyrrhus. Either,
lime.                                    then, tegula is a general word in this passage of
7 Livy, V. 50.                         Livy, signifying roofing materials, whether of
8 Plutarch, Camillus, 82. Dionysius, XIV. 5. shingles or of tiles; or if it mean tiles strictly,
Fragm. Mai.                              we must suppose that the people did not like
' Gellius, V. 17. Livy, VI. 1.         the labor of fetching them from Veii, and preSLivy, VI. 1.                          ferred to use wood, according to their former
u Livy, V. 55.                         practice.




ï~~CHAP. XXV.]  NEIGHBORING PEOPLE ATTACK THE ROMANS.

213

contribute at tne same time to the rebuilding of Rome. Stone and timber might
also be quarried and felled by any man from any public lands, provided he gave
security that he would complete his house within the year. But with all these
aids the building fell heavily upon the mass of the people; it was delayed also
by the attacks of foreign enermies: the securities given for completing it within
the year would in many instances be forfeited; and hence began again the old
system of borrowing from the patricians, speedily to be followed, as before, by a
train of intolerable distresses and oppressions.
In the small states of Greece and ancient Italy, the loss of a great battle caused
a sensible diminution of the population of free citizens. The defeat Four new tribes added
at the Alia had been bloody: many lives must have been lost in to the Romanpeoploe.
after skirmishes with the Gauls, and in their devastations of the surrounding
country; and many fugitives who had taken refuge in the neighboring cities may
have preferred remaining in their new homes.     On the other hand, there was a
large subject3 population, chiefly, it is probable, of Tyrrhenian, that is, of Pelasgian origin, in the recently conquered territories of Veii, of Capena, and, as Livy
adds, of Falerii. From these it was resolved to make up the losses occasioned
by the Gauls, and to convert subjects, who would infallibly have soon revolted,
into citizens, who would be a most seasonable accession of strength. Accordingly, they were admitted in a body to the full rights of Roman citizens: each
head of a family had his portion of seven jugera of land duly granted to him in
full property, and set with landmarks, according to the rules of the agrimensores,
which constituted the legal freehold tenure of the Romans; and to show the great
number of new citizens thus admitted, four new tribes4 were formed out of them,
and they thus constituted nearly a sixth part of the whole people in political
weight, and, probably, a larger proportion in point of actual numbers. The tribes
were thus increased from twenty-one to twenty-five.
I have noticed these measures without regard to the exact chronological order
in which they are said to have occurred.     They are all placed, The neighboringpeopole
however, with the exception of the creation of the four new tribes, attarCrepels t ain the first year after the retreat of the Gauls: in that year the sians and Etruscans.
new citizens were admitted, and received their grants of land: although the creation of the new tribes, in which they might exercise their franchise politically by
voting at the comitia, is said to have happened two years" later.  The magistrates
still, as before the Gaulish invasion, came into office on the first of July;16 thus
the military tribunes who had commanded at the siege of the Capitol, were still
in office for some months after the retreat of the Gauls; but they were not
allowed to hold the comitia"7 for the election of their successors, because of the supposed ill-luck of their magistracy; they resigned therefore, and the comitia were
held by an interrex, a fact which of itself confutes the story of Camillus' pretended
dictatorship: for had he been dictator throughout the year, according to the
tales of his exploits," the comitia would naturally have been held by him, and
there would have been no need of an interregnum. But immediately after the
appointment' of the new tribunes, that is, about the season of harvest, the favorite season for the plundering incursions of the Peloponnesians into Attica, the
13 Livy, VI. 4, calls the new citizens, " qui mans themselves, and their language and reliVeientium Capenatiumque ac Faliscorum per ea gion both bore a considerable affinity to those
bella transfugerant ad Romanos." Individual of Rome.
deserters could not be numerous enough to form  4 Livy, VI. 5.
four tribes; but when the cities of Veii and Ca-  1 That is, it took place at the next census,
pena were hard-pressed, their territory, inhab- which was taken in the year 868; the preceding
ited chiefly by a subject population, replouc at in censors having been appointed in the year 363.
the political language of Greece, would be likely Livy, V. 31.
to revolt or submit to the Romans. The new  6 They continued to do so, it is said, for at
citizens could scarcely have been Etruscans, as least sixty years after this period. See Livy,
the difference of language would then have pre- VIII. 20.
sented a serious barrier to their union with the  1 Livy, VI. 1.
Romans; but if they were Tyrrhenian Pelas-  " See Livy, VI. 1, and Plutarch, Camillus, 831,
gians, they were of the same stock as the Ro



ï~~214

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XX

Romans were alarmed by the reports of hostile attacks on every side; their for.
lorn condition, it is said, tempting even the smallest of the neighboring states to
assail them. If we are to believe one tradition which has accidentally been preserved to us,19 the people of Ficulea, Fidenee, and other places round about, appeared in arms under command of Livius Postumius, the dictator; as he is called.
of the Fidenatians, and caused such a panic that the Romans fled before them;
and the anniversary of this flight, the nones or 7th of July, was celebrated ever
afterwards under the name of the day of the people's flight." This, however, is
an uncertain story,2' in some respects improbable, and connected at any rate with
circumstances which are clearly fabulous. It is more credible that the late destructive inroad of the Gauls should have shaken all old political relations, and
that the Romans could io longer rely on the aid of the Latins and Hernicans.
Emboldened by their knowledge of this, the Volscians took up arms, and advanced
into Latium as far as the neighborhood of Lanuvium,2 which stood on a sort of
spur of high ground, running out from the very southern extremity of the Alban
Hills. Here they encountered the Roman army commanded by the military tribunes, and were so superior in numbers that they presently confined the Romans
within their camp. The tidings of their danger were carried to Rome; Camillus
was named dictator, and he, taking the field with every man who could bear arms,
hastened from Rome by a night-march,3 and appeared at day-break on the rear
of the Volscians. Then the Roman army under the military tribunes made a
sally, and the Volscians, attacked both in front and rear, were totally routed.
Scarcely was this danger repelled, when the dictator learned that an Etruscan
army, probably from Tarquinii, had attacked the Roman frontier on the opposite
side, on the right bank of the Tiber, and was besieging Sutrium. Camillus hastened to its aid, but on his way,24 said the story of his exploits, he met the citizens
of Sutrium in forlorn plight, they having been obliged to surrender their city, and
having saved nothing but their lives. They fell on their knees before him, told
him their sad case, and craved his assistance. He bade them be of good cheer,
saying that it was now the turn of the Etruscans to wail and weep. Then he advanced upon Sutrium, and found, as he had expected, that the enemy kept no watch,
and were thinking of nothing but plunder: he instantly forced his way into the
place, and made a great slaughter, and a still greater number of prisoners; and
Sutrium was thus, according to the story, "lost and recovered in a day again."25
It is impossible to tell how much of exaggeration is mixed up with these details;
but there is no reason to doubt that Camillus by his genius in this memorable
year did truly save his country from destruction. The enemies of Rome were
checked, and time was gained for the state to recover from its disorder and distress, and to meet its rivals on more equal terms. The very existence of the Roman people in after-ages proves how well they must have defended themselves

19 By Varro, Ling. Lat. VI. 18, ea. Miller,
and partly by Macrobius, Saturnal. I. 11.
20 Poplifugia.
21 It is uncertain, because a different account
of the origin of the Poplifugia is given by Macrobius Saturnal. III. 2, and by Dionysius, II.
56, and because we know how little reliance is
to be placed on stories pretending to account
for the origin of old traditional usages or festivals. It is improbable, because Fidenn. hadbeen
taken and colonized by the Romans forty years
earlier, and from that time forward plays no
part in history, and because Ficulea is never
mentioned at all after the times of the Roman
kings. Nor can we conceive how Fidena should
have had a dictator, which was a title peculiar
to the Latin towns; unless, indeed, we suppose
that it had joined some Latin confederacy since
the fall of the Roman power, and was now become Latin. Further, the story of the Fidenatian dictator is mixed up with the famous legend

of Tutula and the female slaves, which is evidently fabulous.
22 Diodorus, XIV. 117. Livy, VI. 2.
23 The resemblance of this story to that of
Cincinnatus is obvious, and is very suspicious.
Livy merely describes the victory of Camillus,
without saying anything ofthe previous danger.
Plutarch makes the Latins to have joined the
Volscians, but he expressly says that Camillus
marched to relieve the army of the military tribunes, which was besieged by the enemy.-Ca
millust 34.
24 Livy, VI. 8. Plutarch, Camillus, 35.
2 The very passage from which this line is
taken, in Shakspeare's Henry VI. Part I. shows
how little reliance can be placed on a poetical
version of events in themselves historical. The
line refers to the capture of Rouen by the Maid
of Orleans and its recovery by Talbot on the
same day; both the capture and recapturebeing,
as every one knows, alike purely imaginary.




ï~~CHA. XXV.]

EXTENT OF THE ROMAN FRONTIER.

215

when attacked by two enemies at once in the hour of their most extreme helplessness and depression.
It were a mere wearying of the reader's patience to follow Livy through the
details of the petty wars of this period-details which cannot be regarded as historical, and which, even though true, would be of little value. It will be enough
to trace generally Rome's foreign relations down to the time of her great internal
regeneration.
On the right bank of the Tiber, the Roman frontier neither advanced nor receded.   Nepete and Sutrium, which had submitted to Rome three          the Rma
Extent of the Roman
or four years before the Gaulish invasion," and were the border fontier. Its limit totowns of the Roman dominion, were twice, according to the story wards Etruria.
of Camillus, attacked by the Etruscans; once, as we have seen, in 366, and again
in 369. They were both, according to the same authority, taken in 369, and
immediately recovered.7 It appears that the Etruscans, who were engaged in
this affair, were the people of Tarquinii; and finding the strength of Rome greater
than they had expected, they were probably glad to conclude a truce for a certain number of years; which was no less welcome to the Romans, as they saw
that they should have enemies enough on their hands on their opposite frontier.
On the left bank of the Tiber we hear of wars with the Volscians generally,
almost every year, and particularly with the people of Antium. its limits on the left
The scene of action was commonly the neighborhood of Satricum, bank of the Tiber.
a town which lay between Velitrae and Antium.2     Satricum  had originally been
one of the thirty cities of the Latins; it had then been conquered by the JEquians and Volscians, had afterwards been taken by the Romans, and had lastly, a
little while before the Gaulish invasion, revolted from them,9 and was now again
become Volscian.   It is said to have been retaken by Camillus in 369,"o and a
Roman colony was sent to occupy it in the following year.. Again, however, it
was lost in 373,3' and held for five years by the Volscians; after which time,
when the people of Antium made peace with the Romans, and Satricum was to
have been restored, it was burned, out of indignation by the Latins," who had
been allied with the Antiatians against Rome, and now found themselves deserted.
Thus, on this side, the Roman frontier had considerably receded from the point
which it had reached thirty years earlier. Then Anxur had been conquered, but
now even Satricum could not be maintained, a place less than thirty miles distant
from Rome.    The loss of Anxur is nowhere expressly acknowledged; but it must
have fallen either in the year 358, when we read of its being besieged by the
Volscians;l3 or else it must have been lost, as well as Bola,34 amidst the calamity
of the Gaulish invasion; for it is not possible that it could have been retained by
the Romans whilst the Volscians were fighting year after year at Satricum, nearly
five-and-twenty miles nearer to Rome.
But the peculiar feature of Rome's foreign relations, after the retreat of the
Gauls, consisted in her altered position with respect to the Latins. Altered relations d
Hitherto, during all the wars with the.Equians and Volscians, the Rome with Latium.
alliance of the Latins and the Hernicans with the Romans had remained unbroken.
It is true that some of the thirty Latin cities which had concluded the original
treaty with Sp. Cassius in 261, had since been conquered by the.Equians and
Volscians:35 and thus as Niebuhr supposes, that treaty had long since been vir15 See chap. xviii.                     11 Livy, VI. 22.
2 Livy, VI. 9, 10.                       32 Livy, VI. 33.
2 Its position is unknown: the Italian anti-  13 Livy, V. 16.
quaries fix it at a little place called Conca, on the  3 Camillus is made to recover Bola from the
edge of the Selva di Nettuno, in the supposed.AEquians, in the year 866. Livy, VI. 2. It
line of the old road from Velitrn to Astura and must therefore have been previously lost.
Antium. But nothing exists beyond a few    5 Of the thirty Latin cities enumerated by
shapeless ruins, which can determine nothing. Dionysius, eight are mentioned by Livy or DiWestphal, p. 40.                         onysius as having been conquered by the Vol2e Diodorus, XIV. 102.                 scians under the command of Coriolanus; Velso Livy, VI. 8, 16.                    itree also became Volscian in the course of tha




ï~~216

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXV

tually at an end: and while some of the Latin states were become AlEquian or
Volscian, or had drawn around themselves a distinct confederacy of the small
towns in their immediate neighborhood; others, like Tusculum, were, from the
equal, become no more than the dependent allies of Rome: for instance, Prmneste, as Niebuhr thinks, must from its position have become AlEquian, and Tibui
stood aloof, and formed the centre of a small confederacy of its own. It does
not, however, appear to me that we are compelled to adopt this supposition by
the reason of the case; and external testimony,6 such as it is, seems to be against
it. The.AEquians may have poured out upon the Campagna through that breach
in the Apennine wall which lies open close below Preneste, and may have occupied Pedum in the plain, and Lavici on the roots of the Alban Hills; nay, they
may have even taken Bola within the mountain-range itself, and yet the impregnable strength of Preneste, which, at a later period, so long defied the whole
power of Sylla, may have remained in perfect security; and as the Hernicans
were unconquered, and yet lay quite on the rear of the.Equians when they established themselves on Algidus, so Tibur and Preneste, safe in their mountainholds, may have continued to belong to Latium, though almost isolated from the
mass of the Latin people by the conquests of the Opican nations.    On the other
hand, it is very likely that amid the ruin of the Latin cities around them, many
small Latin communities may have gathered under their protection; and that
thus the disproportion in strength between them and the other remaining states
of the Latin confederacy would have become greater than it had been before.
This of itself, when Rome had been so crushed by the Gauls, would lead to an
altered relation between them and the Romans. By the treaty concluded with
Sp. Cassius, Rome stood as one contracting party, and the whole Latin confederacy as another: of the plunder or conquest made by the allied nations, the share
of Rome alone was to be equal to that of all the Latin cities together; the allied
armies were to be commanded alternately by a Roman and a Latin; but each
particular Latin state would enjoy the command many times less often than Rome.
Thus when Rome had sunk in power, and Preneste had risen, it would seem fair
that they should stand towards each other on a different footing; that Praneste
should be no longer a mere single member of the state of Latium, but should
itself treat as state to state with Rome.
Be this as it may, we find that after the Gaulish invasion, the treaty of Sp.
Wars with the Latin Cassius, both with the Latins and Hernicans, was either imperfectly
states..rneste.  observed, or altogether violated for a period of nearly thirty years.
Latin and Hernican volunteers in great numbers are said to have joined the
armies of the Volscians;37 then the Latins generally, without any mention of particular states, are described as at open war with Rome,38 in alliance with the Volscians; and Lanuvium,9 and above all, Preneste,Â~ are especially noticed as taking a prominent part in these hostilities.  On the other hand, Tusculum,41 though
on one occasion suspected, remained generally true to Rome: and so also did
wars with the Opican nations; and others of the as their share ofthe spoil in 342. (Livy IV. 51.)
thirty which are not noticed again in history, The Latin and Hernican lands are ravaged by
were, in all probability, destroyed.     the.Equians or Volscians in 846 (Livy, IV.
" Livy says that " the Latins and Hernicans, 55), in 845 (id. IV. 53), and the Hernican lands
since the battle at the lake Regillus, had re- in 342. (Id. IV. 51.) The Latins and Hernimained faithful to Rome for nearly a century cans announce the intended invasion of the
without interruption." VI. 2. This, as a gen- Opican nations in 33882 and 324 (Livy, IV. 26, 87),
eral statement, and one clearly in some respects and in 292 it is expressly mentioned that the
inaccurate, may not 1)e entitled to much weight; lands ravaged by the Volscians were those of
but a variety of incidental notices in the ac- the Pranestines, Gabians, and Tusculans (Livy,
counts of the several years, seem to imply that III. 8): the three people belonging all alike at
the alliance between the three nations, Romans, that period to the Latin confederacy.
Latins, and Hernicans, lasted without any ma- 87 Livy, VI. 7, 13.
terial change down to the Gaulish war. Latins  a Livy, VI. 30, 32, 33.
and Hernicans joined Camillus against Veii in  9 Livy, VI. 21.
859. (Livy, V. 19.) Ferentinum, when taken  40 Livy, V. 21, 22, 27, et seq. 80.
from the Volscians, was given to the Hernicans 4 Livy, VI. 21, 25, 26.




ï~~CHAP. XXV.]

INTERNAL DISTRESS.

217

Gabii and Lavici.42  It may be well conceived how greatly this altered disposition
of the Latins added to the distress of the Roman commons. For some years past
Latium had borne the brunt of the ravaging incursions of the 2Equians and Volscians; its aid had enabled the Romans to carry the war at times into the enemies' country, while their own territory had rested in security. But now we read
of the Roman territory being ravaged in all directions by the Volscians;43 and on
one occasion44 the Preenestines, having laid waste the country between the Tiber
and the Anio, a quarter most likely to have escaped the attacks of other enemies,
at last even crossed the Anio, and advanced as far as the very walls of Rome.
Under such circumstances any gleam of victory would be doubly welcomed; and
an inscription in the Capitol"5 long recorded the successful campaign of T. Quinetins Cincinnatus, who having been appointed dictator to repel this invasion of the
Prtenestines, marched out against them, defeated them in a battle on the very
banks of the ill-omened Alia, chased them into their own country, and stormed
nine of their townships in as many days. But such successes, like those with
which the Saxon kings of England sometimes relieved the disasters of the Danish
invasions, were attended by no permanent fruits. The Prenestines were in the
field again the very next year;46 and the aspect of the Roman foreign affairs continued to be overclouded down to the very end of that period with which we are
concerned in the present chapter.
But the prospect at home was not overclouded merely; it was the very deepest darkness of misery. It has been well said that long periods of Internal distress. Sufgeneral suffering make far less impression on our minds, than the ferings of the Roman
short sharp struggle in which a few distinguished individuals per- commons.
ish; not that we over-estimate the horror and the guilt of times of open bloodshedding, but we are much too patient to the greater misery and greater sin
of periods of quiet legalized oppression; of that most deadly of all evils, when
law, and even religion herself, are false to their divine origin and purpose, and
their voice is no longer the voice of God, but of his enemy. In such cases the
evil derives advantage, in a manner, from the very amount of its own enormity.
No pen can record, no volume can contain, the details of the daily and hourly
sufferings of a whole people, endured without intermission, through the whole life
of man, from the cradle to the grave. The mind itself can scarcely comprehend
the wide range of the mischief: how constant poverty and insult, long endured
as the natural portion of a degraded caste, bear with them to the sufferers something yet worse than pain, whether of the body or the feelings; how they dull
the understanding and poison the morals; how ignorance and ill-treatment combined are the parents of universal suspicion; how from oppression is produced
habitual cowardice, breaking out when occasion offers into merciless cruelty; how
slaves become naturally liars; how they whose condition denies them all noble
enjoyments, and to whom looking forward is only despair, plunge themselves,
with a brute's recklessness, into the lowest sensual pleasures; how the domestic
circe itself, the last sanctuary of human virtue, becomes ad: length corrupted, and
in the place of natural affection and parental care, there is to be seen only selfishness and unkindness, and no other anxiety on the part of the parents for their
children, than that they may, by fraud or by violence, prey in their turn upon
that society which they have found their bitterest enemy. Evils like these, long
working in the heart of a nation, render their own cure impossible: a revolution
may execute judgment on one generation, and that, perhaps, the very one which
4 Livy, VI. 21, 25, 26. 4 Livy, VI. 81.  From Jove and all the gods this favor did be4 Livy, VI. 28.                         fall,
4 Livy, VI. 29, and Festus in "Triens." The That Titus Quinctus, sometime Rome's captaininscription, as Niebuhr has restored it, ran  general,
thus:                                 Nine towns did in nine days assault and take
Juppiter, atque Divi omnes hoc dederunt,  withal.
Ut Titus Quinctius dictator Romanus   48 Livy, VI. 80.
Oppida novem diebus novem caperet.




ï~~218

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVr

was beginning to see and to repent of its inherited sins; but it cannot restore life
to the morally dead; and its ill success, as if in this line of evils no curse should
be wanting, is pleaded by other oppressors as a defence of their own iniquity, and
a reason for perpetuating it forever.
But it was the blessing of Rome, that this course of evils was, in her case,
Causes of the distress; checked in time, when it had brought suffering only on one generarment of insolvent debt- tion, before it had entailed moral corruption on the remotest pos
or..           terity.  Twenty years47 of poverty and oppression, could we present to ourselves each individual case of misery, would seem a fearful amount of
evil; but, happily, twenty years' suffering in the life of a nation are but like an
attack of fever, severe indeed while it lasts, but too short to weaken the constitution permanently.   Mere poverty, moreover, is an evil, the sense of which varies
greatly according to differences of time and place; its actual privations depend
much on climate; their intolerableness arises from contrast; where none are extravagant or luxurious, poverty must almost sink to beggary before its sting is
felt acutely. The actual distress endured by the Roman commons in the loss of
their houses, and the destruction of their cattle and fruit-trees, few of which could
have escaped the hands of the Gauls during their long occupation of the city and
territory of Rome, although severe for the time, would, nevertheless, have been
diminished by the sense of its being the common portion, and would in time have
been altogether relieved. But the attacks of foreign enemies rendered the tributum, as a war-tax, constant and heavy; and other taxes were imposed to defray
the expense of building up the rock of the Capitol with large blocks of stone,4
and probably of rebuilding the temples generally; whilst the obligation of completing the houses in the city within twelve months, was a pressure on the means
of the less wealthy, coming at the very time when they were least able to meet
it.  Thus, as we have seen, debts were unavoidably contracted; and when there
was a general demand for money, it was not possible that any positive law could
keep the rate of interest low. Whether the enactment of the twelve tables, which
fixed its yearly rate at one-twelfth of the principal, was actually repealed, or only
disregarded by common consent, we cannot tell, but the re-enacting that rate49 a
few years later is a proof that at this period it was not observed; and it is expressly mentioned that the principaP of debts was sometimes paid many times
over in interest before they were of five years' standing. It is not necessary to
repeat the details of the extreme severity of the law towards insolvent debtors;
they have been already noticed; but as the distress was far greater now than at
any former time, this severity must have been more extensively felt than ever:
every patrician house was become a private jail; but a jail in which the prisoners were kept to hard labor for the jailer's benefit, or were, at his caprice,
loaded with irons and subjected to the lash.
Imprisonment for debt in its mildest form, and amidst the manifold money
Aggravations of their transactions of a great commercial country, in which the debtor
Aggravations of their
misery from particular must often be paying the penalty of his own imprudence, is yet.ues.         beginning to shock the feelings of modern times, as being liable to
the evil of confounding together misfortune and crime. How then should we
regard the treatment of the Roman commons, whose debts were incurred by no
" The period, according to Niebuhr's chro- of the hill towards the Forum, where the renology, was one of eighteen years, from 865 to mains of the Tabularium still exist.
883: according to the common chronology, it  The " saxum quadratum" of the Roman wrilasted twenty-three years, from 365 to 388.  ters, is the " Steintuf" of the German geolo4a Livy, VI. 4. " Capitolium saxo quadrato gists; the "Tufa litoide" of Brocohi: it is a
substructum est." This must mean that where volcanic conglomerate, found in Rome itself,
the cliff had been proved to be accessible, and and is the stone employed in the Cloaca.
thus have been more or less of an inclined plane,  4 Livy, VII. 16.
it was so built up with large blocks of stone as  5o Livy, VI. 14. " Multiplici jam sorte exsoto enlarge the upper surface of the hill, and lutf, mergentibus semper sortem usuris." This
make it perpendicular with the bottom of it. is said of the year 870, only five years after the
imilar substructions have enlarged the surface Gaulish invasion.




ï~~COw. XXV.]

CONDUCT OF M. MANLIUS.

219

fault of their own, but were the consequence of an overwhelming national calamity, and of the want of consideration shown by the government for their state of
distress? Yet it is remarkable that the severity of the law in itself seems even
now to have excited no complaint; nor do we find that the tribunes extended
their protection to the multitude of innocent debtors who were daily dragged off
to labor amongst slaves in their creditor's workhouse; what excited general discontent was, in the first place, the high rate of interest exacted by the patricians,
who thus seemed to make their profit out of the general misery; and next the
harshness of obliging the commons to pay heavy taxes for the public service,
while the state's domain land, the natural resource in extraordinary national emergencies, was appropriated to the benefit of individuals, and whilst the taxation
itself was highly arbitrary, being regulated according to an old valuation of the
property of the citizens,"' and making no allowance for the enormous losses which
had since so greatly reduced its amount. Above all, there was the intolerable
suspicion that the taxes thus hardly wrung from the people were corruptly embezzled: a tax had been imposed to replace twofold the treasures borrowed from
the temples to purchase the retreat of the Gauls; and it was whispered5" that
this money, instead of being restored to the gods, was secretly kept back by the
patricians for their own use.
Thus the evils of the times and the public irritation were great; but before
they found their true and wholesome remedy, they gave occasion M. Maies comes foa.
to one of those false shows of relief, which only aggravate the dis- wea p the,otectoro
y  t)           the poor and the inease. M. Manlius, the preserver of the Capitol from the Gauls, solvent debtors.
was jealous of the high reputation of Camillus,53 and alienated from the patricians
generally, because his share of the high offices of the commonwealth was not
such as his merits claimed. Thus he was ready to feel indignant at the severities practised against the debtors; and his better feelings also, the loftiness of
his nature, and his sympathy with brave men, were all shocked by the scenes
which he daily witnessed. One day54 he saw a centurion, who had served with
him, and whom he knew to be a distinguished soldier, now dragged through the
Forum on his way to his creditor's workhouse. He hastened up, protested against
the indignity, and himself paid the debt on the spot, and redeemed the debtor.
The gratitude and the popularity which this act won for him, excited him to go
on in the same course: he sold by public auction the most valuable"5 part of his
landed property, and declared that he would never see a fellow-citizen made a
bondsman for debt, so long as he had the means of relieving him. So well did
he fulfil this promise that he was said to have advanced money to no fewer than
four hundred debtors, without requiring any interest to be paid to him; and thus
to have discharged their debts, and saved them from bondage. Such generosity obtained for him the unbounded affection of the people; he was called the "Father
of the Commons;" and his house in the Capitol was always beset by a multitude
of citizens, to whom he spoke of the cruelty of their creditors, and of their fraud
and sacrilege in appropriating to themselves the money paid by the people to replace the treasures borrowed from the gods for the ransom of the Capitol.
A dictator had been5 already appointed early in the year, with the double
purpose of employing him against the Volscians abroad, and, if need should be,
against the attempts of Manlius at home. The office had been conferred on A.
1 See Niebuhr, Vol. II. p. 675.        conquered only eleven years before. But the
2 Livy, VI. 14.                        Ager Veiens came down to the Tiber, and por6 Livy, VI. 11. Plutarch, Camillus, 36.  tions of it may have been conquered in earlier
4 Livy, VI. 14. One is rather too much re- wars, or even in the earlier years, of the final
minded here of the story of the brave old cen- war. The fundus in question was, probably, a
turion, whose hard usage from his creditors ex- " possessio," or a portion of the domain land
cited such a tumult in the year of Rome 259.-  held by occupation; but such estates were
See Livy, II. 23.                        bought and sold amongst individuals as if they
S"Fundum in Veienti," says Livy, "caput were property, subject always to the chance of
patrimonii." It could hardly, then, have been their being reclaimed by the state.
a part of the Veientian territory which had been  o Livy, VI. 11.,




ï~~220

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXV

His ambitionspractices. Cornelius Cossus, perhaps the same person who, in his consulship,
he tripnee. Hi stt  eight-and-twenty years before, had taken cognizance of the murtheight-andstwentytyear
and death.    der of M. Postumius by his soldiers; and he was now recalled
from the field to check the apprehended sedition. He summoned Manlius'
before him, called upon him to prove his charge of the embezzlement of the
sacred money, and on his failing to do so threw him into prison. This seems to
have been merely the exercise of that power of arresting dangerous individuals,
and so stopping their plans for a season, which is granted to, or assumed by, all
governments in perilous times; it is remarkable, however, that the imprisonment
of Manlius did not expire with the term of the dictator's office, but continued till
the senate, fearing, it is said, that he would be released by force, passed a vote
to restore him to his liberty. This might seem to have been an act of weakness, yet
the event allows us to attribute it to a wise policy; for Manlius, when released,
indulged in language more violent than ever, and at last, if we can rightly interpretS the doubtful language of the annalists, the assemblages at his house
assumed a more threatening character; and the Capitol was occupied by him and
his followers as a stronghold in defiance of the government, as it was many years
afterwards by the tribune L. Saturninus. That his motives were not pure, and
that his purposes were treasonable, seems evident from several circumstances.
He did not unite with the tribunes, the natural leaders of the commons, nor concert with them any definite measure for the redress of the existing evils. This
makes a wide distinction between him and the several honest popular leaders who,
on other occasions, had opposed the aristocracy. Volero, Terentilius, Duillius,
Icilius, Canuleius, and Trebonius, had each come forward with some distinct
measure for the attainment of a particular end; but of Manlius we hear nothing
but that he exercised great liberality towards distressed individuals, and so acquired an immense popularity; that he excited the passions of the people by
vague charges and invectives against the aristocracy; and that he occupied the
Capitol with a multitude of his partisans. It marks also the character of his
proceedings, that the tribunes, forgetting the just grievances of their order, joined
the patricians against him; and that Q. Publilius,59 whose iamily was surpassed
by none in its hereditary zeal for the true liberties of the commons, came forward
to impeach him of high treason. What follows is told with some variations, and
the real details cannot be recovered. According to the common account, Manlius submitted to take his trial before the centuries in the Campus Martius. I
have already shown how much even the greatest criminals had to hope from the
uncertainty of such a tribunal; how much weight was given to matters foreign to
the question at issue; how a strong and eloquent appeal to the feelings of the
judges might overpower the clearest evidence of the prisoner's guilt. If even
the decemvir Appius had thought his acquittal by the centuries not impossible,
how much more might Manlius expect from them a favorable sentence?        Nor
was his hope deceived. When he appeared in the Field of Mars, he brought
forward four hundred debtors0 whom he had relieved from bondage; he exhibited the spoils of thirty enemies whom he had slain in personal combat; he showed
forty honorary rewards which he had at various times received from his generals
min war; and amongst these, eight of those wreaths of oak, the famous civic crowns,
which were given for saving the life of a fellow-citizen in battle. He produced,
besides, some of the very men whom he had thus saved, living witnesses of his
services, whose tears and entreaties in behalf of their preserver might strike to
the hearts of all who saw them. Finally, he bared his own breast, covered with
1 Livy, VI. 16.                        as Livy, VI. 19. This Publilius was of the
as " Senatus de secessione in domum priva- same family with Publilius Volero, and was the
tam plebis,... agitat."-Livy, VI. 19. The dictator Publilius Philo who passed the famous
word "secessio" is either an exaggeration or popular laws which bear his name some years
denotes a positive act of insurrection, or, to afterwards.-Livy, VIII. 12.
speak more strictly, of a withdrawal of allegiance to Livy, VI. 20.
from the existing government.




ï~~CHAr. XXV.]

INCREASED DISTRESS.

221

honorable scars; and, looking up to the Capitol, which rose immediately above
the Field of Mars, he implored the aid of those gods whose temples he had
saved from barbarian pollution, and bade the people to look at the Capitol, and
then give their judgment. The tribunes saw that the centuries, thus excited,
would never find him guilty; and the trial was adjourned,6' not to be brought
forward again before the same tribunal. Yet how he was prevented from appealing to the centuries from the sentence of any other court that might have
condemned him, does not appear. Nothing more is known with certainty than
that Manlius was put to death as a traitor; the very manner62 of his execution,
as well as the authority by which he was condemned, are variously reported.
All agree, however,'63 that his house was levelled with the ground; that a law
was passed forbidding any one from henceforth to reside within the precincts of
the Capitol; and that the members of the Manlian gens shared so deeply in the
general sense of his guilt, as to make it a rule of their house, that no Manlius
should ever hereafter receive the pranomen of Marcus.
After this ill-omened opposition to the aristocracy, their power was, as usual,
only the more confirmed.    For four years the distress went on Increased distress: the
increasing, till the tribunes of the year 375 (we do not know their tibunes at last venture
to interfere in behalf of
names) ventured to make a stand64 in behalf of their constituents, the commons.
Censors had been appointed in this year, to take a new valuation of the property
of the citizens; but one of them having died, and it being accounted unlucky to
fill up the place of a deceased censor, his colleague went out of office. Two censors were then elected, but the augurs pronounced their election invalid, and they
also resigned without doing any business; after which a religious objection was
made to any third election, as if the gods had manifested it to be their will that
there should be no censors that year.   This so provoked the tribunes, that when
it was proposed to call the legions into the field against the people of Prmneste,
they had recourse to the old method of opposition practised by the tribunes in
the preceding century, and protected every citizen in refusing to enlist; nay, they
went still further, and declared that they would once for all redress the existing
grievances, by forbidding any debtor to be given over to his creditor's power by
the sentence of the magistrate. And though they did not persevere in their purpose, for the Prmnestines,65 by a sudden inroad up to the very gates of Rome,
furnished an excuse for the appointment of a dictator, and made the war seem a
matter of paramount necessity, yet the tribunes withdrew their opposition only
on some compromise; and at the ensuing election of military tribunes, three out
of six were, for the first time since the Gaulish invasion, chosen from among the
plebeians.
This apparently brought some relief for the following year; but at the end of
it only one6 plebeian was elected amongst the military tribunes; Their interference
and the year 377 was only marked by disappointment of all the seems unavailing.
hopes of the commons, and an actual increase of their burdens.      Censors were
6 Any objection of a religious kind on the lic enemy. Further, what was the "concilium
part of the augurs, or a notice " that it thun- populi," and where was the " Lucus Petelidered," was sufficient to break up the comitia. nus?" for the present reading of " Porta NoC. Rabirius was saved from condemnation by a mentana" in the editions of Livy, is a mere corsudden adjournment produced by the act of L. rection of Nardini, and not to be admitted; inMetellus, who tore down the standard hoisted asmuch as there was no Porta Nomentana before
on the Janiculum, and thus, according to an old the enlargement of the walls by Aurelian. Then
custom, obliged the comitia to separate.  there is the curious story recorded by Dion Cas62 Livy, and most other writers, say that he sius, and which Niebuhr prefers as the most
was thrown from the Tarpeian rock. Cornelius authentic of all the accounts. The question is
Nepos related that he was scourged to death.-  too long to be discussed here: I have thrown
See Gellius, XVII. 21, Â~ 24. Again, some said, it therefore into a note at the end of the volume.
that he was condemned by a "concilium popu-  63 Livy, VI. 20. Plutarch, Camillus, 86. Aueli," held in the Peteline grove without the Porta tor. de Viris illustr. in Manlio. Dion Cassius.
Flumentana; others said that he was condemned Fragm. Peiresc. xxxi.
by the duumviri, or two judges created, accord-  64 Livy, VI. 27.
ing to the old law ascribed to the times of the  65 Livy, VI. 28.
kings, for the purpose of trying him as a pub-  6 Livy, VI. 31.




ï~~222

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXV.

again elected, but a war with the Volscians was made a pretence for postponing
the census; while, on the other hand, although the censors could not find opportunity for relieving the distress of the commons, they thought it necessary to contract for the building of a part of the city wall;" and to defray the expense of
this work, additional taxes were imposed. Accordingly, in this and the following
A  a         year, the amount of debt in the state continued to increase, and
S   the number of insolvent debtors condemned to bondage was
greatly multiplied; while a sudden dissolution of the alliance between the Latins
and Volscians, and the conclusion of a separate peace between the latter and
Rome,68 relieved the patricians from any immediate pressure of foreign warfare,
and thus deprived the opposition of the tribunes of its most effectual weapon.
From this apparently hopeless condition there sprung up suddenly a prospect
tdeliverance is, not. of deliverance.  Again we have conflicting traditions, idle stories,
withstanding, at and. and party exaggerations in the place of history.  But the result
of the great struggle is certain, whatever obscurity hangs over the details. And
L. Sextius and C. Licinius, though we cannot gain a distinct knowledge of them
as individuals, yet deserve to be recorded amongst the greatest benefactors to
the cause of good government and equal law, inasmuch as they brought forward
and carried the Licinian laws.
CHAPTER XXVI,
THE LICINIAN LAWS.-378-884.
" Les mouvemens qui agitent les peuples peuvent etre de deux sortes. Les uns sont produits
par une cause directe, d'od' rsulte un effet immediat. Une circonstance quelconque amine une
nation, on meme une partie de la nation, a desirer un but determine; l'enterprise eehoue ou
rdussit..... Ce sont 1 les heureuses revolutions; on salt ce qu'on veut on marche vers
un point precis, on se repose quand il est atteint."-BARANTE, Tableau de la Litterature Frangaise
pendant le Dixhuitieme Siecle.
Six patrician military tribunes' had been elected at the comitia for the year
378, and had entered on their office on the first of July. The coalition between
the Latins and Volscians, which had been so dangerous to Rome, was dissolved
in this same summer, and the Volscians of Antium made a separate peace.' During the autumn the commons seemed to have utterly lost heart; the patricians
were all powerful at home, and fortune seemed disposed to favor them equally
abroad: the cause, in short, appeared so hopeless that the more eminent men3
amongst the commons were discouraged from coming forward as candidates,
even for the office of tribune of the coumons; the tribune's power, they thought,
would merely expose themselves to odium, while it would be unable to effect any
good. Thus the elderly men, who generally held the tribuneship, now abandoned
the helmhn in despair, and younger men, who would have given way to their higher
claims under other circumstances, now found themselves called upon to come
67 Livy, VI. 82.                        on that very spot, Satricum, which they had con6 Livy, VI. 3388.                       quered in the war now before us, andt which
A Livy, VI. 82.                        they must have retained, therefore, at the peace
2 Livy, VI. 33. But they could scarcely have of 878. See Livy, VII. 27. But a state which
made an absolute surrender, "deditio," of their retains even its conquests at the end of a war is
city and territory; for we hear of them again in not likely to make at that same une an absolute
little more than twenty years, as an indepen- surrender of its own city and territory.
dent and sovereign people; planting a colony  s Livy, VI. 84.




ï~~. Clar. XXVI.]j

THE THREE LICINIAN LAWS.

223

forward, and brought with them strength and spirits better fitted for times so
perilous. At the election in December, C. Licinius Stolo, a member of one of
the richest4 and most distinguished families amongst the commons, and a man in
the full vigor of life, obtained a place amongst the ten tribunes, and L. Sextius, a
young man of an active and aspiring spirit, and a personal friend of Licinius, was
elected one of his colleagues.
Could we look into the private history of these times, we should find, no doubt,
amongst the Roman patricians, as amongst the members of all aris- some of t he patricns
tocracies, a certain number of persons, who, from various motives, tare favorable to the
are opposed to the majority of their own order. By some of these, ase of theo.
Licinius and Sextius were, we may be sure, encouraged and supported; the
Licinian family had repeatedly intermarried with patricians:' the tribune himself
was married to a Fabia, and others of his name had been similarly connected
with the Manlii and the Cornelii. With all the advantages then of wealth and
connection that could be enjoyed by a commoner, Licinius came forward to redress the grievances of his order, and to secure their rights for the time to come.
He proposed in the assembly of the tribes, in conjiinction with L. Sextius,
three separate laws.'  The first provided a strong remedy for the The tribunes propose
great actual evil, the overwhelming pressure of debt. It enacted, tho threoo e Linianwe
that whatever had been already paid in interest should be deducted from the
amount of the principal;' and that the debt thus reduced should be discharged
in three years, in three equal instalments. The second bill was intended to save
the commons, when their debts were once relieved, from the necessity of running
into debt again. It proposed therefore to provide for the poorer citizens by giving them grants of land out of the domain, or ager publicus; and in order to
have land enough available for this purpose, it restrained the right of the occupation, by enacting that no man should occupy more than five hundred jugera
of the public land in tillage,8 nor feed more than a hundred oxen and five hundred sheep on those portions of it which were left in pasture. The third bill
was dictated by the consciousness that the enjoyment of property is neither secure in itself, nor can satisfy the wants of a noble mind, without being united
with a certain portion of political power. The commons, as an order, must be
raised to a level with the patricians; the honors of their country must be laid
open to them; they must have an opportunity of bequeathing nobility to their
children. The institution of the military tribuneship was, in itself, an affront to
the commons: it was only because it was so inferior in dignity to the consulship,
that it had been made nominally accessible to them. The bill of Licinius, accordingly, did away with the military tribuneship, and restored the consulship.' That
very image of the ancient royalty, with all its sacredness and display of sovereign
state, was to be open to the commons no less than to the patricians. But expe
4 This appears from what is related of him
afterwards, that the amount of public land in
his occupation exceeded the measure of 500
jugera, which had been fixed by his own law.
Niebuhr observes also that this wealth of the
Licinian family continued to the latest period of
the republic, as is shown by the immense riches
of M. Licinius Crassus.
6 The Licinius who was a military tribune in
the year 355 was a brother of On. Cornelius;
and the Licinius who Was master of the horsemen in 882-3 was related to the dictator of that
year, P. Manlius.  Livy, V. 12, VI. 89. If in
the first of these two cases we suppose with
Borghesi (Nuovi Frammenti, Parte 2, p. 89),
that P. Licinius was a Cornelius by birth, and
adopted into the family of the Licini, it shows
no less the high eminence of the Licinii and
their intimacy with the noblest patrician houses,
when even a Cornolius would not scruple to become their adopted son.

6 Livy, VI. 85.
7 " Ut deducto eo de capite quod usuris pernumeratum esset, id quodc superesset triennio
equis portionibus persolveretur."-Livy, VI.
85.
s " Ne quis plus quingenta jugera agri possideret." If we remember the legal definition
of possessio, quicquid apprehendimus cujus
proprietas ad nos non pertmnet, ant nec potest
pertinere, hoc posoessionem apellamus," De
Verbor. Significat. l 15 (Digest. Lib. L. tit. xvi.),
we shall see that it was needless to add "publici" to " agri," because the only landwhich
men ordinarily occupied without its being their
own, was the "ager publicus."
For the clause limiting the number of cattle
which might be fed on the public pasture land,
see Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 8.
9 " Ne tribunorum militum comitia fierent,
consulumque utique alter ex plebe crearetur."Livy, VI. 85.




ï~~224

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVI

rience had shown that it was not enough to throw it open merely; one place
must be secured to the commons by law, or the influence of the patricians at the
comitia would forever exclude them from it. It was proposed, therefore, that
one, at least, of the two consuls should of necessity be elected from the commons.
This last law requires no explanation; and the second, since Niebuhr has
Operationofthe system cleared up the whole subject of the agrarian laws, is equally intelo debtor and creditor. ligible.  The first, however, involves in it some difficulty; for if
the rate of interest had been high, and a debt had been of long standing, the
sum paid in interest would not only have equalled, but must, in some instances,
have actually exceeded the amount of the principal; so that the creditor, far
from having any thing more to receive, would rather have had something to refund. To explain this, Niebuhr observes, that debts were ordinarily settled at
the end of one year; and that if a debtor could not then pay, he was in the
habit of borrowing money of a new creditor to discharge the principal and interest of his first account; a proceeding which, from its frequency, had a particular name, "Versura."'1   That a speedy settlement of debts was the ordinary
practice, may indeed be collected from the clause in this very Licinian law itself,
which required the whole debt remaining after the deduction of the already paid
interest to be discharged within three years; and if the practice of versura was
often repeated, it will be obvious that a debtor would have paid his original
debt many times over in interest, although not under that name: a part of the
principal of every new debt being, in fact, the interest of the preceding one.
Still, as the distress had now lasted for thirteen years, there must have been many
who could not have gone on so long upon this system; the amount of their debt
must have so exceeded all their possible means of payment, that no new creditor
could have been found to advance them the money to discharge it. Under these
circumstances, what could the debtor do but enter into a nexum, and at the end
of a certain term, on failing to redeem himself, submit to be given over as a bondman to his creditor; or else try to procure a further respite by offering an exorbitant rate of interest? In this latter case the interest so paid would, undoubtedly,
be deducted from the amount of the principal, and thus it would happen that
there would be a very small balance left for the creditor still to receive. But
such cases would be very few: in most instances, when a man's credit was so
exhausted that he could no longer practice the system of borrowing from a new
creditor to pay his old one, he would be obliged to enter into a nexum, and being
still insolvent, would, in the common course of things, become his creditor's bondman. Then whilst the debtor was giving his creditor all the benefit of his labor,
we cannot suppose that the interest of the debt went on accumulating also; and
thus, after he had remained some years in bondage, he might be redeemed by
the mere payment of his original debt, from which there would be deducted only
that interest which he had paid before he had been consigned to his creditor's
power. But what we should most desire would be, to learn the fate of the great
mass of debtors, who, in the course of the last thirteen years, had thus been reduced to slavery. Was there any limit of time beyond which they could not be
redeemed? or, if the debt were never paid, did they or their posterity ever
recover their freedom?"  Are we, in short, to believe that many families of the
0o Festus, or rather Paulus, in "Versura."  gem habet;" that is, he could not be killed by
" There is a well-known passage in Quinc- his master, nor treated by him absolutely at his
tilian, VII. 8, Â~ 27, which enters into the dif- discretion, but might claim the protection of
ferences between the condition of a slave and the law like a freeman; again, he could inherit
that of one who was "addictus," or given over property and acquire property, which a slave
to his creditor into bondage. But it does not could not do. " Tribum habet" is remarkable,
specially touch the questions which I have sug- because it implies that the addictus did not
gested. Some parts of it, however, are re- undergo either the maxima or media capitis
markable. "Ad servum nulla lex pertinet: deminutio; he could not lose his rights of citiaddictus legem habet. Propria liberi qun nemo zenship if he retained his tribe. But were these
habet nisi liber, prnnomen, nomen, cognomen, rights in abeyance, as the father's power over
tribum; habet he addictus." " Addictus le- his children was suspended so long as he was




ï~~CHAP. XXVI.] ELECTION OF CURULE MAGISTRATES STOPPED.

225

Roman commons, during this period, were finally lost to their country as free
citizens; or was there any mitigation of the extreme rigor of their fate, and did
the slave-debtor ever recover his personal liberty by consenting to become the
client of his master? These are questions to which, I believe, it is impossible
to give satisfactory answers.
To return, however, to our narrative; the promulgation of the three Licinian
bills provoked, as was natural, the most determined opposition on The tribunes stop the
the part of the aristocracy.  Again the battle was to be fought in oe etinof curule omathe assembly of the tribes; the great object of the patricians was
to prevent the bills from being passed there. Some of the tribunes were attached
to the aristocratical party, and these were persuaded to interpose their negative,'2
to forbid the reading of the bills to the people, and thus to stop them from ever
being put to the vote.   Licinius and Sextius, thus baffled, an' being unable to
proceed with their measures directly, determined to retaliate by obstructing, in
like manner, the course of their opponents.   When the month of July arrived,
and the military tribunes for the last year went out of office, Licinius and Sextius forbade the election of any successors to them; they would allow no curule
magistrates to be appointed; and they with the rediles of the commons remained
for a time the only magistrates of the republic.
But that this time continued for five years, according to the common report of
the Roman Fasti and historians, is a thing altogether incredible."  this me o anar
g                         But this time of anarAn anarchy of five years; so long a period of the most extreme po- lchy did not last for five
litical excitement, nay, of the greatest extremities of revolutionary years.
violence; the water boiling, as it were, with such intensity, and yet never boiling

a prisoner in the hands of the enemy, but returned to him as soon as he came home? or can
we suppose that they continued to exist, and
that a creditor might drive his addicti into the
Forum to give their votes as he should require,
and that such votes were legal? or would this
be one of the many cases in which the officer
who presided at the comitia exercised his discretion in objecting to them whenever he
thought proper, or receiving them if it suited
the interests of his party?
12 Livy, VI. 85.
SIt is utterly impossible to ascertain the real
chronology of this period. The story of the five
years' anarchy arose probably from an exaggerated interpretation of some expressions in the
annalists, "that for five years the tribunes went
on obstructing the elections," meaning, that
whilst the contest lasted, this was their weapon, which they used from time to time, and
never relinquished it without stipulating for
some concession in turn. Afterwards, when
the date of the Gaulish invasion had been fixed
to the 2d year of the 98th Olympiad, and this
was assumed as certain, the existence of the five
years' anarchy was no longer questioned. The
Fasti Capitolini acknowledge them as well as
Livy; so also does Dionysius, for he speaks of
the ten years' tribuneship of Licinius. (XIV.
22. Fragm. Mai.) And Polybius implies them,
where he gives the dates of the several invasions of the Gauls, II. 18. The later writers,
such as Eutropius, Cassidorus, and Rufus Festus, make the anarchy to have lasted for four
yeats. So also does Zonaras; but then these
four years are with him the whole period of the
struggle, for he makes them to be followed immediately by the dictatorship of Camillus, and
the pretended Gaulish invasion. They are then
the years which, in the common Fasti, follow
the five pretended years of anarchy; and which
are marked by four colleges of military tribunes.
15

It is to be observed, that about forty years afterwards we still find the consular year spoken
of as beginning on the 1st of July (Livy, VIII.
20), which requires us to suppose either that
one whole year passed without military tribunes, and that the elections were not again
delayed; or that in the course of the five years'
struggle, the elections were each year delayed
for a time, so that at the end of the period the
time lost in the several years, when added together, amounted to just a year in all, or, finally, we must believe that there was no period of
anarchy at all; that the tribunes every year
threatened to stop the elections, but allowed
them, from consideration for the public service,
to be held as usual, stipulating, perhaps, for
the election of certain individuals known to be
either favorable to their claims, or, at least, not
violently adverse to them. Borghesi thinks
that one college of military tribunes has been
omitted by Livy in the year preceding the beginning of the anarchy, and he has restored it,
partly from Diodorus, and partly from conjecture. Thus he places the election of L. Sex
tius as the first plebeian consul, exactly fourand-twenty years after the invasion of the
Gauls. Striking out the five years of pretended
anarchy, the consulship of L. Sextius falls nineteen years after the invasion of the Gauls,
which agrees exactly with the chronology of
Diodorus, when his confusions have been corrected, and the Gaulish invasion brought to its
true date, according to his system, that is, to
the third year of the 99th Olympiad. It agrees
also with the statement of Orosius, III. 1, 4;
and this is the nearest approximation to the
truth at which I think it is possible to arrive;
namely, to fix the consulship of L. Sextius in
the 2d year of the 104th Olympiad, which is the
date of the battle of Mantinca, and of the death
of Epaminondas, 868-2, nB. c.




ï~~226

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CAP. XXVI

over; a knot so perplexing, which none untied, and yet none were tempted tc
cut; a livelong strife, neither pacified by any compronmise, nor exasperated into
open violence, requires far better testimony than that of the Roman annalist
removed two hundred years from the period of the struggle, to induce us to
admit it as historical. What would have become of the ordinary course of business, if for five years the supreme courts of law had been closed, and the praetor's
or prmtorian tribune's judgment-seat so long left empty?  Where was the restless enmity of the Latins, who, down to the beginning of this pretended anarchy,
are described as so relentless in their hostilities, and who again appear in arms
as soon as it is over? Unless the circumstances of the struggle were very different from all the representations of them which have reached our times, we can
scarcely doubt that the Fasti, followed by Diodorus and Orosius, have preserved
the truer account of these disputes; that one year at the most, perhaps even
that not continuously, but at different intervals, was passed without curule magistrates; that the consulship of the first plebeian consul is to be placed not
twenty-four but nineteen years only after the invasion of the Gauls.
The length of the struggle, even when reduced in all from ten years to five, is
Military tribunes again sufficiently memorable. The tribunes had prevented the election
elected.      of any curule magistrates; whether this state of things really
lasted for a whole year, or only for a few weeks, it is not possible to determine;
but it was ended by a fresh attack of the Latins on the old allies of Rome, the people
of Tusculum;14 the call for aid on the part of the Tusculans could not be resisted;
the tribunes withdrew their veto, and the comitia for the election of military tribunes were duly held; but care was taken that only moderate men, or men
friendly to the popular cause, should be chosen; there were two Valerii, the
very name of whose house was an assurance to the commons, and a third tribune
was Ser. Sulpicius, connected by marriage with C. Licinius, and with his patrician
supporter, M. Fabius. After all, they were not allowed to enlist the soldiers for
the legions without much opposition, nor probably without some stipulation on
the part of the senate, that the military tribunes should not, like M. Postumius,
abuse their power by visiting on their soldiers in the field the political offences
of the commons at Rome. When the army did at last march, Tusculum was
relieved, and Velitre, which had been foremost in the attack upon it, was besieged
in its turn; but the siege was not speedily ended, and the year came to a close
before the place was reduced.
Meanwhile the popular cause was gaining ground: amongst the new military
tribunes was M. Fabius Ambustus,' the father-in-law of Licinius,
Plebeians  chosen  as
commissioners of the and the zealous supporter of his bills, an advantage which more
sacred books.  than counterbalanced the danger threatened by the appointment of
two zealous members of the aristocratical party. These were A,. Cornelius Cossus,
who had been named dictator some years before to oppose the designs of M. Manlius, and Q. Quinctius Cincinnatus, of the house of. that Cincinnatus, who, in his consulship, had proposed to repeal the laws passed in favor of the commons at Rome,
by the votes of his soldiers, in an assembly to be held in the field beyond the
protection of the tribunes, and who in his dictatorship had defended the murder
of Sp. Maelius.  Besides, the patrician interest in the college of the tribunes of
the commons was becoming weaker and weaker; not only were Licinius and
Sextius continually re-elected, but three others of their colleagues, it is said, now
espoused their cause, and the remaining five, who had still pledged their veto to
the patricians, so felt the difficulty of their position as to be obliged to lower
their tone: their veto now professed only to suspend the discussion of the bills,
and not to forbid it altogether:: " A large proportion of the people,"'. they said,
" were engaged in foreign service at Velitrae: so great a question must be decided
in a full assembly; till, therefore, the legions should return home, the bills must

I Livy, VI. 36,!6 Livy, VI. 86.

20 Livy, VI. 86.




ï~~CHAP. XXVI.] GROWING STRENGTH OF THE POPULAR CAUSE.

22"

not be brought forward." In such contests as these, delay is an advantage to
the resisting party when the assailants are not keen in their attack, so that it may
be possible to divert them from it by exhausting their patience; but when they
are thoroughly in earnest, the flood gathers into a stronger head the longer it is
opposed, and breaks in at last more overwhelmingly. So Licinius finding hi"
three bills thus pertinaciously resisted, now proceeded to add to them a fourth,17
enacting that the two keepers of the Sibylline books should be superseded for
the future by a commission of ten, and that these ten should be chosen alike
from the patricians and from the commons.. The notion of a plebeian consul was
most objected to on religious grounds; a plebeian, it was said, could not take the
auspices, because his order could exercise no office connected with the service of
the gods. Licinius resolved to destroy this objection most effectually, by attacking the religious exclusion itself. So far was he from allowing that a plebeian
could not be consul because he could not be a priest, that he claimed for his
order a share in the priestly offices as such; he required a distinct acknowledgment that the service of the gods might be directed, and their pleasure made
known, by plebeian ministers as rightfully as by patricians. Perhaps, too, he
had another and more immediate object; in seasons of extreme public danger, it
was usual to consult the Sibylline books, and the keepers of them reported the
answer which they found applicable to the emergency. Licinius might fear that
this oracle, if left solely in the keeping of his adversaries, might be unfairly tampered with; and its answers shaped according to their interests. It was thus
especially desirable that some of the commons should be made acqu inted with
their contents, to prevent the possibility of any forgery.
New military tribunes," it is said, came into office before the army came home
from Velitrm. This would be equally true whether we suppose M. camillus an P.
that the soldiers came home to the harvest in July and August, manius dictatorsm.
or remained in the field till the close of the autumn. Amongst the new military
tribunes we again find Ser. Sulpicius, and also Ser. Cornelius Maluginensis, a
man so distinguished that he had already filled the same office six times before."9
When the Licinian bills were again brought forward, the popular feeling in their
favor was so strong as to make it apparent that the tribunes opposed to them
would find it impossible to persist in interposing their negative; the patricians
accordingly had recourse to their last expedient; it was pretended that the war
with Velitrre required a dictator, and then Camillus, the bitterest enemy of the
commons, was appointed to fill that office. It appears that he issued a proclamation0 summoning the citizens within the military age to enlist and follow him to
the field; whether his object was any thing more than delay must remain doubtful; but his edict was utterly disregarded, and the senate,. to allay the storm,
called upon him to resign his dictatorship. The Fasti recorded, that P. Manlius
Capitolinus was named dictator shortly after, for the avowed purpose of putting
an end to the domestic disturbances;2 no record, however, remains to us of any
thing that he did in his office; but it is evident that he was disposed to take no
violent steps against the commons, for one branch of the Licinian family were
his relations, and from them he chose C. Licinius Calvus, though a plebeian, to
be his master of the horsemen. As if to show still further that the contest was
drawing to a close, the bill2 relating to the keepers of the Sibylline books was
passed before the end of this year; but the other three were still delayed a little
longer.  Every nerve was, doubtless, strained by the patricians. o preserve the
exclusive possession of the consulship, and this was naturally the point to which
1 Livy, VI. 37.                      KardXoyov.-Camillus, 39. And so the Fasti
18 Livy, VI. 38.                      Capitolini; for the beginning of the line may
19 This appears from the fragments of the be safely restored as Sigonius has suppl:ed it.
Fasti Capitolini.                      "Ob Edictum in milites ex S. C. abdicarunt."
0 Livy says, that he only threatened to issue  21 "Seditionisse dandre et rei gerendie cau.
such a proclamation, VI. 88. But Plutarch s."
speaks of it as actually issued, poypa4c cr.oarn   2 Livy, VI. 42.




ï~~228

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVI

the mass of the commons attached the least importance, while they eagerly
desired to pass the other two bills, relating to the public land, and to the debts.
But the tribunes, being well aware of this feeling, and being anxious, on personal
as well as public grounds, to secure the great point of an equal share of the
highest magistracies, had resolved only to bring forward the three bills together,
to be altogether either accepted or rejected.   The more violent" of the aristocratical party remonstrated with hypocritical indignation against the arrogance
of the tribunes, in thus dictating to the commons; and against their selfishness,
in refusing to bring forward bills for the good of their whole order without stipulating at the same time for the gratification of their own ambition. But Licinius,
trusting that the people would have the sense to reject the pretended sympathy
of their worst enemies, persevered in his purpose; and told the commons in
homely language,24 "that they must be content to eat if they wished to drink."
There is nothing viler than the spirit which actuates the vulgar of an aristocOn what grounds the racy; we cannot sympathize with mere pride and selfishness, with
btcery ptosodthe ari-  dsr               h                 f     t
oertoorpposeof the ri- the mere desire of keeping the good things of life to themselves,
cinian bills.  with the grasping monopoly of honors and power without nobleness of mind to appreciate the true value of either.  All can conceive from what
motive, with what temper, and in what language, the coarser spirits of the aristocratical party opposed the Licinian bills. But in all the uncorrupted aristocracies of the ancient world, there was another and a very different element also;
there were men who opposed the advance of the popular party on the highest
and purest principles; who regarded it as leading, in the end, to a general lawlessness, to a contempt for the institutions and moral feelings of men, and to a
disbelief in the providence of the gods.   Such men must have existed amongst
the Roman patricians; and their views are well deserving of the notice of posterity. When Ser. Cornelius Maluginensis in his seventh military tribuneship
opposed Licinius and Sextius in the assembly of the tribes, he might have expressed his feelings in something like the following language, and the soberest
and wisest of the commons themselves would have been touched with a foreboding fear, while they could not help acknowledging that it was partly just:-25
"I know, Quiretes, that ye account as an enemy to your order whoever will
Speech of Ser. come- not agree to the passing of these three ordinances proposed by
lion Maluginensis.  your tribunes, Caius Licinius and Lucius Sextius.  And it may be
that some who have spoken against them, are, in truth, not greatly your wellwishers; so that it is no marvel if your ill opinion of these should reach also to
others who may appear to be treading in their steps. But I stand here before
you as one who has been now, for the seventh time, chosen by you one of the
tribunes of the soldiers;-six times have ye tried me before, in peace and in war,
and if ye had ever found me to be your enemy, it had been ill done in you to
have tried me yet again this seventh time. But if ye have believed me to have
sought your good in times past, even believe this same thing of me now, though
S See the language which Livy has put into on the view of human affairs which I have asthe mouth of Appius Claudius, VI. 40, 41.  cribed to Ser. Maluginensis. And this view is
24 Eir iv, o osc av r ov d  0t dyolcv. Dion exceedingly deserving of notice, because it so
Cassius, Fragm. Peiresc. 33, as corrected by strongly illustrates one of the great uses of the
Reimnar.                                  Christian revelation; namely, that it provides
2 I am far from wishing to introduce into a fixed moral standard independently of human
history the practice ofwritingfictitious speeches, law, and therefore allows human law to be alas a mere variety upon the narrative, or an oc- tered as circumstances may require, without
casion for displaying the eloquence of the his- the danger of destroying thereby the greatest
torian. But when the peculiar views of any sanction of human conduct. I have not, then,
party or time require to be represented, it seems put modern arguments into the mouth of a
to me better to do this dramatically, by making Roman of the fourth century of Rome; but I
one of the characters of the story express them have made him deliver arguments not only
in the first person, than to state as a matter of which might have been, but which were un.
fact, that such and such views were entertained. doubtedly used then, and which are so charac
I believe it to be perfectly true, that the better teristic of ancient times, that they could not be
part of the opposition to the advance of popular repeated now without absurdity.
principles in the ancient world was grounded




ï~~CHAP. XXVI.] SPEECH OF SER. CORNELIUS MALUGINENSIS.

229

I may speak that which in the present disposition of your minds ye may perchance not willingly hear.
Now, as regarding the ordinances for the relief of poor debtors, and for
restraining the occupation of the public land, I could be well content that they
should pass. I know that ye have borne much, and not through any fault of
yours; and if any peaceable way can be found out whereby ye may have relief,
it will be more welcome to no man than to me. I like not the taking of usury,
and I think that ye may well be lightened of some part of the burden of your
taxes by our turning the fruits of the public land to the service of the commonwealth. But if ye ask me, Why then dost thou oppose these ordinances? I
must truly bid you go to your tribunes, Caius and Lucius, and demand of them
your answer.26 They can tell you that they will not suffer me to give my vote
for these ordinances, nor will they suffer you to have your will. For they have
said that these ordinances shall not have our votes, neither yours nor mine, unless
we will vote also for a third ordinance, which they have bound to them so closely,
as that none, they say, shall tear them  asunder.  Now, as touching this third
ordinance, Quirites, I will deal honestly with you: there is not the thing in all
the world so precious or so terrible as shall move me, either for love or for fear,
to give my vote in its behalf.
" What is there, then, ye will say to me, in this third ordinance which thou so
mislikest?  I will answer you in few words.   I mislike the changing of the laws
of our fathers, especially when these laws have respect to the worship of the
gods.  Many things, I know, are ordered wisely for one generation, which, notwithstanding, are by another generation no less wisely ordered otherwise. There
is room in human affairs for change; there is room also for unchangeableness.
And where shall we seek for that which is unchangeable, but in those great laws
which are the very foundation of the commonwealth; most of all in those which,
having to do with the immortal gods, should be also themselves immortal. Now
it belongs to these laws that the office of consul,"7 which is as it were the shadow
of the majesty of Jove himself, should be held only by men of the houses of the
patricians.  Ye know how that none but the patricians may take any office of
priesthood for the -worship of the gods of Rome, nor interpret the will of the
gods by augury.     For the gods being themselves many, have set also upon
earth many races of men and many orders; and one race may not take to itself
the law of another race, nor one order the law of another order. Each has its
own law, which was given to it from the beginning; and if we change these the
whole world will be full of confusion. It is our boast5 that we Romans have
greater power over our children than the men of any other nation: with us the
son is ever, so long as he lives, subject to his father's will, except his father be
pleased to give him his freedom. Now, if a son were to ask why he should not,
when he is come to full age, be free from his father's authority, what answer
should we give than this, that the law of the Romans gave to fathers this power
over their children, that to this law he had been born, as surely as to those other
laws of his nature which appointed him to be neither a god nor a beast, but a
man.   These laws are not of to-day, nor of yesterday; we know of no time when
2 This attack on the tribunes for their re- ments used against the Canuleian bills, IV. 2-6,
fusal to separate the three bills from each other and again in the speech of Appius against the
is put by Livy into the mouth of Appius Clau- Licinian bills, VI. 41. The principle implied in
die's, VII. 40. It would, of course, be pressed this argument is not to be found in Livy, but
by all the opponents of the measures; and it is is important to be stated, because it is as chartoo much to expect that even the best of the acteristic of polytheism, as the opposite grinaristocratical party would have scrupled to avail- ciple, that all men are equal before God, except
themselves of it, although they would have so far as their own conduct creates a differdwelt on this point in a very different manner ence between them, is characteristic of Chrisfrom their more violent associates.     tianity.
2 The religious argument, that a plebeian   Fere enim nulli alii sunt homines, qui
could not be created consul without profana- talem in filios suos habent potestatemn qualem
tion, is to be found twice in Livy, in the argu- nos habemus."-Gaius. Institut. I. Â~ 55.




ï~~230

HISTORY OF ROME,

[OH r. XXVI

they have not been: may neither we nor our children ever see that time when
they shall have ceased to be!
"But if the mere will of the men of this generation can set aside these laws
if, breaking through that order which the gods have given to us, we elect for
consuls those whom the gods allow not; see what will be the end. Within these
fifteen years four tribes of strangers have been added to the commons of this
city. Ye know, also, that many enfranchised slaves, men with no race, with no
law, I had well-nigh said with no gods, are, from time to time, enrolled amongst
our citizens. If all these are admitted into our commonwealth, to become Romans, and to live according to the laws of the Romans, it is well. But if we may
alter these laws; if strangers come among us not to receive our custom, but to
give us theirs, what thing is there so surely fixed in car state, that it shall not be
torn up at our fancy? what law will be left for us to follow, save the law of our
own fancies?   Truly, if the gods had sent down one from heaven to declare to us
their will; if, as our own laws were written by the decemvirs upon the twelve
tables, so there were any tables to be found on which the gods had written their
laws for all mankind, then we might change our own laws as we would, and the
law of the gods would still be a guide for us. But as the gods speak to us, and
will speak only through the laws9 of our fathers, if we once dare to cast these
aside, there is no stay or rest for us any more; we must wander in confusion forever.
"Nor is it a little thing that by breaking through the law of our fathers, and
choosing men of the commons for consuls, we shall declare that riches30 are to be
honored above that rule of order which the gods have given to us.   Riches, even
now, can do much for their possessor, but they cannot raise him beyond the
order in which he was born; they cannot buy for him-shame were it if they
could!-the sovereign state of the consulship, nor the right to offer sacrifice to
the gods of Rome. But once let a plebeian be consul, and riches will be the
only god which we shall all worship. For then he who has money will need no
other help to raise him from the lowest rank to the highest. And then we may
suffer such an evil as that which is now pressing upon the cities of the Greeks
in the great island of Sicily. There may arise a man from the lowest of the
people with much craft and great riches, and make himself what the Greeks
call a tyrant.3" Ye scarcely know what the name means; a vile person seizing
upon the state and power of a king, trampling upon all law, confounding all
order, persecuting the noble and good, encouraging the evil, robbing the rich,
insulting the poor, living for himself alone3" and for his own desires; neither
fearing the gods, nor regarding men. This is the curse with which the gods
have fitly punished other people for desiring freedom more than the law of their
fathers gave them. May we never commit the like folly to bring upon ourselves
such a punishment!
"Therefore, Quirites, unless your tribunes can find for us another law of the
gods to guide us in the place of that law which they are destroying, I cannot consent to that ordinance which they are so zealously calling upon us to pass. Not
because I am proud, not because I love not the commons, but because, above all
things else on earth, I love and honor law; and if we pull down law and exalt33
2 Tois Qrwat rs d   7 otct v repi Ovla"; 7epi the increasing honor aid to riches in comparirpoydvwv OEpa7ras 4 7rep AXov v r T v r TWO TOtO6rTWV, son with the declining estimation of noble
v..  IIv6Oia v6jpp r6AcXwsvatpc roosvras dflS  birth.
av 7roev.-Xenophon, Memorab. L. 8, Â~ 1.    s Thucyd. I. 18. Avvarripa de ytyvopfhvs
Compare the language of Archidamus, and of Ts ' EaXddoc Kcai TWv XP   drwV rov KriatyV rT pACleon in Thucydides, I. 84, III. 37, and the ar- Xov n rp6repov roovp0b cTa roAa rvpavvid3es IV
gument against any alteration in the laws given Tail,r' cL KaOitravro, rO rpo ' h.v cst6vOWv y
by Aristotle in his review of the theoretical yvopivwv.
commonwealth of Hippodamus. 'o yap vSpos  Â~ Thucyd. I.17. Tv 3' avrm Ov p6vov -rpoop dlIaxv ov3pia v.x  rp3T ro irdtOeOat, mrXiiv rapa T,aE psV 1To, iis a  rais  Ko? 02  T T 3 ov o ov a fooo 3
00s. T0oTro d  3 0yyverat cl pis oa Xp6vov rX0os.- a iaxeta aov divavro dTuAra r a  7r oWKOVV.--.
Politic. IL. 6.                        Compare the description of a tyrant in Herodo3o Compare the sentiments of Theognis and tus, III. 80, and V. 92.
Pindar on this point, who constantly lament  3 This is what Archidamus and Cleon, strik



ï~~CHAP. XXVI.] THE LAST COLLEGE OF MILITARY TRIBUNES.

231

our own will in the place of it, truth, and modesty, and soberness, and all virtue
will perish from amongst us; and falsehood, and insolence, and licentiousness,
and all other wickedness will possess us wholly. And instead of that greater
freedom which ye long for, the end will be faction and civil bloodshed,3" and, last
of all, that which is worse than all the rest, a lawless tyranny."
To such language as this the tribunes might have replied by denying that its
principle was applicable to the particular point at issue: they What was to be said in
might have urged that the admission of the commons to the con-..ne. to the argusulship was not against the original and unalterable laws of the Ser. Cornelius.
Romans, inasmuch as strangers had been admitted even to be kings at Rome;
and the good king Servius, whose memory was so fondly cherished by the people, was, according to one tradition, not only a stranger by birth, but a slave.
And further they might have answered, that the law of intermarriage between
the patricians and commons was a breaking down of the distinction of orders, and
implied that there was no such difference between them as to make it profane in
either to exercise the functions of the other.  But as to the principle itself, there
is no doubt that it did contain much truth. The ancient heathen world craved,
what all men must crave, an authoritative rule of conduct; and not finding it
elsewhere, they imagined it to exist in the fundamental and original laws of each
particuidar race or people. To destroy this sanction without having any thing to
substitute in its place was deeply perilous; and reason has been but too seldom
possessed of power sufficient to recommend its truths to the mass of mankind
by their own sole authority. On the other hand, good and wise men could not
but see that national law was evidently, in many cases, directly opposed to divine
law;35 and that obedience and respect for it were absolutely injurious to men's
moral nature; they felt sure, moreover, that the very truth was discoverable by
man, and trusted that it must at last force its way if the ground were but cleared
for its reception. They hoped, besides, as was the case with Aristotle, that by
gaining the ear of statesmen they might see a system of national education established,3t which would give truth all the power of habit; and knowing too that
universal law, that if man does not grow better he must grow worse, and that to
remain absolutely unchanged is impossible; they ventured to advance towards a
higher excellence, even amidst the known dangers of the attempt, in the faith
that God would, sooner or later, point out the means of overcoming them.
The events of the last year of this long struggle are even more obscure than
those of the years preceding it. P. Manlius,3" the late dictator P. Valerius, who
had been five times tribune before, two Cornelii, Aulus and Marcus, the one of

ing specimens of the noblest and vilest advocates of an unchanged system, as opposed to one
of continual progress, call "the wishing to be
wiser than the laws."  Archidamus boasts that
the Spartans were trained iaOarsov r3v vdswv
r'c brrpoatac.-Thucyd. I. 84. Cleon describes
good citizens as men who hrerOvrs T 4 i layrTWv vvEPet, YiaO Errpot rwivV61tsv a tovtal   drat.Thucyd. III. 87.
4 So Theognis,
Kvpvs, KUeOt 7r6Lg A tEilotc a  5 7i r  pri   savspa
EbOvvripa scaotlc iSb3pto Oeriprips.
'Etcr v yip crrdo't itrri, ai d jcbv;ot q r6vL svtipsv"
iMovvapxo,   Xe p s  srorc ri a tot. 89-51.
an Hence the distinction insisted on by the
philosophers between universal and municipal
law, between natural and political justice.-See
Aristotle, Ethics, V. 7, Rhetoric, I. 14. Hence
the interest of the story of Antigone, who is
represented as breaking the law of her country
because it was at variance with the law of the
gods: Sophocles invests her character with all
the sacredness of a martyr; but.2Eschylus, who
more entirely identified the laws of the land with
the highest standard of human virtue, ends his

tragedy of the "Seven Chiefs who warred on
Thebes" with the expression of the opposite
sentiment, which is evidently uttered from his
heart. Half of the chorus go with Antigone to
bury Polynices in defiance of the king's decree;
urging in their justification:ral iyap yesv
soiov rod' axon, Kairdis iAXas
dAAor' raLvti rt tiata.
But the other half follow the body orEteocles,
whose funeral was sanctioned by the law, exclaiming:tpsi d' lara ri', t7reprsT rdt
sai   d iKcatov vvaaravsi.
pr yap spdcapas Kcai t ls imXv
5s Ka3~stwv tifv  rdyt
p5; varpaquat, prdS' Ptlotaary
sevyart ptrtav
KaravaOK) vat r t pdXtsra.
3 Ethic. Nicomach. X. 9. 'Ec Kvion d tiyoy
pOOii rvxsiv rpas aptr iv xal\crov, ps f7a rotorotgs
rpaivra vdaot.... st6 vaiosh i rrdxOat r55
rpoc  v Ka ra Elntprl;sara"- obs mLrat yap Av srp
arvvsiOr yv'psova.
a Livy, VI. 42.




ï~~232

HISTORY OF ROME

[CHAr. XXVI

Last colege or militay the family of Cossus, the other of that of the Maluginenses; M. Ge
ofibtheslastd                                                  of *l.
Iont.. ntstitution of ganius Macerinus, and L. Veturius, formed the last college of milithe praetorship,  tary tribunes which was to be known in Rome. Manlius and Valerius were likely to favor the bills; of Veturius we know little; but the two Cornelii38 and Geganius, if theywere true to the political sentiments of their families,
would be strongly opposed to them. But the story of this year is again perplexed by an alleged dictatorship of M. Camillus, and a pretended inroad of the
Gauls into Latium. It is said that an alarm of an approaching invasion from the
Gauls led to the appointment of Camillus; and this may be true; for the senate
would gladly avail themselves of the slightest rumor as an excuse for investing
him with absolute power; but that the Gauls really did invade Latium at this
time, and were defeated by Camillus in a bloody battle9 near Alba, seems to be
merely a fabrication of the memorials of the house of the Furii, the last which
occurs in the story of Camillus, and not the least scrupulous. Setting aside this
pretended Gaulish war, the annalists merely related, that after most violent contests, the Licinian bills were carried;40 this must have taken place before the tribunes
went out of office in December; and apparently they were not again re-elected,
as if in the full confidence that the battle was won. But when the comitia for
the election of consuls were held, according to the new law, and the centuries
had chosen L. Sextius to be the first plebeian consul, the storm broke out again
with more violence than ever, owing to the refusal of the curire to confirm the
election and invest him with the imperium. No particulars are recorded of the
following crisis; matters, it is said, came almost to a secession of the commons,
and "to other terrible threats of civil contentions;4" words which seem to mean
that the secession would not have been confined to mere passive resistance, but
would have led to an actual civil war. But Camillus, who was still, it is said,
dictator, acted on this occasion, if we may believe any story of which he is the
subject, the part of mediator; both sides made some concessions: the patricians
were to confirm the election of the plebeian consul; but the ordinary judicial
power was to be separated from the consul's office, and conferred from hence
' The   two   Cornelii Maluginenses were
amongst the most zealous supporters of the second decemvirate, one of them being actually a
colleague of Appius Claudius, at a time when
even the patricians themselves were generally
disgusted with it; and a Cornelius Cossus had
been appointed dictator to oppose the supposed
designs of Manlius. The consulship of M. Geganius Macerinus, two years after the end of
the decemvirate, is marked as the period at
which the reaction in favor of the patricians began; and the consuls of that year are contrasted
with those of the year preceding, who are described as moderate men, not much inclined to
either party.Â~ And M. Geganius was one of those
censors who treated the dictator Mam. Emilius
with such unjust severity, because he had
abridged the duration of the censor's office.
3 The Fasti Capitolini state that Camillus was
appointed dictator this year, "rei gerundie causa," that is, "to command an army in the field,"
as distinguished from the other objects for
which a dictator was sometimes appointed,
such as, " seditionis sedandm causAe," "comitiorum habendorum    cause," or "clavi figendi
eausa." But as the fragments of the Fasti are
in this place very much mutilated, we cannot
tell whether they contained any mention of his
victory and triumph over the Gauls or no.
Probably, however, they did, for the story seems
to have established itself in the Roman history
very generally; it is mentioned by Livy, by
Plutarch, by Dionysius in the fragments of his
14th book, by Zonaras, by Appian, in a frag
ment which clearly refers to it, IV. 7, and it is
implied, I think, in the short summary of Florus, I. 18. On the other hand, there is the notorious falsehood of the other stories of Gaulish
victories gained by Camillus; there is the positive statement of Polybius, that the Gauls did
not invade Latium again till thirty years after
their first irruption; and that when they did
come, and advanced to Alba, the scene of Camillus' pretended victory over them, the Romans did not dare to meet them in the fiehl.Polyb..II. 18. There is also the statement of
Aristotle, quoted by Plutarch, Camillus, 22, and
agreeing so completely with Polybius, "that
Rome was delivered from the Gauls by Lucius;
that is, by Lucius Camillus, the son of Marcus,
who repelled the Gauls in the year 406 (or more
properly 401), the first time, according to Polybius, that the Romans ever did meet them with
advantage. Finally, the common stories of this
pretended war are at variance with one another,
some placing the famous combat of T. Manlius
with the Gaulish giant in this year, and making
the Gauls advance as far as the Anio; while
others laid the scene of Camillus' victory on the
Alban Hills, and placed the combat of Manlius
ten years later. I believe, therefore, that the
accounts of this last dictatorship of Camillus are
as little to be relied on as those of his pretended
defeat of Brennus, and freeing Rome from the
shame of paying a ransom.
40 Livy, VI. 42.
41 " Terribilesque alias minas civilium certa.
minum."-Livy, VI. 42.




ï~~CHAr. XXVI.]

THE LICINIAN BILLS BECOME LAWS.

233

forth on a new magistrate, who was always to be a patrician, and who being appointed without a colleague was not to be called consul but praetor; a title of
high dignity, which had been anciently borne by the consuls, and expressed particularly their supreme power, as the captains or leaders of the commonwealth.
The first person who filled this new office42 was Sp. Camillus, the son of the dictator; a compliment which his old father well deserved, if the last public act of
his life of more than fourscore years was the reconciling of the quarrels of his
countrymen, and the bringing a struggle of five years to a peaceful and happy
termination.
This union of the two orders was acknowledged also in the religious ceremonies of the republic. A temple43 was built on the Capitoline Hill Instituton of theo c.looking towards the Forum, and dedicated to " Concord;" and a rule   dileship.
fourth day was added to the three hitherto devoted to the celebration of the great
or Roman games; as if to signify that the commons were from        henceforth to
take their place as a part of the Roman people, by the side of the three old patrician tribes, the Ramnenses, Titienses, and Luceres. To preside at these games,
two new magistrates were appointed under the name of Curule Ediles; and these
were to be elected in alternate years from the patricians and from the commons.
Their other duties and powers it is very difficult to define; but it appears that
they exercised for a time44 the jurisdiction which had formerly belonged to the
Questores Parricidii, that they tried criminals for various offences, and if their
sentence were appealed against, they appeared as prosecutors of the appellant
before the comitia of the centuries.
Thus, with no recorded instance of bloodshed committed by either party, the
five years' conflict upon the Licinian bills was happily ended. The completion of the
From this time forward the consulship continued without inter- form o the constitution.
ruption to the end of the republic; and, with the exception of a short period to
be hereafter noticed, it was duly shared by the commons.    The form of theconstitution, such as we find it described in those times which began to have a contemporary literature, was now in its leading points completed; but many years
must yet elapse before we can do more than trace the outline of institutions and
of actions; the spirit and character of the times, and still more of particular
individuals, must yet, for another century, be discerned but dimly.
42 Livy, VII. 1.                       riod of the empire possessed even the " impe4' Plutarch, Camillus, 42. Livy, VI. 42.  rium." Savigny, Geschichte des Rom. Rechts
"44 See Niebuhr, Vol. III. p. 42, and seqq. im Mittelalt. Vol. I. p. 86. The two Scipios
To what is there said, it may be added that the of the fifth century, whose tombs and epitaphs
title JEdilis was common amongst the magis- have been preserved to us, have their ediletrates of the municipia and colonies at a later ships as well as their censorships and consulperiod; that we meet frequently, in inscriptions, ships recorded. This seems to imply thtt the
with the title " JEdilis juri dicundo," that the office then was held in higher estimation than
ediles in the municipia had a "tribunal," or when Cicero could call the curule AEdile "paullo
judgment-seat, as a mark of their high dignity; amplius quam privatus."-Verr. Act. I. 13.
and as Savigny thinks, they in the earlier pe



ï~~CHAPTER XXVII.
GENERAL HISTORY, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN, FROM THE ADMISSION OF TH
COMMONS TO THE CONSULSHIP TO THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST SAMNITF
WAR-EVASION OF THE LICINIAN LAWS-WARS WITH THE GAULS, TAR
QUINIENSIANS, AND VOLSCIANS.-A. U. C. 389-412, LIVY; 884-407, NIEBUHR.
jovpia b pvptos
xp6vo rxIvoZrat vvxra, s ipaf r' ov,
v a's ra vv  6isbvsalea f swsara
lstl atr6sa  wvcrev h  TKrLjXpo  6yov.
SoriHooLEs, (Edip. Colon. v. 617.
THE first plebeian consulship coincides, as nearly as the chronology can be
Chronology of the Li- ascertained, with the great battle of Mantinea and the death ot
einian laws.  Epaminondas. At this point Xenophon ended his Grecian history;
and as the writings of Theopompus and of the authors who followed him have
not been preserved to us, we here lose the line of contemporary historians in
Greece, after having enjoyed their guidance during a period of nearly one hundred and forty years. More than that length of time must still elapse before we
can gain the assistance of a contemporary writer, even though a foreigner, for
any part of the history of Rome.
But as I have before observed that the Greek poets, long before the time of
contrast between our Herodotus, have done more than any mere annalists could have
Greeksdand ofthe he done to acquaint us with the most valuable part of history, that
mans at this period,  which relates to a people's mental powers and habits of thinking,
so, when we close the Hellenics of Xenophon, we find in the great orators and
philosophers of the next half century more than enough to compensate for the
want of regular historians. What contemporary record of mere battles and sieges,
of wars and factions, could afford such fulness of knowledge as to the real state
of Greece, in all points that are most instructive, as we derive from the pamphlets, as they may be called, of Isocrates, from the dialogues of Plato, the moral
and political treatises of Aristotle, and the various public and private orations of
Ismaeus, Eschines, and Demosthenes? It is when we think of the overflowing
wealth of Greece, that we feel most keenly the absolute poverty of Rome. The
fifth century from the foundation of the city produced neither historian, poet,
orator, nor philosopher; its whole surviving literature consists of three or four
lines of a monumental inscription, and a short decree of the senate, the date of
which is not, however, ascertained. I cannot too often remind the reader of the
total want of all materials for a lively picture of the Roman character and manners under which we unavoidably labor. Still we are, as it were, working our
way to light; the greatness of Rome is beginning to unfold itself; we are approaching the Samnite and the Latin wars, of which the first trained the Romans
to perfection in all military virtues, by opposing to them the bravest and most
unwearied of enemies; while the latter consolidated forever the mass of their
power near home, by securing to them the aid of the most faithful of allies. And
the great domestic struggles are almost ended; what required direct interference
has been, for the most part, remedied; it must be left for time to complete the
union of the two orders of the commonwealth, now that they have been freed
from those positive causes of irritation which kept them so long not only distinct
from each other, but at enmity.




ï~~CHAP. XXVII.]

EFFECTS OF THE LICINIAN LAWS.

235

We have seen the Licinian bills become laws of the land; we have next to
endeavor to trace their results; to see how far they were fairly Effects of the Licinisa
carried into effect, and what was their success in remedying. the e.a.
evils which had made them appear to be necessary.
I. The Licinian law, which opened the consulship to the conmmons, was regularly observed during a period of eleven years.'    After that time i. of theo law respec
the patricians ventured to disregard it, so that in the fifteen fol- ing the consulship.
lowing years, down to the great Latin war, it was violated six or seven severa'
times.' But after the Latin war it was observed regularly, and we can only find
one or two doubtful instances of a violation of it. In the twenty years of plebeian consulship which occur before the Latin war, there appear, however, the
names of only eight plebeian families; the Sextii, the Genucii, the Licinii, the
Poetelii, the Popillii, the Plautii, the Marcii, and the Decii: two of these, the
Marcii' and the Popillii, enjoyed the consulship four times each; the Genucii4 and
Plautii obtained it three times each; the Licinii and Poetelii twice each; and the
Sextii and Decii once each. Of the individual consuls none were eminent, except
M.. Popillius Lmnas, C. Marcius Rutilus, and P. Decius Mus; the two former
were each four times elected consul, and C. Marcius obtained besides the offices
of dictator' and censor, being the first commoner who attained to either of them.
The fame of P. Decius has been still greater, and more enduring; his self-devotion in the Latin war placed him in the fond remembrance of his countrymen on
a level with the greatest names of Roman history, and from      that time forward
it could not be denied that commoners were to be found as worthy of the consulship as the proudest and noblest of the Fabii or the Cornelii.
Thus it appears that the Licinian law was not passed till the state of the commonwealth was ripe for it. There were families amongst the com- It was a seasonable and
mons fit to receive the highest nobility; whilst, on the other hand, wholesome measure.
so sound was the public feeling, that we read of no mere demagogue raised to
the consulship as the reward of his turbulence and faction; even the two tribunes
who had conducted the long contest with the patricians were each only once
elected consul, and none of the other plebeian consuls are known to have been
tribunes at all. No constitutional reform could be more happy than this; nothing
could be more just or more salutary than to open the honors of the state to an
order sufficiently advanced to be capable of wielding political power, but retaining
so much simplicity and soberness of mind as to be in no danger of abusing it.
II. It has ever been found that social evils are far more difficult to cure than
such as are merely political. It was easier to adjust the political 2. or the grarian
relations of the patricians and commons, than the social relations law.
of the great and the humble, the creditor and the debtor. *We are told that the
agrarian law of Licinius was carried; but what amount of public land was allotted
under it to the poorer commons we have no means of discovering. Niebuhr concludes from a passage in Laurentius Lydus,' that now as in the time of Ti. Gracchus
i Livy, VII. 18.                            He was dictator in 399 (Livy, VII. 17), and
2 That is to say, in the year 400, when a Sul- censor in 404 (Livy, VII. 22).
picius and Valerius were consuls, and in the  De Magistratibus, I. 35. Era r 7revrarliav
two following years; again in 404, when a Sul- as&pxav varxsce 7t rosirevpa" ae rol o a  rp is
picius and a Quinctius were elected; then in voloOtrag Kai 3traork p7rpof3XreO4vaes rpi Ipax  av406, in 410, and lastly, in 412. This would flfl)ec &a ra g raeioaov ravdos. Niebuhr thinks
amount to seven instances, but in the year 401 that this is taken from Junius Gracchanus, and
some annals made a plebeian, M. Popillius, the that it relates to the period immediately followcolleague of M. Fabius; although most author- ing the anarchy. But Lydus, whose confusions
ities give this as a year of two patrician con- and blunders make his authority very suspisuls. See Livy, VII. 18.                  cious, intended, I believe, only to notice all the
C. Marcius Rutilus was consul in 898, in extraordinary magistrates who had at any time
408, in 411, and 413.   And M. Popillius been appointed at Rome; and thus after menLmnas was consul in 896, in 899, in 405, and in tioning the famous decemvirs, he goes on to
407.                                      speak of the pontifices, and ediles, as being in
* One of the Genucian family was consul in some sort magistrates; and then he names the
890, 892, and 398, and a Plautius was consul in military tribunes, and the five years" anarchy,
897, in 408, and in 414.                  as another anomalous period; and lastly, the




ï~~236

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHir. XXVIL

a commission of three persons was appointed, with those large powers ordinarily
granted to a Roman commission, for the purpose of carrying into effect the new
agrarian law, and that Licinius himself was one of these commissioners, which
would account for his not having been chosen rather than Sextius to be the first
plebeian consul. It would be the business of this commission to take away all
public land occupied by any individual above the prescribed amount of five hundred jugera, and from the land thus become disposable, to assign portions to the
poorer citizens. But their task would not be easy; for attempts of every sort
would be made to defeat or to evade the law: land which had passed by purchase from one occupier to another, and which had been possessed without dispute for many years, would acquiire, even in the eyes of unconcerned persons,
something of the character of property; while in the feeling of those who held
it, to take it from them without offering them any compensation was no better
than robbery. Besides, the occupation of the public land had been for some
time past, probably since the period of the last war with Yeii, permitted to the
commons as well as to the patricians; so that the occupiers were a larger and
more influential body of men than they had ever been before, and the commissioners must have found it proportionably hard to compel them to observe the
letter of the law.
Thus, although we are told' that the patricians and commons, when the law
Difficulties in carrying was passed, had solemnly sworn to observe it, and though a
into eofe.    penalty had been denounced against any violation of it, yet the
commission, it seems, found it impossible to carry it into effect. The difficulties in
the way of a speedy settlement were indeed manifold. In the first place, many
of the occupiers emancipated their sons,8 and then made over to them the land in
their occupation beyond the legal amount of five hundred jugera; and in the
same way probably their sheep and oxen, which were fed on the public pasture
land, were also entered in the names of their emancipated sons, when 'they exceeded the number fixed by the law. In this manner large portions of land
must have been retained in private hands, which the law had expected to make
available for allotments to the commons. But further, the occupiers urged that
they had laid out money of their own on the land which they occupied; they had
erected buildings on it and planted trees; were they to lose these without
receiving any equivalent?  They were willing to resign what belonged to the
state, but the improvements of the property had been made at their own expense,
and on these the state could have no claim. Besides, it was not always easy to
ascertain what was public land and what was private; for portions of both being
held by the same persons, the boundary stones which, according to Roman practice, were to serve as so sure a mark of private property had been taken up, or
suffered to be destroyed; and in the want of any regular surveys of the ground,
the uncertainty and occasions of litigation were endless. In short, we may suppose that, generally speaking, the occupiers retained their land, either in their
sons' names or in their own, and that the agrarian law of Licinius did but little
towards relieving the distress of the commons.
We are told that nine years after the first plebeian consulship, in the year
C. Licinius himself is 398,9 C. Licinius was himself impeached by M. Popillius Laenas,
prosecuted frevading
itose.ue for evaione of the curule rediles, for having violated his own law by occupying a thousand jugera of the public land, half of which he held in his son's
government of the triumvirs, by whom he effect. And the powers of such a commission,
means, I believe, no other persons than the fa- as may be seen from Cicero's speeches against
mous triumviri reipublicte constituendn, Au- the agrarian law of Rullus, were very great and
gustus, Antonius, and Lepidus. But although very important; and it is extremely probable
I do not think that Lydus spoke of any extra- that Licinius would be apI ointed one of its
ordinary commissioners appointed after the members, almost as a matter of course.
passing of the Licinian laws, yet an agrarian  7 Appian, Bell. Civil. I. 8.
law on an extensive scale necessarily implied a  8 Appian, Bell. Civil. I. 8. Livy, VII. 16.
eommission, whether of three, five, ten, or even  9 Livy, VII. 16.
ifteen members, to carry its provisions into




ï~~CHr. XXVII.]  THE LAW FOR THE RELIEF OF DEBTORS.

237

name, having emancipated him in order to evade the law. Licinius was condemned to pay a fine of ten thousand ases; but in the meagerness of our knowl.
edge of these times, we cannot tell in what spirit the prosecution was conducted;
whether it originated in personal feelings of enmity to Licinius, or whether it was
merely one out of a number of other prosecutions carried on with the intention
of trying once more to carry the agrarian law into full effect. We know nothing
of the character of M. Popillius; but from his having been chosen four times
consul, and once curule aedile, it is scarcely possible to conceive that he could
have been particularly obnoxious to the patricians; whereas we know that they
never forgave any man who was an active supporter of an agrarian law. I am
inclined to think therefore that the prosecution of Licinius1Â~ was rather instigated
by a desire to lower his credit, and to punish him for his obnoxious laws, than by
any wish to see those laws enforced more strictly.
III. The failure of the agrarian law was of itself sufficient to prevent the sue.
cess of the third of the Licinian bills, that for the relief of dis-. Of the aw for tho
tressed debtors. It was something, no doubt, to free them from reliefofdistressed debt,the double burden of both interest and principal, by deducting r..
from the principal of every debt what had been already paid in interest, and to
allow a lengthened term of payment, during which they might be free from the
extremest severity of the law. But to men who had nothing, and had no means
of earning any thing, this lengthened term was but a respite, and their debts, even
when reduced by the deduction of the interest already paid, were more than
they were able to discharge. Grants of public land made at such a moment might
have delivered them from their difficulties; but as these were withheld, the evil
after a short pause returned with all its former virulence. The Licinian law was
not prospective, nor did it lay any restriction on the amount of interest which
might be legally demanded. Accordingly, to pay their reduced debt within the
term fixed by the law, the debtors were obliged to incur fresh obligations, and to
give such interest as their creditors might choose to demand. Things grew worse
and worse, till in the year 398, nine years after the passing of the Licinian laws,
a bill was brought forward by two" of the tribunes, M. Duilius and L. Mmnius,
to restore the limitation of interest formerly fixed by the twelve tables, namely,
the rate of the twelfth part of the sum borrowed, foenus unciarium. But still
this did not reach the root of the evil; the very principal itself could not be
paid, and the number of nexi, or persons who were pledged to their creditors,
and were to become their slaves if the debt was not discharged within a certain
time, went on continually increasing.
At length, in the year 403, fourteen years after the passing of the Licinian
laws, the consuls, P. Valerius and C. Marcius Rutilus, the latter Commission of fiveo phimself a plebeian, the former a member of that family which had oitpto aorIs beal
always been eminent amongst the patricians for its constant zeal point. certai
always been eminent amongst the patricians for its constant zeal point.

1o We should be glad, however, to be able to
excuse the conduct of Licinius, which cannot
be justified by any want of sincerity in the motives of his prosecutor. Ti. Gracchus made it
a provision of his agrarian law that the commissioners for enforcing it should be a permanent
magistracy, to be filled up by new elections
from year to year. And it was this very clause
which deprived the opponents of his law of all
hope of evading it. (Appian, Bell. Civil. I. 10.)
The commission in the present case was probably not renewed after the first year, and then
the law became powerless. It is possible that
the evasion of it practised by Licinius was very
generally adopted; and he may have excused
himself by that common sophism, that as the
evil could not be prevented, he might as well
share in the benefits to be derived from it.
This is not conscientious reasoning certainly,

but it is too common; and Licinius may well
have deceived himself by it. His enemies would
naturally triumph in his violation of his own
law, and would care little though they themselves had set him the example of breaking it.
11 Livy, VII. 16. It is pleasant to observe
the traces of an hereditary political character in
so many of the Roman families. The Manii
and Duilii appear to have been remarkable foi
their moderation and integrity; the conduct of
the tribune M. Duilius, after the overthrow of
the decemvirs' tyranny, has already been noticed; and another Duilius was appointed one
of the five commissioners in 403, for the relief
of the distressed commons, and distinguished
himself in that office by his impartiality and
diligence. We have seen also a Menius taking
part with the patricians against the dangerous
designs of M. Manlius; and C. Mannius, the




ï~~238

RISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVII.

for the welfare of the commons, determined that the government should itself
interfere to relieve a distress so great and so inveterate. Five commissioners were
appointed," three plebeians and two patricians, with the title of mensarii, or
bankers. These established their banks or tables in the Forum, like ordinary
bankers, and offered in the name of the government to accommodate the debtors
with ready money on the most liberal terms. It appears that one cause of the
ptevailing distress was the scarcity of the circulating medium.'3 A debtor, therefore, even though he possessed property in land, might yet be practically insolvent, inasmuch as he could not, except at an enormous loss, convert his land into
money. Here, therefore, the five commissioners interposed: they furnished the
debtor with ready money, when he had any property to offer as a security, or
any friend who would be security for him; and they ordered that land and cattle
should be received in payment at a certain valuation. In this manner much
property, which had hitherto been unavailable, was brought into circulation; land
and cattle became legal tender at a certain fixed rate of value; and thus a great
amount of debt was liquidated, and, as Livy adds, tc the satisfaction of the creditor as well as of the debtor.  If he had any authority for saying this, the fact is
remarkable, for when the dictator Cmsar remedied the evils arising from a scarcity of money, during the civil wars, by nearly a similar arrangement, he was accused of making the creditors sustain a loss of 25 per cent.;14 and men are so
apt to regard money as the only standard of value, that this feeling is still very
general; and he who should pay his creditor a less sum in actual money than he
had borrowed, would be thought to have defrauded him of his due, although,
from an increase in the value of money, what he paid might really be fully equal in
its command over other commodities, to the sum which he had originally received.
After all, however, although these proceedings of the five commissioners were
well calculated to relieve the embarrassments of those debtors,
Other  measures  attempted, but with: in who, being really solvent, were yet unable, owing to peculiar
complete success.
omt........  causes, to convert their property into money, yet the case of the
insolvent debtors was not affected by them. Five years afterwards, in 408, the
interest of money was still further reduced to the twenty-fourth part of the sum
borrowed, or 4- per cent.;15 and in 411, several persons were brought to trial
for a breach of the law," and condemned to pay fourfold, as in an action for
furtum manifestum.
Thus palliatives of the existing evil had been sufficiently tried; but all were
found to be inadequate. The mischief came to a head in the year 413, and
could be stopped only by the most decisive remedies; but the disturbances of
that year so affected the whole state of the commonwealth, and were again so
much mixed up with political grievances, that an account of them will be more
fitly reserved for another place, when we shall have reached that period in the
course of our general narrative.

upright dictator in the second Samnite war,
was a worthy representative of the family character.
12 Livy, VII. 21. Their names were C. Duilius, alluded to in the preceding note; P. Decius Mus, who devoted himself in the Latin
war; Q. Publilius Philo, eminent both as a
general, and as the author of the famous laws
which bear his name; Ti. Emilius, one of the
most moderate of the patricians, the colleague
of Q. Publilius in his consulship, and the man
who named him dictator; and M. Papirius, of
whom nothing, I believe, is known..
is Whether that great rise in the price of copper had yet begun, which led to the successive
depreciations of the as, it is not possible to ascertain; but without taking this into the. account, other and more temporary causes tended
to raise the value of money at this time at Rome,
is comparedwith that of land. A little before

this period the Gauls had been plundering the
country round Rome during four consecutive
years; and the terror of such an enemy could
not but depreciate the value of land exposed to
their ravages, while money could be kept safely
within the walls of cities which the Gauls did
not attempt to besiege; and at such seasons of
alarm the practice of hoarding money is always
more or less prevalent, so that the circulating
medium becomes perceptibly scarcer, and, accordingly, rises in value. If, added to these
causes, the demands of commerce had already
begun to draw away the copper of Italy into
Greece and Asia, the difficulty of selling land to
pay a debt contracted when money was more
plentiful must have been proportionablygreater.
1 Suetonius, Julius Cesar, c. 42.
16 Livy, VII. 27.
a. Livy, VII. 28.  Cato de re rusticd, ab
initio.




ï~~CHAr. XXVII.]

THE PU1TELIAN L.W.

239

I propose, then, first, to take a general view of the internal state of the commonwealth, during the period which intervened between the pass- General internal..hi.
ing of the Licinian laws and the first Samnite war, and then to tory from 389s to 412.
trace its foreign relations within the same space of time.
The first part of our task has been nearly completed already, ia the view
which has been given of the effects of the three Licinian laws. One or two
points, however, may still require to be noticed.
Between 389 and 412 we find the remarkable number of fourteen dictatorships. Four of these dictators are expressly said to have been Frequent dictatorahips
named with a political object," that they might preside at the and their obect.
election of consuls, and prevent the observance of the Licinian law. Two more,8
those of 402 and 403, although nominally appointed to command against a foreign enemy, were yet really named for political purposes; and two,19 those of
892 and 411, were appointed to perform a religious ceremony.     Of the remaining six, three were named during the alarm of the Gaulish invasion in 394, 895,
and 397;2o and the other three were chosen in 393, 399, and 410, to act against
the Hernicans, the Tarquiniensians, and the Auruncans.2' But even in these last
appointments there was something of a political feeling: they prevented a plebeian consul from obtaining the glory of defeating the enemy, and notwithstand
ing the Licinian law, kept the executive government in the hands of a patrician;
and it is expressly mentioned, that App. Claudius was named dictator in 393, to
conduct the Hernican war, because he had been so active in opposing the bills of
Licinius.
It is thus evident that a soreness of feeling continued to exist between the patricians and commons; and that the former could not yet recon- Pttelian law against
cile themselves to the inevitable change which was in progress...anag Bech of
The attack of the Tiburtians in 396, is said to have stopped a peeting the cone ship.
rising quarrel between the two orders;22 the inactivity of the dictator, C. Subl.
picius, in the early part of the campaign of 397, was ascribed to the policy of tihe
patricians,"3 who wished to keep the commons as long as possible in the field, to
prevent them from passing any measures adverse to the patrician interest in the
Forum. The Poetelian law passed in that same year, and brought forward by C.
Pcetelius,24 one of the tribunes, with the sanction of the patricians, appears also
to have been intended indirectly to undermine the Licinian law with respect to
the consulship. Its professed object was to put down canvassing, "ambitus,"
and ambitus here seems to be taken in its literal sense, not as implying any
bribery, but simply the practice of going round to the several markets and meetings, held, for whatever purpose, in the country, and thus acquiring an interest
among the country tribes. It is expressly said, that this law was directed against
plebeian candidates; and this is natural; for men whose names did not yet command respect from their old nobility, were obliged to rely on their personal
recommendations, and a simple plebeian, if unknown to the country voters,
could ill compete with the influence of an old patrician family, strong not only in
its ancient fame, but in the actual votes of its own clients, and of those of the
other patricians, a body of men who would be mostly resident in Rome. Be'T M. Fabius in 404 (Livy, VII. 22), L. Furius  o20 T. Quinctius in 394 (Livy, VII. 9, Fassi
Camillus in 405 (Livy, VII. 24), T. Manlius Capitol.), Q. Servilius Ahala in 895 (Livy, VII.
Torquatus in 406 (Livy, VII. 26), and another, 11 Fasti Capitol.), and C. Sulpicius Peticus in
whose name is unknown, in 407; the fragments 89' (Livy, VII. 12, Fasti Capitol. Appian do
of the Fasti Capitolini only containing under rebus Gall. 1).
this year the words,                        A p. Claudius in 393 (Livy, VII. 6, Fasti
"Dict.                                 Capito. C. Marcius Rutilus in 399 Liv, VII.
Comit. Habend. Caus..."      17, Fasti Captol.), and L. Furius Camilus in
18 T. Manlius in 402 (Livy, VII. 19), and C. 410 (Livy, VII. 28).
Julius in 403 (Livy, VII. 21).              Livy, VII. 12.
1 L. Manlius in 892, ":clavi figendi causa"  " Livy, VII. 18.
(Livy, VII. 3, and Fasti Capitol.), anld P. Va-  ' Livy, VII. 15.
lerius, "feriarum constituendarum causa," in
411 (Livy VII. 28).




ï~~240

HISTORY OF ROME.

LO aAP. XXVIL

sides, if he had not an opportunity of canvassing the country tribes generally, his
interest might not extend beyond his own immediate neighborhood, and thus the
total number of his votes in any given tribe might not be sufficient to give him
the legal vote of that tribe, and two patrician candidates might obtain a majority
of suffrages, merely because no one plebeian candidate had any general interest
in his favor. This seems to have been the way in which the Licinian law was
set aside three years afterwards, in 400. The majority of votes was in favor of
two patrician candidates; one of these was a Valerius, and his name was sure to
be popular amongst the commons; whilst the plebeian candidates, debarred from
general canvassing by the Poetelian law, had each of them probably so small
number of votes in his favor, that they would not have been duly elected according to the Roman law, even had there been no candidate standing against them,
Thus the interrex,25 M. Fabius, was enabled to say that the people had themselves set aside the Licinian law; inasmuch as there was a legal majority in favor
of two patrician candidates, and only a small minority for any plebeian.
An event occurred in the year 398, which very properly alarmed the tribunes,
Law "de vicesima o- although it does not seem to have originated in any evil intention.
rum qet b nenoitteren-    osl, ofol~~l              nte~mA            cnua
tr"n paeiosed by oeof One of the consuls, On. Manlius, was in the field with a consular
the armies io e to he field. army, to carry on the war against the Tarquiniensians and Faliscans; his colleague, C. Marcius Rutilus, was engaged with the Privernatians, and
enriching his army, it is said, with the plunder of the enemy's country, which
had been for many years untouched by the ravages of war. It is probable that
the soldiers on this occasion made prisoners of many Privernatian families, and
released them again on the payment of a large ransom. But prisoners taken in
war, becoming, according to ancient law, the slaves of the captor, his release of
a prisoner upon ransom was, in fact, the manumission of a slave. Accordingly,
On. Manlius called his soldiers together in the camp near Sutrium, according to
their tribes, and, as if they were assembled in regular comitia, he proposed to
them a law, that five per cent. on the value of any emancipated slave should be
paid by his master into the public treasury.27 It might be argued that the state
ought not to lose all benefit from the plunder acquired by its soldiers; and that,
especially, if a soldier set an enemy at liberty for the sake of his ransom, some
compensation should be made to his country, whom his act might be supposed
to injure. There was some plausibility in this, and the army of Manlius might
have felt also some jealousy at the better fortune of their comrades, and might
have known that their own general would not, like C. Marcius, give up to them
the full benefit of such plunder as they might acquire from the Etruscans. Accordingly the law was passed in the camp, and received the ready sanction of the
curime and the senate at Rome. But the tribunes, dreading the precedent of a
law passed at a distance from Rome, beyond the range of the tribunes' protection, and where every citizen was subject to the absolute power of his general,
declared it to be a capital offence, if any one should for the future summon the
tribes in their comitia in any other than their accustomed place of meeting."8
Their bill to this effect was sure of the support of Marcius and his army; and its
principle was so clearly just, that it was passed, so far as we hear, without meeting any opposition.
The years 390, 391, and 392, were marked by a pestilence,29 which is said to
S Livy, VII. 17. " Fabius aiebat, in duo- forward in such an irregular manner. Similar
decim tabulis legem esse, ut quodcunque pos- laws were in force in some of our West Indian
tremum populus jussisset, id jus ratumque islands, at once to restrain emancipation, and to
esset; jussum populi et suffragia esse."  prevent the slave from becoming a burden upon
20 Livy, VII. 16.                     the public, if the state received nothing as a
27 " Legem de vicesim6 eorum qui manumit- compensation for the contingency of being
terentur." The time and place at which the obliged to maintain him as a freeman.
law was passed justify the explanation which I  28 " Ne quis postea populum sevocaret." Conhave given of its meaning; for had the object pare the well-known sense of secessio.
been merely to check the increase of the class  2 Livy, VII. 1, 2.
of freedmen it would scarcely have been brought




ï~~CHAr. XXVII.]

DEATH OF CAMILLUS.

241

have been very generally fatal; and in 391, the Tiber rose to an Natural  onom.
Natural  phenomena.
unusual height, overflowed the Circus Maximus,"' and put a stop Story of Curtiuas leaping
to the games which were going on there at that very time, as a into the gulf.
propitiation of the wrath of heaven.  It is difficult to say whether it was a similar flood two years afterwards, or the shock of an earthquake, which gave occasion to the famous legend of the filling up of the Curtian lake in the Forum. All
know how the gulf, which had suddenly yawned wide and deep in the midst of
the Forum,3" could be filled up by no human power, till the gods at last declared,
that the best and true strength of the Roman commonwealth must be devoted
as an offering to the gulf; so should the state exist and flourish forever. While
men were asking, what is the true strength of Rome? a noble youth, named M.
Curtius, whose valiant deeds had made him famous, said that it were a shame to
think that the true strength of Rome could lie in aught else but in the arms and
in the valor of her children; and he put on his armor and mounted his horse,
and plunged into the gulf. All the assembled multitude threw their offerings
into it after him, and the gulf was closed, but the place bore his name forever.
It were vain to inquire at what period and upon what foundation this remarkable story was first originated."2
The first year of the pestilence was marked by the death of M. Camillus.3 In
him we seem to lose the last relic of early Rome, the last hero Death of camnils.
whose glory belongs rather to romance than to history. But the
fame of the stories connected with him proves the high estimation in which he
was held when living; and it was a beautiful conclusion to his long life, that his
last public action was that of a peacemaker, his last interference in political contests was that of a patriot and not of a partisan.  The glory of his name was
supported for one generation by his son, L. Furius, and then sank forever.
The same period of pestilence was also noted as the era at which the first and
simplest form of dramatic entertainments34 was introduced at Rome. First introduction o
Amongst the games ordered to be celebrated in the hope of pro- stage acting and dancpitiating the gods, one, it is said, consisting of a dance in dumb mg*
show, as an accompaniment to the music of the flute, was, for the first time,
introduced from Etruria. The dumb show was afterwards succeeded by a song
in which the dance was suited to the words; then came a dialogue, and, last of
all, a regular acted story; but here the Romans did but translate or imitate the
dramatists of Greece, and nothing in literature is less original, and therefore less
valuable than the tragic and comic drama of Rome.
What power of imagination can complete these few isolated facts into the full
picture of the life of a people during three and twenty years? who can represent to himself the Senate or the Forum, such as they were at this period, either
as to outward forms and scenes, or as to the men who frequented them? Much
less can we conceive what was passing in the interior of every family, and realize
to ourselves the names of our scanty history-the Fabii, the Valerii,. the Sulpicii, or the Marcii, as they were talking and acting in the ordinary relations of life,
abroad or at home.   A  period, of which there remains no contemporary literature, has virtually perished from the memory of after ages; some scattered bones
of the skeleton may be left, but the face, figure, and mind of the living man are
lost to us beyond recall.
In times so imperfectly known as those with which we are now engaged, the
" Livy, VII. 3.                       the Forum, marked out by an altar, was known,
31 Livy, VII. 6. Valerius Maximus, V. 6.   2. even in the times of the emperors, by the name
32 Another story derived the name of the of the Curtian lake: Galba was thrown out of
Curtian lake in the Forum from one Curtius his litter and murdered close to it. (Tacitus,
Mettius, a soldier of Tatius, the king of the Sa- Hist. I. 41.) But the real origin of the name
bines; who, in the battle between Tatius and being unknown, various stories, as is usual,
Romulus, had been nearly lost in a piece of bog- were invented to explain it.
gy ground between the Capitoline and Palatine  33 Livy, VII. 1.
hills. Livy, I. 12, 13. A spot in the centre of  3 Livy, VII. 2.
16




ï~~242

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVII

Foreign history of geographical order of events is far more instructive than the chroRome from 389 to 312. nological. I propose, therefore, to trace successively the relations
of Rome with the several neighboring states, from 389 to 412, beginning with
the wars with the Etruscans, who were divided by the Tiber from the Latins,
Volscians, and Hernicans.
I. The people of Tarquinii, sometimes aided by the Faliscans, were engaged
wars with Tarquinii in wars with Rome during a period of eight years, from 396 to 404.
and the Faliseans.  What may have been the cause of quarrel is unknown, if it were
any thing more than the ordinary enmity between two neighboring nations, and
the disputes which are forever occurring on their common border. But the war
is rendered remarkable by the specimens displayed in it of the character and influence of the Etruscan religion. The Roman consul, C. Fabius,35 having been
defeated in a battle in the year 397, the Tarquinians sacrificed to their gods three
hundred and seven Roman soldiers, who had been taken prisoners in the action;
and two years afterwards, when the Faliscans had joined them, the priests of
both cities, with long snake-like ribbons of various colors twisted in their hair,
and brandishing burning torches in their hands,36 fought in the front of their
army, and struck such terror into the Roman soldiers, that they drove them back
in confusion to their camp. The Etruscar priests, it should be remembered,
were also the chiefs or lucumones of the nation, and they acted on this occasion,
and with equal success, the same part which the two Decii performed for Rome
in the Latin and Etruscan wars of a later period. Full of confidence in the support of the gods, the Etruscans followed up their victory; they entered the Roman territory and spread their devastations over the whole country on the right
bank of the Tiber as far as the sea. It was to meet this danger that C. Marciusn
was appointed dictator; he was named, we must suppose, by the plebeian consul of that year, M. Popillius Lmenas, and was the first plebeian who ever obtained the dictatorship. His appointment gave great offence to the patricians,
and was proportionably acceptable to his own order; all his commands were
zealously obeyed; he repelled the invaders, and, like the popular consuls of the
year 305, he obtained a triumph by a vote of the people when the senate refused
to grant it.
In the year 401, the Roman annalists say that the butchery of the Roman
Peace concluded for prisoners by the Tarquinians four years before was signally
forty year.  avenged; the Tarquinians were defeated in a great battle, and
three hundred and fifty-eight of the noblest of the prisoners were sent to Rome,
and there scourged and beheaded in the Forum.8 The war lingered on, however, for three years more; and was then ended by a peace concluded for forty
years.39  No conquests of towns or territory are recorded, and thus the Roman
frontier still remained on the side of Etruria in the same position as it had been
for the last forty years, since the conquest of Veii, Nepete, and Sutrium.
II. Far more complicated was the scene on the left bank of the Tiber. There
warsin Latium.  great changes took place; the relations of the several people to one
aanother were materially altered; some nations almost vanish out
of history, whilst Rome saw her territory enlarged, her population of citizens increased, her power and influence strengthened and extended beyond all former
example. But the causes and circumstances of these changes are partly disguised by the dishonesty, and partly omitted through the mere meagerness of the
Roman historians. Out of the confusion of Livy's narrative we must endeavor,
if possible, to obtain a clear and consistent outline of the events of a period which
contributed, in no small degree, to determine the future destinies of Rome and
the world.
In the year 394, according to the common chronology, the Gauls again apSLivy, VII. 15.                       88 Livy, VII. 19.
SLivy, VII. 17.                       ' Livy, VII. 22.
SLivy, VII. 17.




ï~~CHAP. XXVII.]

GAULISH INVASIONS.

243

peared in Latium. This inroad lasted, according to the Roman
Onolioli invasions.
annals, for four years, and was ended, as they pretend, by them
total destruction of the invaders in the year 397. Eight years afterwards, in
405, we hear of another invasion; but this new attack was completely defeated
in the following year, and from that time forward we never again find the Gauls
in Latium.
The dates of these two invasions are, no doubt, correctly given. They are confirmed by Polybius,4Â~ although in all other points his account dif- Account of them gives
fers widely from that of the Roman writers. The Gauls penetrated by Polybius.
into the heart of Latium thirty years after their first attack on Rome; they appeared at Alba, but the Romans, surprised by the suddenness of their inroad,
and unable to collect their allies together, did not venture to meet them in the
field. Twelve years afterwards, continues Polybius, they came again; but the
Romans had now timely notice of their coming; their allies had joined them, and
they marched out boldly to give the enemy battle. The Gauls were dismayed
by this display of confidence; their chiefs quarrelled, and their whole multitude
broke up under cover of night, and retreated like a beaten army to their own
country. On this their last appearance in Latium, the Roman army opposed to
them was commanded by Lucius Camillus; and this is the Lucius4' whom Aristotle spoke of as the deliverer of his country from the Gauls. According to the
Roman accounts, he defeated the Gauls in a general action; yet it is not pretended that he obtained a triumph.
These last invasions of the Gauls were marked, according to the Roman annalists, not only by many signal victories won by the Roman armies Stories of the Gaulish
in general battles, but in particular by two brilliant single combats itoq T. Manli
in which two of the noble youth of Rome gained for themselves leriu corvs.
an immortal memory. T. Manlius, the future conqueror of the Latins, fought
with a gigantic Gaul4 on the bridge over the Anio upon the Salarian road: he
slew his enemy, and took from his neck his chain of gold (torques), which he
wore on his neck in triumph, so that the soldiers called him Torquatus, and his
descendants ever after bore that name. And again, before the last great victory
won by Lucius Camillus, there was another single combat in the Pomptinian territory between a second giant Gaul and the young M. Valerius,43 who afterwards

40 II. 18. It is well known, that the Roman
writers claim three icetories in the course of the
invasion of 894-39' in which, according to Polybius, the Romans did not venture to meet the
Gauls in the field. The victory of the dictator
C. Sulpicius, in 397, is described very circumstantially by Appian, who, probably, copied
Dionysius, as well as by Livy, and the Fasti
Capitolini give the day of his triumph, the nones
of May. On the other hand, the statement of
Polybius is given simply and positively, and
we know how completely the Romans corrupted
the memory of many events in the Samnite war,
and in other parts of their early history. We
should be glad to know from what sources Polybius derived his knowledge of these events.
The chronological exactness of his account seems
to show, that it could not have been taken from
any Greek writer who may have mentioned the
Gaulish invasions of central Italy, but from some
Roman annalist, and it is probable that Fabius,
who, in spite of his national prejudices, had, in
other instances, given a true report of transactions which later annalists utterly misrepresented, was the authority whom Polybius followed. It is not likely, on the other hand, that
the pretended victories of the Roman generals
are mere inventions, but that some trifling advantages gained over detached parties of the
Gauls were magnified into general battles, and

that the triumphs, if not altogether false, were
granted by the policy of the senate, wishing to
make the most of any advantage gained over an
enemy so formidable as the Gauls.
41 Tsv aaiavra Ae'xtov ealvaS t Oiv. Plutarch,
Camill. 22. It should be remembered, that the
Romans, in old times, were known and called
by their prunomina, or first names, as Polybius calls Scipio, "Publius," and Regulus,
"Marcus."   The prnnomenwas thenmuch less
likely to be mistaken than in after ages, when
the nomen and cognomen were generally used
instead of it, and when it was possible for a
foreigner to be very familiar with the actions of
Casar, without remembering whether his prmnomen was Caius or Lucius. But Aristotle
would have been no more likely to have mistaken one pranomen for another, than to have
confounded two Greek brothers together, because together with their own peculiar names
they had both the same patronymic.
42 There is a striking description of this combat given by Q. Claudius Quadrigarius, an annalist of the seventh century of Rome, and preserved to us by A. Gellius, IX. 13.
43 This combat is also given by Gellius from
some of the old annalists, IX. 11. It is described too by Dionysius, XV. 1, 2, and by
Livy, VII. 26.




ï~~244

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVI1

defeated the Samnites at the great battle of Mount Gaurus. A wonderful thing
happened in this combat, said the story; for as Marcus was going to begin the
fight, all on a sudden a crow flew down and perched upon his helmet. When
the two combatants closed with each other, the crow still sat on the Roman's
helm, but ever and anon it soared up in the air, and then darted down upon the
Gaul, and struck at his face and eyes with its beak and claws. So the Gaul, confounded and dismajyed, soon fell by the sword of Marcus; and then the crow flew
up again into the air, and vanished towards the east. For this wonderful aid
thus afforded him M. Valerius was known ever afterwards by the name of Corvus, Crow, and the name remained to his posterity.    These stories are the very
counterpart of the combat between Sir Guy of Warwick and the Danish giant
Colbrand before the walls of Winchester; or, as Manlius and Valerius Corvus
are certainly more real personages than Sir Guy, we may compare them with the
ballad of Chevy Chase, and consider how far we could recognize the historical
battle of Otterburne, and the real Hotspur, in the battle on the Cheviot hills,
and in the Earl Percy of the poem.    As in this instance, the time,1 place, circumstances, and issue of the poetical battle bear no resemblance to those of the
real one, so also the poetical or romance accounts of these last Gaulish invasions
retain scarcely a feature of that simple and real history of them which has been
preserved to us by Polybius.   That the triumphal Fasti have followed the fictitious rather than the true account, belongs to that peculiar blot on the Roman
character which I have already noticed; that what with other people has been
mere fanciful romance, has been by the Romans made to wear such an appearance of serious earnest as to be no longer romance but falsehood.
What the Gauls did in Latium and against the Romans has been sufficiently
Effectof the Gaulishin- disguised and perverted; but what they did in other parts of Italy
vasion on the re lation is altogether unknown to us. We hear of them in Latium, and
of the severa tteeeof i  loehr'unw  ou.te                         a~m
Italy.        that they moved southwards from thence into Campania and Apulia;45 but they do not seem to have touched Etruria, and their attacks on Rome
were all made on the left bank of the Tiber.   Perhaps the Etruscans had early
concluded a peace with them, so that in their invasions of Latium and Campania
they passed through Umbria and the country of the Sabines, descending upon
Rome either by the Salarian road along the Tiber, or by the valley of the Anio.
The Romans complained that two Latin cities, Tibur and Preeneste,41 had not
scrupled, in their hatred of Rome, to ally themselves with these barbarians; and
this was remembered afterwards against them when the issue of the great Latin
war had placed them at the mercy of their old enemies. But it is not to be
wondered at if they were glad to divert the torrent of the Gaulish invasion from
themselves to the territory of strangers or rivals; perhaps they hired some of the
Gaulish bands to enter into their service, and some advantages gained over these
by the Roman generals may have been the origin of the pretended victories and
triumphs recorded in the annals and in the Fasti. The main Gaulish army
appears to have stationed itself principally on the Alban hills,41 from whence, as
from some island stronghold, they could attack and lay waste all the neighboring
country. Twice they are said to have approached Rome, and once they advanced
as far as the very Colline gate,4" by which they had entered the city in their first
4 The battle of Otterburne was fought in the in the poetical battle, Percy is killed, but the
reign of Richard the Second, of England, and English are victorious. And further, to show
Robert the Second, of Scotland; the poetical how slight actions may be magnified into great
account of it places it in the reign of a King battles, the Scottish army at Otterburne which
Henry in England, and a King James in Scot- consisted really of 2300 men, is made in another
land. Otterburne is in Redesdale near Elsdon, ballad of the battle to amount to 44,000, of whom
the scene of battle in the poem is in the Cheviot there "went but eighteen away."
hills; the historical battle did not arise out of  45 Livy, VII. 11. 26.
any hupting excursion of Percy on the Scottish  46 Livy VII. 11. VIII. 14.
border, but from an inroad of the Scotch into  4 Polybius, II. 18. Livy, VII. 25. DionyNorthumberland. In the real battle, Percy was sius, XIV. 12.
taken prisoner, and the English were defeated;  48 Livy, VII. 11.




ï~~CHAP. XXVII.]  LATINS, ETC., AGAIN ALLIED WITH ROME.

245

invasion. On one occasion we find them encamped at Pedum45 in front of Preneste, an old Latin city which the.zEquians had formerly conquered, but which
afterwards, perhaps at this very time, got rid of its foreign masters and became
again united to the Latin nation. None can tell what cities were destroyed, what
people weakened, and what confederacies or dominions were broken up in the
course of these Gaulish invasions. The Volscians seemed to have suffered more
especially; for it was through their territory that the Gauls moved onwards from
Latium to Campania, or returned from Campania to their quarters on the Alban
hills; and it appears that their nation was from this time forward broken into
fragments, each of which had from henceforth a destiny of its own. In order to
understand this change fully, we must recollect that in the year of Rome 378
the Roman frontier had fallen back from Anxur to Satricum, that Satricum itself
had been won by the Volscians, and afterwards burnt by the Latins" that it
might not revert to Rome, and tJat the Roman territory in the maritime part of
the Campagna scarcely reached to the distance of twenty-five miles from Rome.
But in 397 we find that the Latins" renewed their alliance with the Romans;
that two new tribes of Roman citizens were created,52 the Pomptine and the
Publilian; and that Velitre and Privernum,53 both of them Volscian towns, but
the latter unmentioned hitherto in Roman history, were engaged alone in a war
with Rome. This same year witnessed also the retreat of the Gauls from Latium,
after they had been overrunning it at intervals during a period of three years;
and finally, it was marked by what the Romans call a conquest of the Hernicans,54 who for the last four years had been at open war with Rome. That there
was a connection between all these events is manifest, although they appear in
Livy as mere accidental coincidences. It should be remembered also that in this
same year war was formally declared5 between Rome and Tarquinii.
The complicated negotiations and the ever-changing alliances of the Greek
states, between the peace of Nicias and the Athenian expedition Renewalof the alliance
to Sicily, cannot be comprehended readily, even though related by between Rome and the
such an historian as Thucydides. In the last ten years of the atinand ernican.
fourth century of Rome, Latium and its neighborhood must have presented a
tissue of events equally perplexed in themselves, without any contemporary historian like Thucydides to explain them to posterity. But by considering the
mere fragments of information which have been preserved to us, we may attempt
to combine them into something like the following form. A war with Tarquinii,
in addition to one with the Hernicans, and that at a time when Tibur and Prmneste were hostile, and when the Gauls might be expected to appear again in
Latium as they had done regularly for the last three years, was clearly more
than the strength of Rome could bear. The old alliance with the Hernicans,
and with some at any rate of the Latin cities, must, at whatever price, be renewed.
We can easily conceive that there must have been a party amongst the Latins
and Hernicans equally well disposed to such a reunion. It was accordingly
effected: the plebeian consul C. Plautius appears to have had the honor of
restoring at this critical moment the great work of Sp. Cassius. The whole people of the Hernicans renewed their old alliance with Rome; but of the thirty
Latin cities which had concluded the league with Sp. Cassius many had perished,
and some had become separated from the Latin confederacy, and were now the
heads of small confederacies of their own: we may safely conclude, however,
that Aricia, Bovillre, Gabii, Lanuvium, Laurentum, Lavinium,.Nomentum, and
Tusculum were among the cities which returned to their old connection, and became as heretofore the equal allies of the Romans. Thus a force was organized
49 " Gallos.. circa Pedum consedisse audi-  4 " Hernici devicti subactique sunt."-Livy,
tumrn est." Livy, VII. 12.            VII. 15.
6 Livy, VI. 33.                        5 Livy, VII. 12. "Rebus nequicquam re51 Livy, VII. 12.                    petitis, novi consules jussu populi bellum in52 Livy, VII. 15.                    dixere."
1 Livy, VII. 15.




ï~~246

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVII

which might be able at last to meet the Gauls in the field, should they again venture to establish themselves on the Alban hills, or to overrun the plains of Latium.
But while Rome was thus strengthened by this reconciliation with her old allies,.wo ew Roman tribe, she also made an addition to the number of her own citizens. Two
created.      new tribes were created, making the whole number twenty-seven;
and the new citizens thus received into the state appear to have been in part the
inhabitants of the Ager Pomptinus, or Volscian lowlands, the country between
Antium and Tarracina on the coast, and running inland as far as the roots of the
Apennines which form the eastern wall of the Campagna. In the times of the
later kings, the Romans, according to their own stories, had made several conquests over the Volscians in this region, which at any rate were all lost again
during the subsequent advance of the.Equians and Volscians into Latium: but
in the twenty years immediately preceding the Gaulish invasion, the Volscian
frontier had again receded, and the Romans, as we have seen, extended their
dominion for a time as far as Tarracina or Anxur. After the Gaulish invasion
there followed another change of fortune; when the Latins no longer aided the
Romans, but were for some time in alliance with the Volscians, the Romans again
lost ground; Satricum became once more Volscian, and the intermediate country between it and Tarracina, the much contested Ager Pomptinus, must also
have returned to its old masters. But whether it was that the Volscians had
suffered even more than their neighbors from the Gaulish invasions, or whether
the Samnites had already begun their attacks upon them in the valley of the Liris
and on the side of Campania, or whether it is to be ascribed to internal divisions,
and to the destruction of their old allies the.Equians, it seems at any rate that
the Volscian nation was now declining, and utterly unable to withstand, as it had
once done, the united forces of Rome and Latium. It is probable that much of
its territory became at this period either Roman or Latin; exactly in the same
manner as the Sabines of Regillus and Nomentum had lost their independence
soon after the expulsion of the Tarquins. And as the Claudian and Crustuminian
tribes were then formed out of those Sabines who became Romans, while Nomentum and Regillus fell to the share of the Latins, so a similar division in all
probability took place now, and the Pomptine and the Publilian tribes must have
been formed out of the Volscians who were assigned to Rome, whilst other portions of the Volscian territory and population fell to the share of the Latins.
Thus the Volscian nation having been so dismembered, those states which still
survived became henceforth more individually distinguished, and also, as was
natural, more resolute to defend their independence. Amongst this number
were the people of Privernum; and the ravages which they and the people of
Velitra are said to have carried into the Roman territory5 in this same year,
were doubtless more especially directed against those whom they would consider
as traitors, their own Volscian countrymen, the new Roman citizens of the Pomptine and Publilian tribes.
This favorable aspect of the Roman affairs was still further improved four
Peace with Tibur and years afterwards, when in the year 401 both Tibur and Prmeneste7
Preneste.     gave up their long-continued hostility, and obtained, perhaps at
the price of some sacrifices of territory, a peace for a certain number of years
with Rome. The peace with Tarquinii followed, as we have already seen, in the
year 404.
But in the year 402 we again hear of an attack made by the Volscians upon
The growthof the Sam- the Latins in the direction of Tusculum.8  No particulars are
steo p.wer drawsathe mentioned, perhaps because the allied Romans and Latin forces
lon and Ratios        pras~
more closely together. were in this year commanded by a Latin general; but we may
bn Livy, VII. 15. " Accessit... vastatio Re- 19; and for the peace or rather truce with PrsDmani agri, quam Privernates, Veliterni deinde, neste, see Diodorus, XVI. 45.
incursione repentina fecerunt."        15 Livy, VII. 19.
61 For the peace with Tibur, see Livy, VII.




ï~~CHAe. XXVIII.]

ORIGIN OF THE SAMNITES.

247

suppose that Privernum and Velitrm, with some of the cities of the Volscian
highlands, were the part of the Volscian nation engaged in these hostilities. From
this time for the next five years all was quiet: but in the year 407, Satricum,
which had been burnt some years ago by the Latins, and the territory of which
the Latins had appropriated to themselves in their late partition of the Ager
Pomptinus with Rome, was again occupied and rebuilt by the Volscians of Antium.59 Jealousies were arising about this time between Rome and Latium; and
it appears probable that there was a party amongst the Latins disposed to form
a separate alliance with the remaining independent states of the Volscians, in
order to be strengthened by them against Rome. Thus when the Auruncans, or
Ausonians, one of the most southern people of the Volscian stock, began to plunder the Ager Pomptinus in 410, the Romans, we are told, suspected that this
inroad was actually made with the concurrence of the Latins, and expected" a
war with the whole Latin confederacy. Their fears, however, were groundless
for the present, and indeed the progress of the Samnite arms in Campania and
on the Liris was a strong inducement both to the Eomans and Latins to defer
their jealousies of each other to a more convenient season. Two years afterwards, in 412, the first Samnite war broke out, in which both the Latins and
Volscians to all appearance took part with Rome.
Thus in the course of three-and-twenty years Rome was finally delivered from
the scourge of the Gaulish invasion; she had secured her north- Increased power of
ern frontier by a peace with the neighboring states of Etruria; her Rnome.
old alliance with the Latins and Hernicans, however doubtful might be its duration, had been restored in time to enable her to repel the Gauls and to crush the
Volscians: and it was now ready to aid her in her coming struggle with the
Samnites. She had not merely extended her dominion, but by granting the full
rights of citizens to the Volscians of the Ager Pomptinus, she had enlarged and
strengthened her own commonwealth. She was thus prepared for the events
of the next ten years, which assured to her beyond dispute the first place among
the nations of Italy.
We have seen that the date of the first plebeian consulship coincided with
that of the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea. The first Sam- chronology.
nite war broke out about two years before the establishment of the Macedonian
supreum y in Greece by Philip's great victory at Cheronea.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE FIRST SAMNITE WAR-SEDITION OF THE YEAR 408-GENUCIAN LAWS.A. U. 0. 407-409 NIEBUHR: 410-412 FASTI CAPIT.: 412-414 LIVY.
"Majora jam hinc bella et viribus hostium et longinquitate vel regionum vel temporum spatio
quibus bellatum est dicentur; namque eo anno adversus Samnites, gentem opibus armisque
validam, mota arma."-Livr, VII. 29.
THE Sabines, who dwelt amidst the highest mountains of the Apennines,
where the snow lies all the year long, and which send forth the Legend concernin the
streams to run into the two seas northward and southward, were' origin ofthe sanites.

1 Livy, VII. 27.

6o Livy, VII. 28.

L  Strabo, V. p. 250. Dionysius, II. 49.




ï~~248

AISTORY OF ROME

[CHAP. XXVIII

at war for many years together with their neighbors the Umbrians. At last they
made a vow, that if they should conquer their enemies, all the living creatures'
born in their land in that year should be devoted to the gods as sacred. They
did conquer, and they offered in sacrifice accordingly all the lambs and calves
and kids and pigs of that year, and such animals as might not be sacrificed, they'
redeemed. But still their land would not yield its fruits, and when they thought
what was the cause of it, they considered that their vow had not been duly performed; for all their own children4 born within that year had been kept back
from the gods, and had neither been sacrifibed nor redeemed. So they devoted
all their children to the god Mamers, and when they were grown up they sent
them away to become a new people in a new land.. When the young men set
out on their way, it happened that a bull went before them; and they thought
that Mamers had sent him to be their guide, and they followed him. He laid
himself down' to rest for the first time when he had come to the land of the
Opicans; and the Sabines thought that this was a sign to them, and they
fell upon the Opicans, who dwelt in scattered villages6 without walls to defend
them, and they drove them out, and took possession of their land. Then they
offered the bull in sacrifice to Mamers, who had sent him to be their guide;
and a bull was the device' which they bore in after ages; and they themselves were no more called Sabines, but they took a new name and were called
Samnites.
Such is the legendary account of the origin of that great people whose history
whatt ethis ontainea is now beginning to connect itself with that of Rome. In two
in it.        points it has preserved the truth; the Samnites were a people of
Sabine extraction, and had established themselves as conquerors in the country
of the Opicans. But the two races were, probably, not very remote from each
other, and thus it is less surprising that the conquerors should have adopted the
language of their subjects; for the Samnites spoke Opican, or Oscan, and the
legends of their coins, and their remaining inscriptions are in the Oscan character.
Still the two people were distinct; and the Samnites regarded neither their Opican subjects in Campania, nor their Opican neighbors, the /Equians and Volscians,
as their own proper countrymen.
One single contemporary notice of the Samnitess in the days of their greatness
Notice of the Saimnites has descended to our times; and this is contained in two short lines
in the Periplus of Scy- of the Periplus of Scylax, who describes the Samnites as living on
'Y,          the coast of the Lower Sea between the Campanians and Lucanians, and the length of their coast-line was no more, he tells us, than half a
day's sail. The space which they occupied reached nearly from the Sarnus to

2 The form of one o' these vows is given by
Livy, XXII. 10, " quo, ver adtulerit ex suillo,
ovillo, caprino, bovillo grege, quaeque profana
erunt, Jovi fieri."
V  T,ev KariOveav, ra~ OKaptopwav. Strabo,
V. p. 250. What was not sacrificed, but yet
was consecrated to the gods, must have been
redeemed before it could be employed for ordinary purposes.
4 Strabo as before. Festus in "Mamertini."
b This reminds us of the story of the white
sow which guided.Eneas to the place where he
was to build his city. A wolf was said to have
done the same service to the Iirpinians, who
were also of Samnite extraction.
S'Eriyxavov Ri E K cu py gvre. Like the.Etolians in the time of the Peloponnesian war,
Thucyd. III. 94; or like the Casali, which to
this day contain the greatest part of the population in the valleys of the central Apennines.
S Micali gives an engraving of a coin, struck
by the Italian allies during their great war with
the Romans in the seventh century of Rome,

whiz   represents a bull, the emblem  of the
Samnites, goring a wolf, the well-known type
of the Romans. Two or three specimens of this
coin are to be seen in the British Museum.
8 Ka'ravwv 3i R xovrat xaav'irat 'Kal rapdrlov
Carl Eavvcr vdpipa iipae, p. 3. Niebuhr reads
xavirat instead ofavvira in the following page
of Scylax, urging that the description is inapplicable to the Daunians, as they neither extended
across all Italy from sea to sea, nor lived to the
N. W. of Mount Drium or Garganus. I think
that this conjecture is highly probable, because
Scylax had not mentioned the Daunians in his
description of the coasts of the Lower Sea but
had mentioned the Samnites; and the only
other people who had stretched from sea to sea,
the Etruscans or Tyrrhenians, are mentioned
separately in the description of both coasts. If
so, Scylax includes within the limits of the Samnites, not only the country of the Frentanians,
who were notoriously of Samnite origin, but
also that of their neighbors, the Marrucinians
and Vestinians.




ï~~CHAP. XXVIII.]

GEOGRAPHY OF SAMNIUM.

249

the Silarus; Neapolis, according to Scylax, is in Campania; Posidonia, or Piesturn, is in Lucania. But the Samnite possessions on or near the coast, even though
they once included the famous cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii,' of Nola, Nuceria, and Abella, were a mere recent offshoot from the great body of the nation:
the true Samnium lies wholly in the interior, and having been thus removed from
the notice of the Greeks, from whom alone we derive our knowledge of the an.
cient world before the dominion of the Romans, it has been fated to remain in
perpetual obscurity.
Nearly due north of Naples, there stands out from the central line of the
Apennines, like one of the towers of an old castle frofn the lower Geograpy of sanniand more retiring line of the ordinary wall," a huge mass of mount- um.-h atse.
ains, known at present by the name of the Matese. On more than three-fourths
of its circumference it is bounded by the Volturno and its tributary streams, the
Cal ore'0 and the Tamaro, which send their waters into the Lower or Tyrrhenian Sea;
but on its northern side, its springs and torrents run down into the Biferno, and
so make their way to the Adriatic. A very narrow isthmus or shoulder, high
enough to form the watershed between the two seas, connects the Matese at its
N. W. and N. E. extremities with the main Apennine line, and thus prevents it
from being altogether insulated.
The circumference of the Matese, as above described, is between seventy" and
eighty miles. Its character bears some resemblance to that of the ts extent and...
district of Craven, in Yorkshire, or more closely to that of the ter.
Jura. It is a vast mass of limestone," rising from its base abruptly in the huge
wall-like cliffs or scars, so characteristic of limestone mountains, to the height of
about 3000 feet; and within this gigantic inclosure presenting a great variety
of surface, sloping inwards from the edge of the cliffs into deep valleys, and then
rising again in the highest points of the centre of the range, and especially in
the Monte Miletto, which is its loftiest summit, to an elevation computed at 6000
feet. Its upland valleys' offer, like those of the Jura, a wide extent of pasture,
and endless forests of magnificent beech-wood; it is rich in springs, gushing out
of the ground with a full burst of water, and suddenly disappearing again into
some of the numerous caverns in which such limestone rocks abound. In this
manner the waters of a small lake in the heart of the mountain have no visible
outlet;13 but the people of the country say that they break out at the foot of a
deep cliff or cove, aboi: two or three miles distant, and form the full stream of
the Torano.
On the highest points of the Matese the snow lies till late'4 in the summer; and
suc is their elevation, that the view from them extends across the whole breadth
of laly from sea to sea. No heat of the summer scorches the perpetual fresh
s Herculaneum and Pompeii both stood, it is
true, to the northward of the Sarnus; and Strabo expressly says that they were wrested by the
Samnites from the Etruscans, V. p. 247. This,
however, was the case also with Cuma and Capua; but as Scylax places these towns in Campania, and distinguishes it from the country of
the Samnites, a little to the south of it, it is probable that at the time of the first Samnite war,
which is nearly the date of Scylax's Periplus,
most of this district had recovered its independence, and the Samnite possessions were reduced
to the limits mentioned in the text.
10 The Calore runs along the southern side of
the Matese: the Tamaro, which bounds its eastern side, runs into the Calore from the north
nearly at right angles.
11 Mr. Keppel Craven says, that it is reckoned
to measure seventy miles.-Excursions in the
Abruzzi, &e. Vol. II. p. 166. Giustiniani gives
it at sixty-two Neapolitan miles, which are
more than seventy English ones.-See his Di
zionario del Regno di Napoli, Parte 2, in " Matese."
1 This limestone is, in some parts, bituminous, and contains some fossil remains of fish.
There are some volcanic or tufaceous rocks in
the Matese, resembling probably the beds of
tuff which are found on the slopes of the Apennines in other places, as, for instance, on the
road from Naples to Avellino in the pass of
Monteforte.
3 See Keppel Craven, Excurs. in the Abruzzi,
Vol. I. p. 18. The English reader will remember Malham Tarn, and the full burst of water
with which the Aire rushes out from under the
rocks of Malham Cove. Similar phenomena
are frequent in the limestone mountains of Poloponnesus.
14 See Giustiniani, Dizionario. Mr. Keppel
Craven found the upper half of the Matese covered with snow in Mlay: it would ramain much
later on the highest summits.




ï~~250

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVIII

ness of these mountain pastures; and during the hottest months5 the cattle from
the surrounding country are driven up thither to feed.
This singular mountain, with its subject valleys, was the heart of the country
Principal divisions and of the Samnites. Of the two principal divisions of the Samnites,
towns of Samnium.  one, the Caudinians, occupied the southern side of the Matese, and
the other, the Pentrians, dwelt on its northern side. To the former belonged the
towns of Allifse' on the Vulturnus, of Telesia, the country of that Pontius Telesinus,"7 who struggled so valiantly against the fortune of Sylla in the great battle
at the Colline gate, and of Beneventum.Y  To the Pentrians belonged Â~Esernia9
on one of the first feeders of the Vulturnus, Bovianum25 on the Biferno or Tifernus,
and Sepinum21 on the E. of the Matese, not far from the sources of the Tamaro.
Besides the Caudinians and Pentrians, there were, doubtless, other tribes more or
Tribes connecteod with less closely connected with the Samnite name, who took part in the
the Samnites.  great contest of their nation with Rome. The very names of some
of these may have perished; for it is by mere accident that we hear of the Caracenians,22 a tribe to the north of the Pentrians, who dwelt in the upper valley of
the Sangro or Sagrus, and to whom belonged the town of Aufidena. The Frentanians, who reached down to the very shores of the Adriatic, are called a Samnite people;h3 yet in the accounts of the wars with Rome, they are spoken of as
distinct; and they seem to have taken no part in the first war. And the Hirpinians, whose country is also included within the limits of Samnium, and who
dwelt to the S. E. of the rest of their countrymen, occupying the upper valleys
of the Calore and Sabbato on the south of the Apennines, and of the Ofanto or
Aufidus on the northern side, are on some occasions4 distinguished from the Sam
S They are turned out about the end of June.
See Keppel Craven, Vol. I. p. 20.
16 Alife, which still retains its ancient name,
ranks even now as a city, but the bishop resides
at Piedimonte, a flourishing town about three
miles distant, and Alife is at present almost depopulated from malaria. See Keppel Craven,
Vol. I. p. 21.
7 And according to the writer of the little
work, "de viris illustribus," it was the country also of that still greater C. Pontius, who defeated the Romans at the Caudine Forks. The
remains of Telesia are to be seen at the distance
of about a mile to the N. W. of the modern
town of Telese, which, like Alife, has almost
gone to ruin from the influence of the malaria.
See Keppel Craven, Vol. II. p. 173, 174.
8 This is still a well-built and flourishing
town, containing a population of 18,000 souls.
See Keppel Craven's Tour in the southern provinces of Naples, p. 22, 28.
1n The present town, still called Isernia, stands
on a narrow ridge between two torrents, running down in very deep ravines, which meet
a little below, and then fall into the Vandra,
about two miles above its junction with the Volturno. It is a flourishing place, with various
manufactures, and a population of about 7000
souls. Large remains of polygonal walls are
still visible, which belong, probably, to the days
of its independence as a Samnite city. The remarkable tunnel, hewn through the rock for
about a mile, and still used, according to its
original purpose, for supplying the town with
water, is probably a work of the Roman times.
See Keppel Craven, Abruzzi, Vol. II. p. 81-84.
20o Bovianum, or Boiano, also contains remains of polygonal walls, built of very large
stones, put as closely together as possible and
the smaller interstices filled up with remarkable
Inicety. It is a cold place, being shaded by the
Matese, which rises directly to the south of it;

and the Biferno so floods the valley, that it is a
constant swamp, and the air is damp and foggy;
but there is no malaria, because it has no severe
heats in summer. Its population, according to
Giustiniani, writing in 1797, was then 8500 souls.
Mr. Keppel Craven rates it at present as low as
1500. Abruzzi, Vol. II. p. 164.
21 The actual town of Sepino stands on a hill
at some distance from the remains of the ancient
city, which are to be seen in the valley below.
These remains are very large and remarkably
Sperfect, but they are of Roman, as I imagine,
rather than of Samnite origin. One of the famous cattle-tracks (calles, tratturi, delle pecore), which have existed unaltered from time
immemorial for the yearly migrations of the
cattle from and to the coast, runs straight
through the ruins of the ancient town from E.
to W. See Keppel Craven, Abruzzi, Vol. II. p.
181, 135.
22 The name is only noticed, I believe, by Zonaras and Ptolemy; unless it be the same with
the Carentini of Pliny. The Italian writers,
Romanelli, for instance, and Micali, propose to
read Sariceni, as if the name were derived from
the neighboring river Sarus or Sangro. But
this is exceedingly uncertain. Alfidena, or Aufidena, contains at present about 1500 souls: it
stands on the Rio Torto, a torrent which just
below the town plunges down into a very deep
and narrow glen, about a mile above its einction with the Sangro. There exists considerable
remains of polygonal walls, and an Oscan inscription on the bridge which crosses the Rio
Torto. Keppel Craven, Abruzzi, Vol. II. p. 58,
59.
3 Strabo calls them YavvctfeXv Ovog, V. p. 241;
yet Livy represents them as suing for and obtaining peace as a distinct people, after a treaty
had been concluded with the Samnites, IX. 45.
24 As, for instance, "Hannibal ex Hirpinis in
Samnium transit." Livy, XXII. 13.




ï~~CHAP. XXVIII.]  STATE AND HABITS OF THE SAMNITES.

251

nites; and it is by no means certain that they took part in the beginning of the
contest with Rome; nor, on the other hand, that when they became involved in
it, the other tribes which had been first engaged continued to maintain it without
interruption.
The country of the Samnites still retains its ancient features, and our own eyes
can inform us sufficiently of its nature. But of the Samnite peo-  is known oe
ple we can gain no distinct notions whatever.   Unknown and state of h Smnthe
unnoticed by the early Greek writers, they had been well-nigh people.
exterminated before the time of those Roman writers whose works have come
down to us; and in the Augustan age, nothing survived of them but a miserable
remnant, retaining no traceable image of the former state of the nation. Our
knowledge of the Samnites is literally limited to the single fact that they were
a brave people, who clung resolutely to their national independence. We neither
know what was the connection of the several tribes of the nation with each other,
nor what was the constitution of each tribe2t within itself. We know nothing
distinct of their military system and tactic, except that they did not use the order of the phalanx; the sword and large shield"2 were their favorite arms, and
not the small shield and pike. We do not know how they governed the countries which they conquered, nor how far they adopted the Roman system of
colonies."7 Their wealth, manner of living, and general civilization we can but
guess at; and to add to all this, the very story of their wars with Rome having
been recorded by no contemporary historian, has been corrupted, as usual, by the
Roman vanity; and neither the origin of the contest, nor its circumstances, nor
the terms of the several treaties which were made before its final issue, have been
related truly.
Thus destitute of direct information, we may be pardoned for endeavoring to
extract some further conclusions from the few facts known to us. Their pri nipal articoles
The nature of their country makes it certain that the principal of produce.
wealth of the Samnites consisted in their cattle. Wool and hides must have
been the chief articles which they had to sell to their neighbors. winter asturage for
But the high elevation of much of their country, as it preserved their cattle o the seathe pasture unscorched by the summer heats, was, on the otherconst,
hand, especially exposed to the rigor of the winter; the snow lay so long on the
ground that their cattle could not have found subsistence. And as, in like manner, the parched plains of Apulia yield no grass in the summer, the inhabitants
of the centre of Italy, and of the coast of the Adriatic, must always have been
dependent on each other; and the Samnites, either by treaty or by conquest,
must have obtained the right of pasturing their cattle in winter in the low grounds
near the sea, either on one side of the peninsula or on the other. On the shores
of the Adriatic this was probably secured by their close connection with the
Frentanians, a people of their own race; and by their constant friendly inter
", Micali states that the Samnites were governed by a priestly aristocracy, like the Etruscans. He gives no authority for this, and certainly it is not proved by their mere practice of
enlisting their soldiers on great emergencies
with certain solemn religious ceremonies.
26 Livy expressly speaks of them as scutati,
and describes the form of their shield, IX. 40.
The use of the scutum in itself implies that the
sword, and not the spear, was the offensive
weapon generally used; we are told also that
the Campanians called their gladiators Samnites,
because they equipped them with arms taken
from the Samnites (Livy, IX. 40); and in such
combats, as the very name shows, the sword
was the common weapen. Add to this the story,
whether well or ill founded, as to the particular
fact, that the Romans borrowed their arms, offensive and defensive, " arma et tela," from the

Samnites.   Sallust, Bell. Catilin, 52.  Athenuns, VI. 106, p. 273. Diodorus, XXIII. L
Fragm. Vatic.
21 Micalisays that "their society was founded
on a system of agrarian laws," and he quotes as
his authority for this a fragment of Varro preserved to us by Philargyrius, one of the scholiasts on Virgil, in his note on Georgic. II. 167.
The fragment runs thus: "Terra culture causa
attributa olim particulatim hominibus, ut Etraria Tuscis, Samniumin Sabellis." But I do not
understand this as saying any thing of agrarian
laws, but merely that the earth became the property of particular portions and races of mankin, instead of being all common to all; and
that thus Etruria was given (by the gods, I
think, and not by an agrarian law) to the people of the Etruscans, and Samnium to the Sabellines.




ï~~252

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVIII

course28 with the Marrucinians and Vestinians; while their arms, by winning possession of Campania, procured for them an access to the coast on that side, and
gave them the full enjoyment of that soft and sunny plain which extends along
the shore of the Gulf of Salerno.
It is not certain, as I have said, that the Samnites governed their Campanian
Their conquestsinCam. conquests by means of colonies, but there is every probability that
pania.       they did so. The Samnite colonists would thus constitute the ruling body in every city: and, like the early Roman patricians, might be called
indifferently either the burghers or the aristocracy. Niebuhr supposes that the
sixteen hundred Campanian knights, who in the great Latin war are said to have
stood aloof from the mass of the people, and to have remained faithful to Rome,
were the colony of the Samnite conquerors. And the frequent revolts which we
read of, from one alliance to another, may mark a corresponding domestic revolution, in which the colony either lost or re-established its ascendency. Yet it
may have happened that the colony, in some cases, had really identified itself
with the old inhabitants, and felt with them more than with the people from whom
they were themselves descended. In this manner the Samnite colonies may
have become in feeling thoroughly Campanian, and have wished to make themselves independent of their own Samnite countrymen in Campanium; and thus,
although the highest of the Campanian nobility were of Samnite extraction, yet
Campania may have become, as it is represented, wholly independent of the Samnite nation within no long period after its first conquest.
Not the slightest notice remains of the effect produced on the Samnite dominHow they were affected ion by the irruptions of the Gauls. Yet in the year 394-395 the
by the invasions of the Gauls had wintered"9 in Campania; and after their last appearGauls.       ance in Latium in 406, they are said to have retreated into Apulia30
through the land of the Volscians and Falernians; so that they must have passed
as it seems through a part of Samnium. The heart of the Samnite territory
indeed they were not likely to assail; they were not expert in besieging walled
cities, nor would they be tempted to invade the mountain fastnesses of the cen.
tral Apennines. Thus if the Samnites did not choose to engage with them in the
plains, their substantial power would be little impaired by their invasions; and
they received from them perhaps no greater mischief than the ravaging of their
territory in Campania, and the loss of their cattle, which might have been sent
down to the coast for their winter pasture. It is possible, however, that a dread
of the Gauls may have been one of the causes which led to a treaty of alliance
between Rome and the Samnites' in the year 401.
The first Samnite war, which broke out eleven years afterwards, was no doubt

28 The Vestinians join the Samnites in 424,
and the Marsians, Pelignians, and Marrucinians,
are represented as so closely connected with the
Vestiniians, that an attack on these would necessarily involve the Romans in a war with all the
others. Livy, VIII. 29. I think it may be concluded that the Marsians and Palignians were
on friendly terms with the Samnites, from the
fact that the Latins, then in alliance with Rome,
attacked the Pelignians in the first year of the
Samnite war (Livy, VII. 88); and that as soon
as peace is made between Rome and Samnium,
the Roman armies march through the country
of the Marsians and Pelignians, in order to
reach Campania. Livy, VIII. 6.
According to Livy, IX. 13, the Apulians were
hostile to the Samnites, because they were oppressed by them, and their country frequently
'aid waste. Had Livy any authority for this
last expression, " campestria et mnaritima loca... ipsi montani atque agrestes depopulabantur," or did he put it in merely as a natural way
of accounting for the ill-will of the Apulians

towards their neighbor? But what if the injurious treatment of the Samnites consisted in
compelling the Apulians 'o find pasture for their
cattle in the winter; exa ly as the Arragonese
kings of Naples obliged all tenants holding of
the crown in Apulia to let their lands during the
winter to the cattle-owners of the Abruzzi; and
although the French took off these restrictions,
yet the present government has, in a great measure, reimposed them: and the Apulian proprietors are still obliged to reserve two-thirds
of their land in pasture, and have only the cultivation of one-third leftto their own disposal
See Keppel Craven, Abruzzi, Vol. I. p. 267 -269.
29 Livy, VII. 11.
o Livy, VII. 26.
sx Livy, VII. 19. Diodorus, XVI. 45.   It
may be observed that Diodorus agrees with
Livy in placing this treaty in the consulship of
M. Fabius Ambustus, and T. Quintius; but the
consulship is according to him the 2d year of
the 107th Olympiad.




ï~~CI. XXVIII.]

CHARACTER OF THE WAR,

253

occasioned in part by the advance of the Samnite arms in the val- Causes of the first war
ley of the Liris, and by the war between Rome and the Auruncans between the R  nans
in the year 410, which brought the Roman legions into the imme-nSamit.
diate neighborhood of Campania."   At this time Rome and Latium     were in
league together, and jointly pressing upon the Volscians; their power held out
hopes to the Campanians that, by their aid, they might be defended against the
Samnites. This aid was in the year 412 become highly needful; the Campanians, having ventured to defend the Sidicinians33 against an attack of the Samnites, had drawn the hostilities of the Samnites upon themselves, and we find
that a Samnite army occupied the ridge of Tifata immediately above Capua, and
from thence descended like the   Equians and Volscians from Algidus, to the
plain before the walls of the city. In this state of distress, Capua implored the
protection of Rome and Latium, and obtained it.34 A war between Samnium on
the one hand, and the connected Romans, Latins, and Campanians on the other,
was the immediate consequence.
The Roman consuls in this year were M. Valerius Corvus, and A. Cornelius
Cossus. Valerius is the hero of that famous legend already re- character of the a
lated, which told how he had vanquished in his early youth a count of th war.
gigantic Gaul by the aid of a heaven-sent crow. The acts of his consulship have
been disguised by a far worse spirit; they were preserved, not by any regular
historian, but in the mere funeral orations and traditional stories of his own family; and were at last still further corrupted by the flattery of a client of his
house, the falsest of all the Roman writers, Valerius of Antium. Hence we have
no real military history of the Samnite war in this first campaign, but accounts
of the worthy deeds of two famous Romans, M. Valerius Corvus, and P. Decius
Mus. They are the heroes of the two stories, and there is evidently no other
object in either of them but to set off their glory. It seems to me to be a great
mistake5 to regard such mere panegyric as history.
All that history can relate is that the Romans, we know not with what allied

3 Livy, VII. 28. Niebuhr supposes that by
the name of Auruncans are meant the Volscians
en the Liris, and that Sora was an Auruncan
town. Vol. III. p. 101. Livy himself does not
seem to have had this notion; for the Auruncan and Volscian wars are in his accounts carefully distinguished, and Sora is said to have
been taken from the Volscians. The Auruncans, on the other hand, are mentioned again
in the 8th Book, c. 15, and Suessa Aurunca is
named as their chief town.    Now Siessa is
Sessa, a town standing on the crater of an old
volcano, just above the modern road from Naples to Rome, a few miles to the east of the
Garigliano or Liris. Is there any reason for
thinking that these Auruncans were more
closely connected with the Volscians of Sora
and Arpinum than with those of Antium, or
that the name Auruncan was at this period extended to any other Opican people than to those
of the neighborhood of Sessa?
3 Livy, VII. 29. The Sidicinians were close
neighbors to the Auruncans, living on the same
cluster of volcanic hills which form the boundary of the plain of Naples on the road towards
Rome. Teanum, now Teano, was their principal town.
4 Livy, VII. 81. But it is impossible to believe the statement in Livy that they applied to
the Romans only, or that they purchased the
Roman protection by a literal surrender,- deditio, of themselves and their city to the sovereign
disposal of Rome. Every step in the Samnite
and Latin wars has been so disguised by the
Roman annalists, that a probable narrative of
these events can only be given by a free correc
tion of their falsifications. The case of Capua
applying for aid to Rome against the Samnites
was exactly that of Corcyra asking help from
Athens against Corinth. The motives which
induced the Athenians to receive the Corcyrnans into their alliance were the very same which
influenced the Romans: the justice of the measure was in both cases equally questionable;
but it may be doubted whether the Roman legions sent into Campania were ordered only to
fight in the event of an actual attack made upon
their allies, which was the charge given by Pericles' government to the ten ships sent to protect Corcyra. So truly is real history a lesson
of universal application, that we shouldunderstand the war between Rome and Samnium far
better from reading Thucydides' account of the
war between Corinth and Corcyra, than from
Livy's corrupted story of the very events themselves.
-5 Some of my readers may have seen a work
which formed a sort of Appendix to the " Victoires, Conqu~tes, &c. des Frangais,"' and was
called "Tables du Temple de la Gloire." It
consisted of an alphabetical catalogue raison
of all Frenchmen, of whatever military rank,
who had distinguished themselves, or thought
that they had done so, in the course of the last
war; and many of the articles were apparently
contributed by the very individuals themselves
who were the heroes of them. Now these notices had nothing of the license of a poetical account of events; they professed to be a real
matter of fact narrative; they were published
when the memory of the actions to which they
relate was fresh, and in the face of the jealous




ï~~254

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVIII

irst  mign, and force to aid them, took the field with two armies; that one of
battl by Mount Gau- these was to protect Campania, while the other was destined to...       invade Samnium. The army in Campania was commanded by M.
Valerius, and his panegyric, careless of historical details, brings him, without a
word as to his previous march, to Mount Gaurus,35 now Monte Barbaro, in a
remote corner of Campania, close upon the sea above Pozzuoli. Here, says the
story, he met the Samnites, and here, after a most bloody battle, he defeated
them.
The army which was to invade Samnium,5 had scarcely entered the hills
Un.nccessfulinvasionot which bound the plain of Naples, apparently by the pass of Madsuanium.     daloni, when it became involved in a deep defile, and was nearly
cut off by the enemy. It was saved by the conduct and courage of the famous
P. Decius, then one of the military or legionary tribunes; and thus his panegyrist gives the whole story in great detail, and ends with saying that the Roman
army was not only saved from destruction, but gained a great victory over the
enemy. As it is not pretended, however, that the Romans made any progress
in Samnium beyond the scene of their victory, it is likely that their success was
limited to their escaping from a very imminent danger, and being enabled to
retreat with safety.
The story of Valerius pretends that he won yet a second victory over the
Resultof the campignwhole collected force of Samnium, which had been gathered to
Resulofthe campgn. revenge their late defeat; and yet we are told that as soon as the
Roman armies had returned to Rome, the Campanians3t were obliged to send
embassies to the senate, requesting that a force might winter in Campania for
their protection, to keep off the attacks of the Samnites. This is the beginning
of a totally different story, that of the sedition of the year 413, and the author
of it having no concern with the Samnite war, did not think of reconciling his

criticism of all the nations of Europe, where
there were thousands of witnesses both able
and eager to expose any exaggeration. And yet,
after all, what sort of history of any of the campaigns of the last war could be compiled from
the "Tables du Temple de la Gloire?" I cannot
therefore, persuade myself that the details of
the battle by Mount Gaurus, or of the wise and
valiant conduct of Decius in Samnium, deserve
to be transcribed in a modern history of Rome.
They have not obtained such celebrity as to be
worth preserving as legends; they have not in
their style and substance those marks of originality which would make them valuable as a
picture of the times; and least of all, have they
that trustworthiness which would entitle them
to be regarded as historically true.
ae Livy, VII. 82. "Consules... ab urbe
profecti, Valerius in Campaniam, Cornelius in
Samnium, ille ad montem Gaurum, hic ad Saticulam, castra ponunt." "What actions," says
Niebuhr, " had forced the consul to fall back
thither, and gave to the Samnites that assurance
of victory with which they hastened to attack
him,-this knowledge, as almost all else whereby the Samnite wars might have become more
intelligible, is buried in everlasting night."
Vol. III. p. 187.
3 Livy, VII. 84-36.   The account of the
honors paid to Decius on this occasion by his
fellow-soldiers, is characteristic of the time and
people, and is worth transcribing. "After the
battle, the consul called all the soldiers together, and made a speech, in which he coinmmended all the worthy deeds which Decius had
done." [Polybius especially mentions and
praises this practice, VI. 89.] "'He then, as
was the custom, gave him divers gifts of honor,

especiainy a crown of gold, and one hundred
oxen, and one beautiful white ox over and
above the number, with his horns bedecked
with gold. To the soldiers who had been with
him in his post of danger, the consul  gave an
ox to each man, and two coats; and told them
that their daily allowance of corn should for the
time to come be doubled. Then, when the consul had ended, all the soldiers of the legions
gave to Decius a wreath of twisted grass, which
was accustomed to be given by a beseiged or
blockaded army to him who had delivered
them; and it was put upon his head amidst the
cheers of all the army. Another wreath also,
of the like sort, was given to Decius by the
soldiers of his own band. So Decius stood,
wearing his crown of gold and his wreath of
grass, and he forthwith offered in sacrifice to
Mars the beautiful white ox with the gilded
horns, and the other hundred oxen he gave to
the soldiers who had followed him in his enterprise. And the other soldiers too gave each
man to the soldiers of Decius a pound of corn
from their own allowances, and a measure exceeding a pound in weight (sextarios) of wine.
All the while that they were giving these honors to Decius and his soldiers, the whole army
were shouting and cheering, for they knew not
what to do for joy."  Livy, VII. 87.
u8 Livy VII. 88. He adds that the people of
Suessa sent an embassy to the same effect.
This shows, that immediately after the retreat
of the Roman armies, the Samnites were beginning, not only to overrun Campania again, but
even to carry their ravages beyond the Vulturnus into the country of the Sidicinians and Au
runcans.




ï~~CHAP. XXVIII.]

DOMESTIC DISTURBANCES.

255

account with the exaggerated representations given of the preceding campaign.
That the Romans drove the Samnites from Campania is probable; but, on the
other hand, they failed in their attack upon Samnium, and the Samnites were
clearly no way dispirited as to the general result of the war.
It would seem from a short and obscure notice in Livy,39 that the Samnites
were assisted in this war by some of their neighbors; whether as The Latin. engaged
equal or as dependent allies we know not. For it appears that against the relignian..
the Latins, instead of being engaged in Campania or in Samnium, moved into the
heart of Italy and attacked the Pelignians; so that we must suppose that the
operations of this year were carried on on a most extensive scale, and we thus
see how much greater was this contest with Samnium, than any other in which
Rome had been engaged before.
The active campaign was short; for the consuls, so far as appears, still entered on their office on the 1st of July, and their triumphs took A Roman armywintere
place on the 22d and 24th of September.4"0 They themselves in Campania.
did not return to Campania, but parties of Roman soldiers, according to the
request of the Campanians, were sent back to garrison the several cities, and a
large force was thus kept on service during the winter. This state of things
lasted through the following spring; the Romans would not commence offensive
operations till the new consuls should come into office: of the movements of the
Samnites we hear nothing; but it may be that their usual season of military service was the same as that of the Romans, and mere plundering parties would be
deterred by the force left to keep them in check.  But when the new consul, C.
Marcius Rutilus, arrived after midsummer to take the command of the army, he
found himself engaged in a very different duty from that of marching against the
Samnites.
Had we any history of these times, events so important and so notorious as
the great disturbance of the year 413 must have been related in Domestic distrbances
their main points clearly and faithfully.  But because we have
merely a collection of stories recording the great acts of particular families and
individuals, and in each of these the glory of its own hero, and not truth, was
the object: even matters the most public and easy to be ascertained are so disguised, that nothing beyond the bare fact that there was a disturbance, and that
it was at length appeased, is common to the various narratives.41 The panegyrists of the Valerian family claimed the glory of putting an end to the contest
for M. Valerius Corvus, who was, they said, specially appointed dictator; while
the stories of the Marcian and Servilian families said that every thing had been
done by the two consuls, C. Marcius Rutilus, and Q. Servilius. One account
represented the affair as a secession of the Roman commons, another described
it as a mutiny of the army in Campania. The story which most of the annalists
afterwards adopted, taking only the latter view of the case, and thinking that
mutinous soldiers ought not to benefit by their mutiny, told only how they were
pardoned for their crime, and how they obtained4" no more than one or two insignificant concessions, which in no respect compromised the dignity of the government. But other accounts43 preserved the memory of a secession headed by
a tribune of the commons, and winning some of the most important constituSLivy, VII. 88. "Hujus certaminis fortu- must not suppose that the "ancient authors"
na... Latinos, jam exercitibus comparatis, ab here spoken of were contemporary with these
Romano in Pelignum vertit helium." This can times; they were but the annalists of the sixth
only mean that the Latins directed their main and seventh centuries of Rome, who followed
force against the northern side of the Samnite each the traditions and memorials of a different
confederacy, moving by the lake Fucinus upon family. Livy himself, in another place, VIII.
Sulmo, and the country of the Pelignians, and 40, deplores the want of all contemporary writhus threatening Samnium on the rear.    ters for the times of the Samnite wars, as one
40 See the Fasti Capitolini.           great cause of the hopeless confusion in which
"  " Adeo nihil," says Livy, "preterquam  the story of those wars was involved.
seditionem fuisse, eamque compositam, inter  42 Livy, VII. 41.
antiquos rerum auctores constat." VII. 42. We  41 Livy, VII. 42.




ï~~256

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVIII

tional points which had ever yet been agitated; nay, they told how it forced
from the patricians that which above all things they would be most loth to
yield, both on public grounds and on private,-a general abolition of debts.44
The truth, however, in this instance, seems not difficult to disentangle. In
spite of the successive lowerings of the rate of interest, there was
The army in Campania
mutinies and marhes a large amount of debt undischarged, because there had been no
towards Rowe.0
to..d Ro.  change for the better in the circumstances of the commons at
large to enable them to pay off even the principal of what they owed. A multitude of men thus involved, many of them perhaps actually nexi, were kept on
foreign service during the winter, a thing in itself extremely galling to them, and
were quartered in the towns of Campania, where they witnessed a state of luxury such as they could never have conceived before. Nothing is more probable45 than that they should have longed to appropriate those wealthy cities to themselves, to establish themselves at Capua, as their fathers, forty years before,
would have fain done at Veii, and to make the Campanians their subjects, the
commons of a state in which they themselves would be the burghers. Stories
of their design were carried to Rome, and the commons there feeling that they
too had their share of distress, proposed also to seek their remedy. Before the
plans of the soldiers were yet ripe, attempts were made by their officers to break
up their combinations, and detachments of those who were most suspected were
ordered home, as if they were no longer wanted in Campania. But these, when
they came to Lautulae, a narrow pass between the sea and the mountains close
to Tarracina, concerted their measures with the cohort which was there in garrison, and openly refused to obey their commanders. The example once set became contagious; the mass of the soldiers quartered in Campania joined the
revolters, and all marched together46 towards Rome, releasing on their way all
the bondmen debtors whom they found working as slaves on their creditors'
lands, till their number was swelled to 20,000 men.
They halted on the slope of the Alban hills, near Boville, fortified a regular
The commons rise at camp, plundered the country as if it belonged to an enemy,41 and
oa. vaerius seized upon a patrician, T. Quinctius, at his farm or country-house
Corvus diltetr.
near Tusculum, and forced him to become their leader. The commons at Rome waited no longer; they too rose; they too laid hold on a patrician, C. Manlius, loving the name of their old champion and martyr M. Manlius:
they marched out of the city, and established themselves in a spot four miles
distant from the walls. Even now the patricians were not left helpless; besides
themselves and their clients, a numerous body, they would on this occasion be

"4 Auctor de Viris Illustribus, inValer. Corvo.
Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. I. Â~ 2.
Perhaps I ought hardly to have expressed
myself so strongly as to the probability of this
part of the story, since Niebuhr considers it
undeserving of credit. But Wachsmuth has
well observed, that the eager desire of the commons to settle at Veii, proves sufficiently that
they had no invincible attachment to Rome as
their native country: he adds, withno less truth,
"that a people whose innocence is the fruit of
ignorance rather than of principle, is little able
to resist the first strong temptation." How
great were the excesses of the Spartans after
the Peloponnesian war, when opportunities of
indulgence were first offered to them! And
why should we conceive that the Roman commons were men of greater simplicity of manners than the Samnites, who had formerly
seized Capua in a similar manner, when they
were inhabiting it jointly with the Etruscans?
Compare also the stories of the forcible occupation of Smyrna by some Colophonian exiles
who had been hospitably received there (Herodotus I. 150); and of the seizure of Zancle by

the Samians (Herodotus, VI. 23), as showing
that such acts were practised even by Greeks
towards Greeks, at a period when manners had
been as little corrupted by luxury and skepticism as they were at this time at Rome; whereas the Campanians were no countrymen of the
Romans, and therefore, according to the too
prevailing notions of the ancient world, were
entitled to far less consideration.
46 Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. I. Â~ 1. The persons whom he speaks of as ril rle pywv' iv roZ
eypoi lelsiveovh, must have been debtors working as slaves on the " possessiones" of their patrician creditors, on such portions of land lately
conquered from the Volscians as had been occupied in the usual manner by individuals.
Foreign-purchased slaves must have been too
rare at Rome at this period, to have been employed in great numbers as agricultural laborers: and, in fact, the slaves who were confined to work in the workhouses of the patricians in these early times, are always described
as insolvent debtors.
4 " Ex prcedatoribus agis quidam compertum adtulerunt," &c.-Livy, VII. 89.




ï~~Cae. XXVIII.]

M. VA.LERIUS DICTATOR.

257

joined by all the noblest and richest of the commons, and by many, perhaps, of
the best men even among the less wealthy, who would view with horror the disobedience of the soldiers, and the breach of their military oath.  They prepared
to put down the revolt; yet, not trusting to force alone, they named as dictator
M. Valerius Corvus, the most popular man in Rome, born of a house whose
members had ever befriended the commons, himself in the vigor of youth,4"
scarcely thirty, yet already old in glory, and now in the full renown of his recent
victories over the Samnites. The dictator proceeded to meet the soldiers from
Campania; the consuls were left to deal with the commons who had seceded
from the city.
But when the opposing parties49 approached each other, and citizens were seen
arrayed in order of battle against citizens, all shrunk alike from Reconeniation of the
bringing their contests to such an issue, and with a sudden revul- contending parties.
sion of feeling the soldiers, instead of joining battle, first welcomed each other
with friendly greetings, then, as they drew nearer, they grasped each other's
hands, till at last, amidst mutual tears and expressions of remorse, they rushed
into each other's arms. It may well be believed that not Valerius only, but the
majority of the patricians, were noble enough to rejoice sincerely at this termination of the mutiny, although they foresaw that whatever were the demands of the
soldiers and the commons, it would now be necessary to grant them.
But the insurgents were also brought to a softer temper, and asked little but
what might have been given them      unasked, as being in itself Terms demanded by
just and reasonable. First, an act of amnesty5Â~ was passed for the thoe soldiers, and grantmutiny and the secession, and the dictator entreated the patricians d.
and those of the commons who had sided with them, that they would never,
even in private life, in jest or in earnest, reproach any man with having been
concerned in these unhappy dissensions. Then there was passed and sworn to,
with all religious solemnities,1 a law which the soldiers regarded as their great
charter, that no man's name who had been once enlisted should be struck off the
list of the legions without his own consent, and that no one who had once been
chosen military tribune should be afterwards2 obliged to serve as a centurion.
They deprecated the power of striking their names off the list of soldiers, partly
because it degraded them to an inferior rank, that of the capite censi, who were

48 He was three and twenty in his first consulship (Livy, VII. 40), and he was consul for
the first time in the year 407. - See Livy,
VII. 26.
49 Livy, VII. 42. Appian, Samnitic. Fragm.
I.   2. This sudden burst of feeling is credible
enough; for civil war seems shocking to men
who are little scrupulous in shedding the blood
of foreigners, however unjustly. In this respect, it needs the hardness and coldness of a
later stage of society to overcome the natural
shrinking from domestic warfare, The feudal
times are, of course, an exception to this; for
to the isolation and lawlessness of the feudal
system the relations of countryman and fellowcitizen were almost unknown.
" Livy, VII. 41.
1 "S Lex sacrata militaris." A lex sacrata
partook of the character of a treaty, and was
sworn to by the two parties between whom it
had been agreed to. Thus the term is applied
only to such laws as settled points most deeply
affecting the interests of the two orders in the
state, and were therefore a sort of treaty of
peace between them. Of this sort, besides the
famous laws respecting the tribunes of the commons, was the law of Icilius, de Aventino publicando.
on It should be observed, that Livy gives to
this petition a different object. The soldiers,
17

he says, insisted that no one who had been once
tribune should afterwards be made centurion,
out of dislike to one P. Salonius, who had been
made almost every other year one or the other,
and who was obnoxious to them, because lihe
had especially opposed their meeting. Both
Niebuhr and Wachsmuth suppose, on the contrary, that P. Salonius was a popular man with
the soldiers, and that the petition was made in
his behalf, to save him from being obliged to
go on serving in a lower rank, after having once
served in a higher. Wachsmuth well compares
the case of Volero Publilius, who complained
of being required to serve as a common soldier,
after having been once centurion. (Livy, II.
55.) Many motives may have joined, however,
in suggesting this demand of the soldiers. It
was a great thing for a. deserving soldier, that
if once appointed military tribune (six of whom
were at this time chosen by the votes of the
people themselves, Livy, VII. 5), he should be
freed from the necessity of serving again, except in the same or a higher rank. And it was
a great thing for the mass of the commons, that
promotion should be kept as open as possible,
and that it should be necessary every year to
fill up the vacancies among the centurions with
new men, instead of confmning them to a certain
number of individuals who might pass at plea.
sure from one command to another.




ï~~258

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXVIII.

considered unfit to bear arms; partly because, whilst they were on military serve
ice, they were protected from being personally attached for debts; and partly,
also, because service in Campania bore an agreeable aspect, and might furnish a
poor man with the means of relieving himself from his embarrassments. The law
about the military tribunes had, probably, various objects; amongst the rest it
may have been intended to advance the dignity of that office, which offered to the
commons the readiest means of acquiring distinction, and thus was a natural step
to the highest political magistracies.
Another demand was made in a different spirit; that the pay of the horsemen
Terms demanded and or knights should be lowered, they receiving at that period three
refused.      times as much as the foot-soldiers. In requiring this the soldiers not
only wished to reduce the public expenditure, and sc to lighten their own taxation,
but there was also a feeling of enmity towards the knights, who had taken a decided part against them.  But on this point the senate would not yield; and the
soldiers, ashamed perhaps of the motives which had led them to ask for it, did
not press their demand.53
While the mutiny of the legions was thus ended, the commons, who had withdrawn from the city, returned to their homes again; and L. GeDemands of the corn-.
ennt n Rom.he nucius,64 one of their tribunes, proposed to them  in the Forum,...... ~ certain political measures to which, it was understood, the patricians would offer no opposition.  These were, "that no man should be re-elected
to the same magistracy within ten years, nor hold two magistracies in the same
year; and that both consuls might be plebeians, as the Licinian law had declared that one must be." The multiplication of various offices in the same
hands is an evil of which we have no instance on record, because we have no lists
of any of the magistrates of this period, except the consuls only. The frequent
re-election of the same person to the consulship created an aristocracy within the
aristocracy, and confined the highest offices to a number of great families; and
now that the Licinian law was again observed, it would raise a few plebeian
houses to an undue distinction, whilst the mass of the commons would be altogether excluded. It may be observed that C. Marcius, the plebeian consul of
this very year, was now consul for the fourth time within a period of fifteen years.
But there was another law passed, which Livy could not endure to record, and
General abolition of of which we know not who was the proposer:15 a law whose veryname
debts.         all settled societies regarded with horror; a law which is, indeed,
like war, an enormous evil, but which in this is most unlike war, that it has never
been adopted, except when it was really necessary to prevent an evil still greater.
In order to give the commons an opportunity of rising to a more healthful condition, they were to be freed once for all from the shackles thrown around them
by a former period of unavoidable distress: the consequences of the burning of
the city by the Gauls had never yet been shaken off, nor did it appear likely that
in the ordinary state of things they ever would be.  It was demanded, therefore,
by the commons, and M. Valerius, it is said, advised compliance with their demand, that an act of grace should be extended to all debtors, and that their cred's As the commons were persuaded by Vale- 3ov4i-ras pehv rv  ev rosoras 1i iptuaro rarius and Horatius to abandon their demand for ats 'Pweaoteos roil i rure i xpot5 (namely, the rethe summary execution of the decemvirs.-See volted soldiers), Kai i eta--Samnnitic. Fragm. I.
chap. xvi.                               Â~ 2. There is no mistaking the well-known ex5 Niebuhr supposes, not unnaturally, that pression X Pwr erocor6.-" Num honestum igithis Genucius belonged to the family of the trib- tur," asks Cicero with respect to Cusar when he
une Genucius, who was murdered by the aris- had just heard of his crossing the Rubicon,
tocracy in the year 281.-See p. 65. He was "XpcWr aroscZras, evyd6eov caO6ove, sexcenta alia
also, in all probability, of the same family with scelera moliri,
tI plebeian consuls of the years 385, 887, and  r y 6eav peytrrv er ' xesty rvepavvia. l"
888.                                                        Ad Atticum, VII. 11.
S It is attested by Appian, who, as Niebuhr The expression in the Roman writer is no less
thinks, copied this part of his work from Dio- decisive. M. Valerius, he says, " sublato tere
nysius; and by the little work De Viris Illus- alieno, seditionem compressit."
tribus. Appian's words are plain enough:




ï~~CRAP. XXVIII.]  PEACE BETWEEN ROME AND SAMNIUM.

e,       259

itors should not be permitted to enforce payment. In other words, all those
who had pledged their personal freedom for the payment of their debts (nexi)
were released from their bond; nor could the praetor give over to his creditor's
power, addicere, any debtor who had refused, or might refuse, to enter into such
an engagement.    Thus the burden of actual debts was taken away; and to prevent the pressure of an equal burden hereafter, even the lowest rate of interest
was declared illegal, and any man who received more than the actual sum which
he had lent was liable to restore it fourfold.
This was a sort of national bankruptcy, yet surely it wore the mildest features
of that evil, and in some respects did not deserve the name.  The Its necessity and jus.
nation itself broke no faith; but it required one portion of its citi- ice.
zens to sacrifice their strict legal rights in favor of another portion for the common benefit of all. It was doing on a large scale and under the pressure of urgent necessity, what we see done every day on a smaller scale for an object, not
of necessity, but of expediency; when individuals are forced to sell their property
at a price fixed by others, in order to facilitate the execution of a canal or a railway. The patricians were, in like manner, obliged to part with the money which
had been advanced as a loan either by themselves or by their fathers; and the
compensation which they received was the continued existence of a state of society fraught to them above all their fellow-citizens with the highest means of
happiness: they lost their money to preserve their country.   Had such a sacrifice been made to the indolence, or carelessness, or dishonesty of their debtors,
it would have been mischievous as a precedent, however urgent the necessity
which led to it; but in the present case the debts of the commons had arisen
out of a common calamity, not occasioned by their fault, nor to be remedied by
their exertions: their distress, therefore, was fairly entitled to sympathy, and if
there be any meaning in the term civil society, justice would require that its
stronger members should bear the burdens of the weaker, and should submit to
more than their share of the inconveniences of a common misfortune, rather than allow
it to entail upon their fellow-citizens not inconvenience merely, but absolute ruin.
The domestic disturbances of this year produced important consequences
abroad. The whole brunt of the Samnite war devolved on the rowing power of the
Growing power of the
Latins, and they sustained it so ably that their consideration Latine. Pence between
amongst their allies was greatly increased, and Latium, rather than Re and Sani.
Rome, began to be regarded as the most powerful member of the league. The
remains of the Volscians, such as the brave people of Privernum, and the Antiatians, together with those more distant tribes of the same stock who bordered
on Campania, and were known to the Romans under the name of the Auruncans,
began to gather themselves under the supremacy of Latium, and the Campanians,
who had good reason to dislike the presence of Roman soldiers in their towns,
may have hoped to find in a new confederacy, of which the Latins should be the
head, protection at once against Rome and against the Samnites.    Accordingly,
the Romans felt that it was no time for them to continue their quarrel with Samnium; and in the very next year they concluded with the Sam- A. U. c. 414. A. c.
nites" a separate peace.  Thus the relations of all these nations-"o
were entirely changed: Rome had connected herself with Samnium, and perhaps
66 The Roman story is (Livy, VIII. 1, 2), that ritory on different sides, the Romans suddenly
when L. Emilius, the consul, entered the Sam- and treacherously made a separate peace with
nite territory he found no enemy to oppose him; the common enemy, and withdrew their army:
that the Samnites humbly sued for peace, and and that, not content with this, they actually
purchased an armistice to allow them to send  entered into an alliance with the Samnites, and
ambassadors to Rome, by giving the consul a were ready to join them against Latium."year's pay for his army, and three months' al- Compare the extreme dissatisfaction of the forlowance of corn. What would have been the mer allies of Lacednmon, when she suddenly
account of a Latin writer? Would it not have formed her separate treaty with Athens soon
been something of this sort? " That when the after the conclusion of the peace of Nicias.confederate armies of Rome and Latium were Thucydides, V. 27.
actually in the field, to invade the Samnite ter



ï~~260

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CAP. XXIX,

through the Samnites with their neighbors the Marsians and Pelignians; while,
on the other side, stood a new confederacy, consisting of the Latins and all the
people of Opican extraction who lay between them and the Samnite frontier,
whether known by the name of Volscians, Auruncans, Sidicinians, or Campanians. In the same manner, after the Peloponnesian war, we find Thebes and
Corinth, so long the close allies of Lacedaemon, organizing a new confederacy
against her; and thus, at a later period, Athens was at one time supporting
Thebes, arid shortly after, having become jealous of her growing power and ambition, joined Lacedemon against her former ally; so that in the last campaigns
of Epaminondas, the free citizens of Athens and the barbarian mercenaries of
Dionysius the tyrant were fighting in the same ranks in defence of the Spartan
aristocracy.
CHAPTER XXIX,
THE GREAT LATIN WAR-BATTLE UNDER MOUNT VESUVIUS-THE PUBLILIAN
LAWS-FINAL SETTLEMENT OF LATIUM.-A. U. C. 415-417 (410-412 NIEBUHR).
"Je me refuse a croire que des peuples conf6d6r6s puissent lutter long-temps, a 6galit6 de
force, centre une nation oi la puissance gouvernmentale serait centralisee."-DE TOCQUEVILLE,
De la D6mocratie en Amerique; Tome I. p. 290.
ALTHOUGH Rome had concluded a separate peace with Samnium, yet the
Uncertain relations be- old alliance with the Latins still subsisted in name unbroken.
tween Rome and Latium.          But it could not long remain so; for the Latins continued the war
against the Samnites, and might undoubtedly have called upon the Romans to
aid them, according to the terms of the alliance; while the Samnites' called upon
the Romans to procure for them peace with Latium also. In fact, the existing
state of things showed clearly that the relations between Rome and Latium must
undergo some change; either the two nations must become wholly separate, or
more closely united; if they were to act together at all, some scheme must be
devised to insure that they should act unanimously.
The general congress of the Latin cities took upon itself to propose such a scheme;
no Ltth ins make pro. and the two pretors for the year, L. Annius of Setia, and L. Nutwoon" o  an L-b misius of Circeii, magistrates corresponding to the Roman consuls,
tu.            and retaining the name which the consuls had borne down to
the time of the decemvirate, were dispatched with ten of the principal deputies
of the congress, to communicate their proposal to Rome.' The substance of it
was that the two nations should be completely united; that they should both be
governed by two consuls or praetors, one to be chosen from each nation; that
there should be one senate, to consist of Romans and Latins in equal proportions;
I Livy's whole narrative proceeds on the as- pleased: that is, in Greek language, they were
sumption that the Latins were the dependent abTrduKoL, or able to give and receive satisfaction
allies of Rome, and that the war was on their in their own name, without being obliged to
part a revolt. Now, this is certainly false, as refer their quarrels to any superior; one of the
we know from the terms of the original alliance characteristics of an equal as opposed to a depreserved by Dionysius, V. 61 (see p. 58 of pendent alliance.-See Thucyd. V. 18, 27. I
this history), and from the indisputable author- have, therefore, tacitly corrected all Livy's false
ity of Cincius (p. 58, note 4). Livy himself coloring in this matter, and given his facts i
supplies a refutation of his own story; for he their true light.
allows expressly, VIII. 2, that the Latins had  2 Livy, VIII. 5.
the right of making war with whom they




ï~~CHAP. XXIX.]

'ROPOSALS OF THE LATINS.

26i

and a third similar provision must have been made for the popular branch of
the government, so that a number of Latin tribes should be created, equal to
that of the Roman, and the fifty-four tribes of the two nations should constitute one
common sovereign assembly. In one point the Latins were willing to yield precedence to Rome; none of their cities was equal to Rome in size or greatness:
Rome, therefore, was to be the capital of the nation and the seat of government;
there the senate should sit, and the assembly of the tribes be held; the Roman
Jupiter of the Capitol should be equal to the Latin Jupiter of the mountain of
Alba; to both should the consuls of the united people offer their vows when
they first came into office, and to the temples of both should they go up in triumph, when they returned home from war with victory.3
There were probably some in Rome who would have accepted this union
gladly; but the general feeling, both of the patricians and of the
These propoals are recommons, was strongly against it. It was viewed as a sacrifice jeted wth inignaof national independence and national pride. To the Latins, used tion.
already to a federal government, it was but taking another city into their union;
but to the Romans, whose whole political life was centred in Rome, it was admitting strangers into the Forum and into the Senate, and allowing the majesty
of the Roman Jupiter to be profaned by the entrance of a foreigner into his temple.  Accordingly when the Latin praetors announced their proposal to the senate, which had assembled in the Capitol, it was rejected with indignation; and
T. Manlius Torquatus,4 who was one of the newly elected consuls, declared that
if the senate should be so lost to itself as to receive the law from a man of Setia,
he would come armed into the senate-house, and would plunge his sword into
the body of the first Latin whom he saw within its walls. Then he turned to
the image of the Capitoline Jupiter, and exclaimed: "Hear, O Jove, this wickedness! Wilt thou endure to behold a stranger consul and a stranger senate
within the sacred precinct of thy temple, as though thou wert thyself vanquished
and made captive?" To this the Latin praetor, L. Annius of Setia, made a reply
which the Romans called insulting to their god.    "But Jove," said the Roman
story,5 "taught the stranger to repent him of his scorn: for as soon as he had
spoken his proud words, the lightning flashed and the thunder pealed, and as the
Latin left the temple in haste, to go down by the hundred steps towards the Forum,
his foot slipped, and he fell from the top of the steps to the bottom, and his
head was dashed against a stone, and he died."     Some of the annalists, struck
perhaps by its being a notorious fact that L. Annius commanded the Latin army
in the war, scrupled to say that he had been killed before its commencement;
they said, therefore, that he had only been stunned by his fall: and they said
nothing of the sudden burst of the lightning and thunder.  No doubt, if the traditions of the family of L. Annius had been preserved, they would have given a
different picture of his mission. But whatever were the particulars of it, its result
is certain; the proposal for an equal union was rejected, and the sword was to decide
whether Latium should from henceforth be subject to Rome, or Rome to Latium.
' If the Latins really consented, as is not im- festival on the mountain of Alba, as well as to
probable, to acknowledge Rome as the capital sacrifice to the Roman Jupiter in the Capitol.
of the united nation, it accounts for their sub- Livy, XXI. 63, XXII. 1. And, although the
sequent acquiescence in the settlement made instances are of more rare occurrence, yet we
by the Romans after the war, so far as this, that read of Roman generals triumphing at the
it shows their willingness to waive the mere Mons Albanus, and going up in solemn procesfeeling as to the name of their country, and sion by the Via Triumphalis to the temple of
their consciousness that Rome was so superior the Latin Jupiter, as they went up usually by
to every other Latin city, as to be fairly entitled the Via Sacra to the Capitol. We cannot imto be the head of the united nation. What I agine, therefore, that the Latins, when prohave added in the text respecting the Jupiter posing a perfectly equal union, should have conof the mountain of Alba, seems warranted by sented to assign less honors to their national
the actual practice of later times, even after the god, than he enjoyed even when they were be.
Latins were in a state of acknowledged inferi- come dependent.
ority to Rome. It is well known, that one of  4 Livy, VIII. 5.
the consul's first duties after entering upon  Livy, VIII. 6.
his office, was to offer sacrifice at the great Latin




ï~~262

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXIX,

The Romans, however, had made up their minds to this issue before they heard
Theo Roman, pare the proposals of the Latin ambassadors. They were anxious to
fn P... T. Mlis engage in the war at a moment when they might be assisted by
and P. Deeius are ap-  b Iyih
pointed consuls.  the whole force of the Samnites: the Latins, on the other hand,
would gladly have reduced Samnium to submission before they came to an open
breach with Rome. Resolved, therefore, on the struggle, and well aware of its
importance, the Romans wished to anticipate the election of the new consuls,"
that they might have more time for their preparations before the usual season for
military operations arrived, which, as we have seen, was not till after the harvest.
Accordingly, the consuls of the year 409 were required by a decree of the senate to resign their office before the end of their year, the middle of the summer,
and two men of the highest military reputation were appointed to succeed them.
One of these was T. Manlius Torquatus, renowned in his youth, like Valerius
Corvus, for having slain a gigantic Gaul in single combat, and no less remarkable
for a force of character, such as is best fitted for the control of great emergencies, when what in ordinary life is savageness becomes often raised and sobered
into heroism. He had been consul only four years before; but a special act, wo
must suppose, dispensed in his case with the recent provisions of the Genucian
law. His colleague was the deliverer of the Roman army from its imminent peril
in Samnium in the first campaign of the late war, and a man no less distinguished
nine years earlier for his moderation and equity as one of the five commissioners
appointed to relieve the commons from the burden of their debts,? the famous P.
Decius Mus.
The Romans had good reason to prepare earnestly for the coming contest; for
importan ce of the on- never had they been engaged in one so perilous.  With two or
test.         three exceptions all the Latin cities were united against them; not
all indeed with equal determination, but still all were their enemies. Tusculum,3
whose true friendship they had so long experienced; Lavinium, the sacred city,
which contained the holy things reported to have been broughtby Eneas from
Troy; Setia, Cerceii, and Signia, Roman colonies, were now joined with the mass
of the Latin nation, with Tibur and Prmeneste, with Pedum, Nomentum, and Aricia. The Latin nobles were personally known to those of Rome, and in many
instances connected with them by mutual marriages; the two nations speaking
the same language, with the same manners, institutions, and religious rites, trained
with the same discipline to the use of the same arms, were bound moreover to
each other by the closeness of their long alliance; their soldiers had constantly
served in the same camp, and almost in the same tents; the several parts of
their armies9 had constantly been blended together; legions, cohorts, and maniples had been made up of Romans and Latins in equal proportions; the soldiers, centurions, and tribunes of both nations were thus familiar with each other's
faces: and each man would encounter and recognize in his enemy an old and
tried comrade.
"The Romans and Latins," says Livy,0 "were alike in every thing, except in
their courage." This is an unworthy slander. Even nations of difThe  Latin  millioar
character not i ferio ferent race, and climate, and institutions, when long trained toto the Roman.  gether under a common system of military discipline, and accustomed to fight side by side in the same army, lose all traces of their original
disparity. But what the Latins were, we know from the rank which they held
s Livy, VIII. 2.,                  the Lavinians; and their disposition is evident
S"Quinqueviri mensarii." See Livy, VII. from Livy's own story, VIII. 11. The prmtors
21.                                    of the whole nation for the first year of the war
SGeminus Metius, who was slain by the came from Setia and Circeii, and they are esyoung T. Manlius, commanded the horsemen pecially said to have induced Signia to join the
of Tuseulum.-Livy, VIII. 7. Lavinium, ac- confederacy.
cording to Livy, took no part in the first cam-  9 Livy, VIII. 7, 8.
paign, but the Fasti Capitolini says that the  'o " Adeo nihil apud Latinos dissonum at
consul Munius, in the year417, triumphed over RomanA re prieter animos erat."-VIII. 8.,




ï~~Cnr. XXIX.]

ALLIES OF ROME.

263

amongst the nations of Italy, and from the families which they afterwards furnished to Rome, when it became their common country. The Latins were able to
contend on equal terms with the Samnites and Volscians, with the countrymen
of C. Pontius and C. Marius. From Latium Rome received the Fulvii,n a family
marked at once with all the great and all the bad qualities of the Roman aristocracy; and what Roman house could ever boast of brighter specimens of every
Roman virtue than the Latin house of the Catos of Tusculum?  The issue of the
contest was not owing to the superior courage of the Romans, but to the inherent advantages possessed by a single powerful state when contending against a
confederacy whose united strength she can all but balance alone, while to each
of its separate members she is far superior.
With the Latins were joined, as we have seen, the Camp nians, the Sidicinians,
the Auruncans, and the Volscians, including under this name the The Latin confederacy,
various remnants of that people, the Antiatians on the coast, and and its weaknesses.
the several tribes or cities in the valley of the Liris. Laurentum, Ardea, and
perhaps Lanuvium," alone of all the Latin cities took part with Rome: Fundi
and Formiae stood aloof from the rest of their Volscian countrymen and remained
neutral, allowing a free passage to the Roman armies through their territory.3
It was a more remarkable circumstance, and one of ill omen for the unanimity
and perseverance of the Latin confederacy, that the knights4 or aristocracy of
Capua, whether of Samnite extraction, or of mixed blood, Samnite, Etruscan,
and Opican, protested as a body against the war with Rome, although for the
present the influence of the Latin party overbore their opposition. But it was evident that on the first reverses they would regain their ascendency, and hasten to
withdraw their countrymen from the league. We have also indications" of a Roman
party in some of the cities of the Latins; and it is impossible to suppose that
Tusculum in particular should not have contained many zealous supporters of the
old alliance with Rome. Probably the Roman and anti-Roman parties were in
most places more or less identical with the aristocracy and the party of the commons; and already, as in the second Punic war, Rome was regarded by the
Italian aristocracies as the greatest bulwark of their ascendency.
With Rome were united some few Latin towns," some of her own colonies,'1
her old allies the Hernicans, and above all the Samnites and their Anllies of Rome.

1 L. Fulvius, who was consul in the year
427, had been chief magistrate of Tusculum only
the very year before he was consul at Rome.Pliny, Hist. Natur. VII. 43. Ed. Venet. 1559.
" I agree with Niebuhr and with Sigonius,
that in.Livy's narrative, VIII. 12, 13, Lavinio
and Laviniis should be restored instead of Lanuvio and Lanuvinis. It is not only that the
Fasti Capitolini name the people of Lavinium
and not of Lanuvium as those over whom the
consul Munius triumphed, or that several MSS.
of Livy support the correction; but in the settlement of Latium the Lanuvians are named
apart, as if they had been treated with singular
favor, which is, scarcely to be conceived, if they
had been among the last of the Latins to remain in arms. And that they were favorably
treated appears also from the famous article
" Municipium" in Festus, where they are classed along with the people of Fundi, Formin, and
others, who we know were thought worthy of
reward rather than punishment. Besides, Livy
himself tells us that the Antiatians in the year
415 ravaged the district called Solonius (VIII.
12), and we know from Cicero, de Divinatione,
I. 36, that this district was a part of the territory of Lanuvium. It is certain, therefore, that
Lanuvium must have been friendly to Rome at
that time, and if so, it is not conceivable that
she could afterwards have joined the Latins,

when their cause was almost desperate. But I
am not sure that the mistake is not to be ascribed to Livy himself rather than to his copyists: for it seems a just remark of Drakenborch's that Livy calls the people of Lavinium
not Lavinii, but Laurentes, as if he had confused the two towns together.    Yet "Lanrentes," in VIII. 11, must mean the people of
Laurentum, not of Lavinium, from a comparison with Livy's own statement about Lavinium in the beginning of the same chapter; and
that the two names really belong to two distinct
places is proved by their being both found in
the list of the thirty Latin towns given by
Dionysius, V. 61.
13 Livy, VIII. 14.
1 Livy, VIII. 11.
1 The Romans received inormation of the
hostile designs of the Latins, says Livy, "per
quosdam privatis hospitiis necessitudinibusque
conjunctos." These, like the,rp6favoL in Greece,
would undoubtedly form a party disposed to
Rome, whose influence would be felt as soon as
the fortune of the war turned against the Latins.
16 The lands of the Ardeatians were ravaged
by the Antiatians in 415 (Livy, VIII. 12). Ardea,
therefore, must have been at that time in alliance with Rome.
7 Such as Ostia, whose lands were also ravaged by the Antiatians in 415. (Livy, ibid.)




ï~~264

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXIX.

confederacy, including, it is probable, the warlike nations of the Marsians and
the Pelignians.
When the Latins sent the two praetors as ambassadors to Rome, it is evident
The Romascommencethat no active warfare could be going on in Campania. Latin gar
the war unexpectedly, risons had probably wintered there to repel plundering parties of
and both consuls march
through Samnium into the Samnites; and the Latin army would march thither as soon
campania.     as the season for military operations arrived, to renew their invasion of Samnium.:No expectation seems to have been entertained that their
proposal of an equal union would be answered by an immediate declaration of
war. Certain it is that the breach of the old alliance was far more to be charged
on the Romans than on them; for the Romans had deserted them in the midst
of a war jointly undertaken by the two nations, and had made peace with the
common enemy; and the Campanians, who had originally joined the alliance to
obtain protection against the Samnites, had no choice but to follow the Latins, as
from them alone was that protection now to be hoped for. But the opportunity
was tempting, and the Romans, taking advantage" of the earliness of the season,
when the Latins might scarcely be prepared for active operations, hastily declared
war, and dispatched both consuls with two consular armies, not by the direct road
into Campania by Tarracina or by the Liris, but by a circuitous route at the back
of their enemies' country, through the territory of the Marsians and Pelignianst
into Samnium. There the consuls were joined by the Sanmite army; and their
combined forces then descended from the mountains of Samnium, and encamped
in presence of the enemy in the plain of Capua, with a retreat open into the
country of the Samnites on their rear, but with the whole army and territory of
the hostile confederacy interposed between them and Rome.
While the Romans and Latins lay here over against each other, the consuls
The son of T. Mantus issued an orderÂ~ strictly forbidding all irregular skirmishing, or
enage  the eney co- single encounters with the enemy. They wished to prevent the
trocy to his father's orders, and is executed. confusion which might arise in chance combats between two parties alike in arms and in language; perhaps also they wished to stop all intercourse with the Latins, lest the enemy should discover their real strength, or
lest old feelings of kindness should revive in the soldiers' minds, and they should
begin to ask whether they had any sufficient grounds of quarrel. It was on this
occasion that T. Manlius, the consul's son, was challenged by Geminus Metius,
of Tusculum;" and, heedless of the order of the generals, he accepted the challenge and slew his antagonist. The young man returned in triumph to the camp,
and laid his spoils at his father's feet; but the consul, turning away from him,
immediately summoned the soldiers to the prretorium, and ordered his son to be
beheaded before them. All were struck withhorror at the sight, and the younger
soldiers, from a natural sympathy with youth and courage, regarded the consul

When we consider that the usual season for
hostilities at this period was the autumn, it may
be doubted whether the Latin army which fought
under Vesuvins was more than that force which
had wintered in Campania to garrison the several towns, and as such very inferior in numbers to the two consular armies of the Romans.
The rapid march of the consuls through the central countries of Italy may have been unknown
to the Latins, and their sudden appearance in
Campania in conjunction with the Samnites may
have been as startling a surprise to the enemy,
as that of Claudius Nero to Hasdrubal after his
admirable march from Bruttium to join his coleague on the Motaurus; or as that of Napoleon
to the Austrians when the army of reserve
broke out from the Val d'Aosta on the plains
of Lombardy in the campaign of 1800.
"I Livy, VIII. 6.
2 Livy, VIII. 6.
u Livy, VIII. 7. The same story may be told

again with effect, even after it has been often
told before, if we have received it from an original and independent source; because if
twenty eye-witnesses give an account of the
same event, the impression which it has made
on each of them will have been different, and,
therefore, each will tell the story in his own way,
and it will contain something new and original.
But when we derive all our knowledge from one
single account, and that account has been once
perfectly given, there is nothing to be done by
later writers but to copy it, or simply to state
its substance. Thus it is with Livy's famous
description of the condemnation of T. Manlius
by his father; the story cannot be better told
than he has told it, and we have no means of
adding to it or varying it from other original
sources. I have therefore followed Niebuhr in
simply stating its outline; for the finished picture the reader must consult Livy himself.




ï~~CHAr. XXIX.]

BATTLE UNDER MOUNT VESUVIUS.

265

with abhorrence to the latest hour of his life; but fear and respect were mingled
with their abhorrence, and strict obedience, enforced by so dreadful an example,
was felt by all to be indispensable.
The stories which we are obliged to follow, shifting their scene as rapidly and
unconnectedly as our old drama, transport the two armies without The two armies meet
a word of explanation from the neighborhood of Capua to the foot near mount Venvios.
Resolution of the Rn,
of Mount Vesuvius, where, on the road which led to Veseris, ac- mangeer Ie to devote
themselves to death for
cording to their own way of expressing it, the decisive battle was the victory of their
fought.   What Veseris was,22 or where it was situated, on which country.
side of Vesuvius the action took place, or what had brought the two armies
thither, are questions to which we can give no answers. But he who had been
present at the last council held by the Roman generals before they parted to take
their respective stations in the line, might have seen that, having planned for the
coming battle all that skill and ability could devise, they were ready to dare all
that the most heroic courage could do or suffer: the aruspices had been consulted" as to the import of the signs given by the entrails of the sacrifice: their
answers had been made known to the principal cifficers of the army; and with it
the determination of the consuls, that, on whichever side of the battle the Romans should first begin to give ground, the consul who commanded in that quarter should forthwith devote himself, and the hosts of the enemy with himself, to
the gods of death and to the grave: "for fate," said they, "requires the sacrifice of a general from one party, and of an army from the other: one of us, therefore, will be the general that shall perish, that the army which is to perish also
may be not ours, but the army of the Latins."
We have seen that the arms and tactic of both armies were precisely similar.
In each there were two grand divisions, the first forming the ordi- Similar dispositions o3
nary line of battle, and the second the reserve; the latter being, both rmies.
in point of numbers, considerably the strongest.24 The first division, however,
was subdivided into two equal parts, the first of which, known by the name of
the Hastati, consisted of light and heavy armed soldiers, in the proportion of onethird of the former to two-thirds of the latter; the second part, called the Principes, contained the flower of the whole army, all heavy-armed men, in the vigor
of their age, and most perfectly and splendidly accoutred. The reserve, forming
in itself a complete army, contained a threefold subdivision; one-third of it was
composed of veteran heavy-armed soldiers, the Triarii; another third of lightarmed, Rorarii; and the remainder were mere supernumeraries, Accensi, who
were destined to supply the places of those who should have fallen in the first
line, or to act with the reserve in cases of the last extremity. These divisions
being the same in both armies, the generals on either side knew precisely the
force and nature of the enemy's reserve, and could calculate the movements of
their own accordingly.
The tactic of the Romans was, at this period, in an intermediate state, between
the use of the order of the phalanx, with the round shield and pike, Taonticof eo man leoand the loose array of the later legion, with the large oblong shield, gion at this period.
sword, and pilumr such as it is described by Polybius. But the want of all co2 "Apud Veserim fluvium," is the expres- the dead, and earth, the mother of all, claimed
sion of the author "de Viris Illustriblis" twice as their victims the general of one party, and
over, in his notices of P. Decius and of T. Man- the army of the other: the consuls then sacrilius. Cicero twice mentions the name, but sim- ficed, to see whether the sign observed in the
ply says " ad Veserim." There is no stream at entrails of the victim would speak the same
present on either side of Vesuvius which will language as their vision.
answer the description; but it is scarcely pos-  24 See the famous description of the legion at
sible to calculate the changes effected in the ge- this period in Livy, VIII. 8, and Niebuhr's comography of a country by volcanic action during ments upon it, Vol. I. p. 497, &c. Ed. 2, 1827,
a period of so many centuries,            and Vol. III. p. 110, &c. The first line, coms Livy, VIII. 6. Both consuls, said the story, prising the hastati and principes, contained in
had seen in the night the same vision; a figure each legion only 1890 men; the reserve, conof more than human stature and majesty ap- sisting of the triaril, roraril, and accensi, amountpeared to them, and told them that the gods of ed to 2790.




ï~~266

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXI

temporary accounts of this middle period makes it exceedingly difficult to comprehend it clearly. Reserving, therefore, for another place all minute inquiries
into the subject, I shall here only take for granted some of the principal points,
so far as they are essential to a description of the battle.
The Roman and Latin legions were, as we have seen, opposed to each other.
Order of battle of both The Samnites and Hernicans, who formed one wing of the Roman
armies.       army, must, in like manner, have been opposed to the nations of
their own or of a kindred stock, the Campanians, Sidicinians, and Volscians.
Of the Roman line itself, the legions on the right were commanded by Titus
Manlius,"5 those on the left by Publius Decius.
The battle began with the encounter of the hastati, who formed on each side,
BattloeunderMount Ve. as we have seen, the first division of the first line. Consisting both
'vius.        of light and heavy armed soldiers, they closed with each other
with levelled pikes, amidst showers of darts from their light-armed men, who
either skirmished in the intervals between the maniples of the pikemen, or, sheltered behind them, threw their missiles over the heads of their comrades into the
line of the enemy.
In this conflict the right wing of the Latins prevailed, and the Roman hastati
Roman first line in dis- of the left wing fell back in disorder upon the principes, who formed
order.,       what may be called the main battle.
Decius then called aloud for M. Valerius, the pontifex maximus. "The gods,"
P.Decius devotes him- he said, "must help us now;" and he made the pontifex dictate
self.         to him the form of words in which he was to devote himself and
the legions of the enemy to the gods of death. It should be remembered that
to Decius, as one of the commons, all the ceremonies of the Roman religion were
an unknown mystery. The pontifex bade him take his consular toga,27 and wrap

25 Livy, VII. 9.
2 Who this M. Valerius was, we know not;
whether it was the M. Valerius Poplicola, who
was consul in 400 and 402, or M. Valerius Corvus, who had been already three times consul
and once dictator, and of whom Pliny relates,
that in the course of his long life, he was appointed to curule offices no fewer than one and
twenty times. Hist. Natur. VII. 48.
2 "Togam pretextam sumere jussit;" "sumere," because itwas not commonly worn in battle. The form of words in which Decius devoted himself ran as follows: " Thou, Janus, thou,
Jupiter, thou, Mars, our father, thou, Quirinus,
thou, Bellona; ye, Lares, ye, the nine gods, ye,
the gods of our fathers' land, ye, the gods whose
power disposes both of us and of our enemies,
and ye also gods of the dead, I pray you, I humbly beseech you, I crave, and doubt not to receive this grace from you, that ye would prosper the people of Rome and the Quirites with
all might and victory; and that ye would visit
the enemies of the people of Rome and of the
Quirites with terror, with dismay, and with
death. And, according to these words which
I have spoken, so do I now, on the behalf of
the commonwealth of the Roman people and the
Quirites, on the behalf of the army, both the legions and the foreign aids, of the Roman people and the Quirites, devote the legions and the
foreign aids of our enemies, along with myself,
to the gods of the dead, and to the grave." No
one can doubt the genuineness of this prayer,
which, together with the rules to be observed
in these solemn devotions, Livy has copied, he
tells us, "verbis ipsis, ut tradita nuncupataque
sunt:" VIII. 11; where "' tradita," I may observe, does not refer to any oral tradition, but
to the pontifical books: just as Cyprian, where
he appeals to "traditio apostolica," meanp to

refer to the apostolical writings in the New Testament. Livy himself may have copied the
prayer immediately from one of the older annalists, either from Fabius Pictor, from whom
Gellius quotes one or two similar notices of ancient religious observances, or from L. Cincius,
whose treatise " de Re Militari" contained the
form used by the Fetiales in declaring war, and
that of the military oath. See Gellius, XVI. 4.
Varro also was fond of recording ancient forms,
carmina, in their own words; of which we have
several instances in that almost solitary remnant of his voluminous works which has reached
our times, his work on the Latin language.
Forms of all sorts, and laws, may be relied on
as perfectly genuine, even when ascribed to a
period the history of which is good for nothing.
To notice more particularly the prayer of IDecius, it may be seen that it addresses Janus before all other gods, even before Jupiter himself;
in evident agreement with that ancient rite of
opening the gates of Janus at the beginning of
a war, which implied that he was in an especial
manner the god whom     the Romans wished
to go out with them to battle. See p. 4. Mars
Pater, like the ZEUS and 'AroAowv arpwo, has a
manifest reference to the legend of the birth of
Romulus. As a god of war, Mars, I should imagine, was of a later date in Italy than Janus;
or, at any rate, that the two gods came.to the
Romans from different quarters. Virgil speaks
of the opening of the gates of Janus as a Latin
rite, older than the origin of Rome. The "lares" here spoken of, would be, I suppose, "lares militares" (see Orelli's Inscriptions, No.
1665), "lares," as is well known, being a general title, and denoting powers, or mighty ones;
their particular character and office being expressed by a particular title, or implied by the
nature of the case. Thus L..Emilius, in the




ï~~CHAP. XXIX.]  P. DECIUS DEVOTES HIMSELF TO DEATH.

261

it round his head, putting out his hand from under it, to hold it to his face, and
to set his feet upon a javelin, and so to utter the set words which he should dictate. When they had been duly spoken, the consul sent his lictors to his colleague, to say that he had devoted himself to death for the deliverance of the
Roman army. Then, with his toga wrapped around his body, after the fashion
adopted in sacrifices to the gods, he sprung upon his horse, armed at all points,2"
plunged amidst the ranks of the enemy, and was slain. Such an example of selfdevotion in a general is in all cases inspiriting; but the Romans beheld in this
not only the heroic valor of Decius, but the certain devotion of their enemies to
the vengeance of the gods; what was due from themselves to the powers of death
Decius had paid for them; so, like men freed from a burden, they rushed on with
light and cheerful hearts, as if appointed to certain victory.
The Latins, too, understood the meaning of Decius' death, when they saw his
dress and heard his words of devotion; and no doubt it produced The main battles on
on their minds something of dismay. But, soon recovering, the both sides engage.
main battles on both sides closed in fierce onset; and though the light troops of
the Roman reserve were also brought into action, and skirmished amongst the
maniples of the hastati and principes, yet victory seemed disposed to favor the
Latins.
In this extremity Manlius, well knowing that in a contest so equal the last reserve brought into the field on either side would inevitably decide The Roman reserve dethe day, still kept back the veterans of his second line, and called rides the fate of the
forward only his accensi or supernumeraries, whom, for this very day.
purpose, he had, contrary to the usual custom, furnished with complete arms.
The Latins mistook these for the veterans, or triarii, and thinking that the last
reserve of the Romans was now engaged, they instantly brought up their own.
The Romans struggled valiantly, but at last were beginning to give way, when,
at a signal given, the real reserve of the Roman veterans started forwards, advanced through the intervals of the wavering line in front of them, and with loud
cheers charged upon the enemy. Such a shock at such a moment was irresistible; they broke through the whole army of the Latins almost without loss; the

war with Antiochus, when engaged in a seafight with the enemy, vowed to build a temple
to the lares permarini, or " the powers or genii
of the deep."  Livy, XL. 52. Macrobius, Saturnalia, I. 10. Miiller, Etrusker, Vol. II. p.
129, conf. p. 91. The war lares, to whom Decius
prayed, are, apparently, the same powers that
are represented on two Etruscan tombs, engravings of which are given by Micali in the plates
accompanying his history, P1. 105, 106. They
are winged figures, male and female, who are
present in a battle, taking part with the several
combatants.
The "nine gods," "dii novensiles," are probably the nine gods of the Etruscan religion,
who alone had the power of launching lightning and thunderbolts. See Miller, Etrusker,
Vol. II. p. 84, note 10. According to another
definition, Servius, En. VIII. 187, the dii novensiles were gods who had been deified for
their good deeds; " quibus merita virtutis dederint numinis dignitatem."
By "the gods whose power disposes both of
us and of our enemies,"" "divi quorum est potestas nostrorum hostiumque," may be meant
either the especial tutelar powers of eachnation,
the "h lares urbium et civitatum" (see Orelli,
Inscription. Collect. 1668, 1670, and Miiller,
Etrusker, Vol. II. p. 91, 93), or the peculiar national gods of each, such as the Jupiter, Juno,
and Minerva of the Capitol for Rome, and the
Jupiter of the mountains of Alba for Latium.
The gods of Latium might be addressed in the

prayer, to show that the Romans did not treat
them with that irreverence which the Latin ambassador had manifested towards the Jupiter
of the Capitol.
Lastly, to end this long note, it has been
doubted what is the meaning of the expression,
"veniam   peto feroque," which occurs in the
prayer of Decius. I think the true interpretation of "fero" is " nanciscor;" and that as some
have understood it (see the note on the words in
Bekker's Livy), the words are added as of good
omen, " the grace which I crave I feel sure that
I shall also obtain;" in the well-known future
sense of the present tense, in which "fero" signifies, "I am going to obtain."  It may, perhaps, signify no more than an earnest wish, "1
am ready to obtain," "I would fain obtain;
but, at any rate, " ferre veniam" must signify
" to receive favor," as " petere" signifies to sue
for it."
" 1 Armatus in equum insilivit," says Livy.
Zonaras says, r5 Â~rX a hvi (VII. 26). But this
must refer only to the moments while he was
uttering the prayer: when that was ended, he
resumed the full arms of a Roman general; only
his sacred character, as one devoted to the gods,
was marked by the peculiar manner in which
his toga was wrapped around him, the "cinctus
Gabinus."
With respect to the nature and origin of the
cinctus Gabinus, see Miiller, Etrusker, Vol. IL
p. 266.




ï~~268

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXIX

battle became a butchery, and, according to the usual result of engagements
fought hand to hand, where a broken army can neither fight nor fly, nearly threefourths of the Latins were killed or taken.
How far the Samnites contributed to this victory, whether they, after having
share of the sa mnite. beaten the Volscians and Campanians, threatened the flank of the
in the battle.  Latins at the moment of the last charge of the Roman veterans,
there was no Samnite historian to tell, and no Roman annalist would tell truly.
Nor need we wonder at this; for if we had only certain English accounts of the
battle of Waterloo, who would know that the Prussians had any effectual share
in that day's victory?
If the importance of a battle be a just reason for dwelling upon it in detail,
then I may be excused for having described minutely this great action between
the Romans and Latins under Mount Vesuvius; for to their victory on that day,
securing to them forever the alliance of Latium, the Romans owed their conquest
of the world.
The wreck of the Latin army retreated by different routes out of Campania;
The Latis are  and the conquerors had suffered so severely that they were in no
defeated, aadmanoit. condition to pursue them. The fugitives first halted at Minturne;2
ies submit.
a sumi     then finding themselves not molested, they advanced again to
Vescia, a town described as in the country of the Ausonians, one of the Greek
forms of the name of the Opicans or Oscans, and situated apparently on the eastern or Campanian side of the Massican hills, where the streams run towards the
Savone.   Here they rallied, and L. Numisius, the Latin praetor, used every effort
to revive their courage, and to procure reinforcements both from Latium, and
from the Volscians; Campania having been wholly lost by the late battle. A
large force was thus again assembled, and the Romans and Samnites, who had
been themselves also reinforced, we may suppose, in the interval, from Samnium
at any rate, if not from Rome, hastened a second time to encounter them. But
the victory was easy and decisive; and as no third army could immediately be
raised, the consul entered Latium without opposition, plundered the open country, and received the submission of several cities. The Latin confederacy was,
in fact, broken up forever.
According to the Fasti, the consuls of the preceding year must have resigned
T. Manlus. retrns to so long before the regular expiration of their office, that Manlius
Rome and triumps.  and Decius must have been appointed to succeed them almost before the end of the winter, and their great campaign was carried on in the early
spring. Manlius made all haste, no doubt, to return home to his triumph; but
as he triumphed on the 18th of May," it is clear that he had greatly anticipated
the usual season for military operations, and by so doing had perhaps taken the
enemy by surprise. Great as had been his services, his triumph was regarded
with no joy; such rejoicings seemed unbecoming3' in one who had lost both his
colleague and his own son in the course of the contest; and the younger Romans
looked on him less as the conqueror of the Latins, than as the murderer of his
son.
The Latin towns which had already submitted were deprived of all their public
or domain land, and a like penalty was imposed on the Campanians.32 But as
S Livy, VIII. 10, 11. It is plain from this that by a route circuitous indeed, but secure from
8amnium was altogether the base of the Roman interruption, through the country of the Mararmy's operations, and that whatever was the sians and Pelignians.
exact scene of the great battle, the Romans  30 The notice in the fragments of the Fasti
fought with the enemy's army interposed be- runs as follows:tween them and Rome. This sufficiently marks  [T. M]anlius L. F. A. N. Imperiossus Torthe grand scale of these operations, and also the quatus [C]os III. De Latineis. Campaneis. Sienlarged military views of the Roman consuls. dicineis. Aurunceis. A.CDXIII. xv. K. JuThey ventured to abandon altogether the line of nias.
their own territory, and to carry the war di-  a Dion Cassius, Fragm. XXIX. Ma.
rectly into Campania, resting on the territory  32 Livy, VIII. 11. Niebuhr thinks that the
of their allies, and communicating with Rome settlement of Latium was attended by many ex




ï~~OCHr. XXIX.]

THE LATINS AGAIN DEFEATED.

269

the Campanian aristocracy had been wholly opposed to the war eca       anariso
The Camp ian aristac.
with Rome, they were rather entitled to reward than punishment. racy rew ded for their
They therefore received the franchise of Roman citizens, which ttachmnt to Rome.
enabled them to intermarry with Romans, and to inherit property, while their
ascendency in their own country was abundantly secured; and as a compensation
for the loss of their domain land, they were each to receive from the Campanian
people 4503 denarii a year.
Whilst the consuls were absent in Campania, L. Papirius Crassus, the prmetor,
had been left at home with the command of the forces usually
appointed to protect the city. He had watched the Antiatians,.c. aito.
and checked their plundering inroads, but had been able to do nothing of importance. After the return of Manlius he was appointed dictator, as Manlius himself
fell sick. It seems probable that he was appointed dictator for the purpose of
holding the comitia, and that Manlius, having been left sole consul, and afterwards being himself disabled by illness, was required, like the consuls who had
preceded him, to resign his office before the end of his year.4 He was succeeded
by Ti. LEmilius and Q. Publilius Philo.
The history of their consulship is obscure. The Latins are said to have renewed the war again,85 to recover their forfeited domain; it is more The new consuls defeat
likely that only some of their cities had submitted to Manlius, and the Lattias again.
that the treatment which these met with drove the rest to try the fortune of
arms once again. They were defeated by the consul Publilius,3 and more of
their towns then submitted; some, however, still continued to resist, and amongst
these Pedum, Tibur, and Preneste, are particularly named.     The consul Ti.
JEmilius ]aid siege to Pedum, but the defence was obstinate; and whatever was
the true cause, Pedum remained to the end of his consulship unconquered.
This was probably owing to the state of affairs in Rome. Out of the large
tracts of domain land won in the last campaign, the assignations of Q. Publilius Philo dicland to the commons had in no case exceeded the amount of three tor.  brings for
jugera to each man: all the rest was occupied, as usual, by the great Pian  the
jugera to each man: all the rest was occupied, as usual, by the great Publiiaa..

ecutions, which history, from a desire to soften
the picture, has omitted, Vol. III. p. 159. The
Romans, however, far from being ashamed of
such executions, rather gloried in them, and
even Livy himself relates with entire approbation the cruel vengeance taken upon Capua in
the second Punic war. The moment that the
war was at an end with any of the Latin states,
it was the policy of Rome to avoid driving them
again to despair by any bloody executions; and
as the deportation of the senators of Velitre is
mentioned as an instance of remarkable severity,
it seems reasonable to believe that no blood was
shed except on the field of battle.
"* Livy, VIII. 11.  Mr. Twiss supposes that
thirty talents were fixed upon as the annual payment to be made to each century of the Campanian equites, which would make one hundred
and twenty talents for the whole four centuries;
and as there were four hundred knights in each
century, it allows just four hundred and fifty
denarii or drachmae to each individual. Niebuhr well observes that the yearly payment of
so large a sum as one hundred and twenty talents gives us a high idea of the wealth of Capua.
The coin paid is called by Livy " denarios nummos;" and although silver denarii were not coined at Rome till a later period, yet this proves
nothing against their earlier use in Campania;
and although Eckkel and Mionnet acknowledge
only a coppercoinage of ancient Capua, yet Micali
gives an engraving of a silver coin, with an Oscan
inscription, which must, undoubtedly, have belonged to Capua in the days of its independence.
See plate 115 of Micali's Atlas.

S Something of this sort must be supposed,
if Livy had any authority for his statement, that
the consuls in the year 420, only ten years after
this period, still came into office on the 1st of
July. (Livy, VIII. 20.) For as Manlius entered on his consulship before the winter was
well ended, and triumphed as early as May, the
consular year must have begun from that time
forwards, not in July, but in the early spring,
unless it had again been altered by some subsequent change. But the whole chronology of
this period is still so uncertain in its details, that
it is impossible to arrive at any certain conclusion.
w Livy, VIII. 12.
88 The dates for these years furnished by the
Fasti are as follow:
T. Manlius triumphed on the 18th of May,
413. Q. Publilius Philo triumphed on the 18th
of January, 414; and L. Camillus and C. Mnnius triumphed on the 28th and 80th of September, 415. Now, as the Fasti reckon the years
of Rome from the 21st of April (the Palilia), the
traditionary date of the foundation of the city,
it is obvious that between May, 413, and January, 414, there intervened twenty months,
whilst between January, 414, and September,
415, there would be no more than eight. But
whether these dates are correct is quite another
question. I believe that it is impossible to fix
the chronology of much of the fifth century of
Rome with precision, because it is impossible
to fix the history; and again, we cannot attempt
to fix the history by the chronology, becaue
that is in itself uncertain.




ï~~270

HISTORY OF ROME.:[CHAP. XXIX

famihies of the aristocracy. Great discontent was excited at this, and other circumstances occurred, in all probability showing a design on the part of the patricians to take advantage of their successes abroad in order to recover their old
ascendency. Niebuhr supposes that the majority of the senate was opposed to
these projects, and cordially joined with the consuls in repressing them. Both
the consuls were wise and moderate men; both had been amongst" the five
commissioners for the relief of the general distress in the year 403, whose merits
were so universally acknowledged by all parties. There is no likelihood that
such men should have indulged a spirit of faction or personal pique at such a
moment, or should have proposed and carried laws of the greatest importance
without any especial call for them, and yet without encountering any formidable
opposition. Nor is it consistent that the senate, after having had some months'
experience, according to the common story, of the factious character of the two
consuls, should have required them to name a dictator in order to get rid of
them, when the very result which did take place might have been so easily foreseen, that i.Emilius would name his own colleague. It is far more probable that
the senate foresaw, and had in fact arranged that it should be so, in order that
the reforms which were judged necessary might be supported and carried with
the authority of the greatest magistracy in the commonwealth. The reforms
now effected were purely constitutional, and consisted mainly, as far as appears,
in destroying the power of the aristocratical assembly of the curiam, a body necessarily of a very different character from the senate, and in which the most
one-sided party spirit was likely to be predominant. General assemblies of the
members of a privileged or separate order8 are of all things the most mischievous; as they combine with the turbulence and violence of a popular assembly
all the narrow-mindedness and exclusiveness of a particular caste. It seems that
no greater benefit could have been conferred on Rome than the extinction of the
power of the curiae; and accordingly one of Publilius' laws deprived89 them of
their power as a branch of the legislature with regard to all laws passed by the
comitia of tribes; and another reduced it to a mere formality with respect to all
laws submitted to the comitia of the centuries:40 whatever law was proposed by

3 Livy, VII. 21. " Meriti nquitate curaque
sunt ut per omnium annalium monumenta
celebres nominibus essent."
" It scarcely needs to be observed that our
house of lords resembles the Roman senate, and
not the comitia of the curiae. If our nobility
were like that of the continent, so that all a
peer's sons were noble or like the patrician order at Rome, so that all his descendants in the
male line were noble, a representative body
chosen out of and by so large a privileged class,
without any mixture of new creations, would
be a very different thing from our house of
peers, and would give a tolerable idea of the nature of the Roman comitia of curie. Compare
also the spirit, at once factious and intolerant,
which has marked the convocations of the
clergy, and particularly the lower house of convocation as opposed to the upper; that is, agai.,
the curiae as opposed to the senate. Consider
also that worst of all possible assemblies, the
diet of the nobles of Poland.
9 I have followed Niebuhr in his explanation
of the Publilian laws. Vol. III. p. 169, et seqq.
Livy says the purport of the first law was " ut
plebiscita omnes Quirites tenerent:" evidentlyunderstanding it to have had the same purport
witlithe Valerian and Horatian law of the year
806, which enacted, "ut quod tributim plebes
jussisset populum teneret." III. 55. It is certainly possible that the same law having fallen
into disuse, or rather being obstructed by the
power of a party, should be again solemnly re
enacted; but Niebuhr's explanation is so consistent and so probable that I have been induced to adopt it.
40 " Ut legum que comitiis centuriatis ferrentur ante initum suffragium patres auctores fierent."  I need not say that "patres" here was
generally supposed to mean the senate, and I
have no doubt that Livy so understood it; but
I think Niebuhr is right in understanding it of
the patrician curia, who had before possessed
a distinct voice as a branch of the legislature.
The power of the curia was likely to be disputed earlier than that of the senate; the
senate was now a mixed body, composed of
the most eminent men of both orders; it
was a true national council; and that such a
body should exercise the power of deciding
what questions should be submitted to the
comitia of the people at large, was nothing
more than what was common in Greece even at
this very period; and it was held not to be incompatible with a democracy, provided that the
body in which this power was vested was not
of too narrow and exclusive a character. Azs
ev yap  vat retrotiorov.rtp  idsc rat roi ltjov
7rspo3ov)estv.. roro, 3v i3Myot riv Apt ov 3o'ety,
eAtyapxeKdv. Aristotle, Politica IV. 15. See
also the institution of the vopo Xatces at Athens:
rpoypdyovurt &  r6s I3ovXA6 scai rpi rf f KKA}o'as
vrp cv r rpi xprPariebv.  Pollux, from  Aristotle, VIII. Â~ 95. It is not probable then that
the senate at Rome should havethus early lost
a power which still existed generally in Greece;




ï~~CHAP. XXIX.]

SETTLEMENT OF LATIUM.

271

the senate to the centuries, and no measure could originate with the latter, was
to be considered as having the sanction of the curime also: so that if the centuries passed it, it should have at dnce the force of a law. A third Publilian
law enacted that one of the two censors should necessarily be elected from the
commons; a fourth, as Niebuhr thinks, provided that the pr etorship also should be
thrown open, and that in each alternate year the pretor also should be a plebeian.
"The patres," says Livy, "thought that the two consuls had done the commonwealth more mischief by their domestic measures than service The Pblilia laws apThe Publilian laws apby their conduct of the war abroad."    If the term patres be un- proved by a majority
derstood of the majority of the patrician order, Livy is probably of the senate.
right; but if he meant to speak of the senate, he must have judged them overharshly. That assembly contained the best and wisest of the aristocracy, but it
did not represent the passions and exclusiveness of the patrician vulgar. The majority of the senate, whether patricians or commoners, saw the necessity of the
Publilian laws, and had the rare wisdom to pass them in time. Accordingly, they
were followed by no demands for further concessions; but by a period of such
unbroken peace and order, that for many years the internal dissensions of the
Romans are heard of no more; and the old contests between the patrician order
and the rest of the people may be said to have ended forever.    The Hortensian
laws, about fifty years later, were occasioned by contests of another sort, such as
marked the latter period of the commonwealth; contests of a nature far more
dangerous-where the object sought for is not so much political power for its
own sake, but as the means of obtaining bread.
In the following year the war with the Latins was brought to a conclusion.
The new consuls were L. Furius Camillus, perhaps a grandson41 Final submission of La
of the great Camillus, and C. Maenius. Camillus marched against tium.
Pedum, while his colleague attacked the Antiatians, who were supported by the
people of Velitrm, Aricia, and Lavinium.   Both were completely successful; Pedum was taken by Camillus,4' and the people of Tibur and Preeneste, who endeavored to relieve it, were defeated; while Mmenius gained a victory over the
Antiatians and their allies near the river, or rather stream, of Astura. Then all
the cities of Latium severally submitted, as did also the people of Antium; garrisons were placed in them, and the future settlement of Latium was submitted
by the consul, Camillus, to the decision of the senate. It appears that the case
of each city was considered separately, and its fate was settled as justice or expediency might seem to dictate. Unluckily, Livy either could not find, or grew
impatient of repeating, what was the particular sentence passed upon each state;
he has only noticed the fate of a few, and we are left to conjecture what was determined with respect to the rest.
First of all, it was ordered as a general law, that there should be from henceforth no common meetings, assemblies, or councils for any two or Stement of Lai.
Settlement of Latium.
more of the cities of Latium;43 and that they should be made as Dissolution of theo Latin
foreigners to one another, with no liberty of intermarriage, or of ofod.racy.
but that the curiae should be deprived of it was peaceably, and, so far as we hear, without a
perfectly natural. And as Niebuhr observes, struggle.
that the principal members of the senate, head-  41 He is called in the Fasti, "Spurii filius,
ed by the dictator and supported by the mass Marci nepos." The great M. Camillus is known
of the people, should have triumphed over the to have had a son named Spurius, who was the
ultra aristocratical spirit of the curie, is easily first praetor. Livy, VII. 1. The other consul,
conceivable: but the senate would not so read- C. Munius, must have belonged to one of the
ily have yielded an important prerogative of its most distinguished families of the commons,
own; and it is not possible to believe that had for although we have no yearly lists of tribunes
the senate joined the body of the patricians in preserved, yet three tribunes of the name of
resisting the dictator's measures, they could Mnnius are incidentally mentioned at different
have been carried without some violent convul- times by Livy, IV. 53, VI. 19, and VII. 16.
sions. Whereas the Publilian laws, very un-  42 Livy, VIII. 18.
like the Hortensian, the Genucian, the Canu-  4 " Ceteris Latinis populis connubia comleian, or any other of the great measures carried merciaque et concilia inter se ademerunt." Livy,
by the commons against the inclination of the VIII. 14.
senate as well as of the patricians, were passed




ï~~272

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXIX

purchasing or inheriting lands in each other's territories. All notion of a Latin
state or union was to be utterly done away; and each city was to be isolated
from its neighbors, that all community of interests and feelings between them
might as much as possible be destroyed. This was the system on which the
Romans settled the kingdom of Macedon after their final victory over Peresus: it
was split up into four distinct portions,44 and each of these was debarred from
any interchange of the rights of citizenship with the other three.
Tibur and Praeneste, the two most powerful cities of Latium, were deprived
Condition of the several of their domain land,45 and probably of any dominion which they
Latin stattes. Tiburand may have exercised over the decayed towns or districts in their
Pr..neste.    immediate neighborhood.   They retained their own laws and municipal independence, and there was still to exist between them and the Romans
the old mutual right of assuming at pleasure each other's citizenship, so far as
regarded the concerns of private life.  But in war they were bound to follow
where Rome should lead, and to furnish soldiers as auxiliaries or allies to the
the Roman legions.
Lanuvium obtained the full rights of Roman citizenship, and its people formed
the whole or a part of one of the new tribes which were created at
Lanvium, &o  the next census.46 It is probable that several other districts of Latium obtained the same privilege: perhaps such as had been hitherto dependent
on some of the larger towns, since the decay or destruction of their own
cities. In this manner the inhabitants of Scaptia and Gabii, which once were
among the thirty cities of Latium, but had since fallen to decay, may have become latterly subjects of the Tiburtians, and now, in all likelihood, received the
full citizenship of Rome, and composed the Scaptian tribe, which was created
five years afterwards.
Aricia,47 Pedum, Nomentum, and perhaps Tusculum, obtained the Roman citiAricia, Pedum, &c.  zenship without political rights; in other words, they were placed
in the condition of provincial towns, without any municipal or
corporate privileges, and justice was administered amongst them by a prefect
sent from Rome. Their law was altogether that of Rome; their citizens were
enlisted in the legions, and their taxation was in all respects the same as that of
the Romans.
In Velitre, from some reason to us unknown, the aristocracy appear to have

44 Livy, XLV. 29.
4 Livy, VIII. 14. That Tibur remained a
distinct state is proved by the language of Livy,
IX. 30, where he speaks of the Romans sending
ambassadors to the people of Tibur; and still
more by the fact that Roman citizens might
choose Tibur as a place of exile, as was also the
case with Preneste. Late in the sixth century
of Rome, we have instances on record of this,
Livy, XLIII. 2; and Polybius, writing early in
the seventh century, speaks of the same right
as still existing, adding, as the reason of it, that
the Romans were bound by solemn treaties to
the people of these cities. These treaties,(6pcta,
are rightly understood by Niebuhr to have been
the old terms of the Latin league, including the
interchange of all the private rights of citizenship
between the citizens of the two countries; o7rArcsa. On the other hand, the political dependence of Tibur and Prmneste upon Rome is evident: Papirius Cursor, when consul, had a summary power of life and death over the general of
the Prenestine auxiliary troops serving in his
army, Livy, IX. 16, so that the alliance probably
contained the famous clause which distinguished
a dependent from an equal ally: "Majestatem
populi Romani comiter conservato." See Cicero, ro Balbo, 16. Compare Livy, XXXVIII. 11.
4 The Macian tribe was created in 422 by the

censors, Q. Publilius and Sp. Postumius. It
derived its name, according to Paulus, the
epitomator ofFestus, " a quodam castro." And
Livy, VI. 2, speaks of a place near Lanuvium,
whichhe calls "ad Macium." The probability
is, therefore, that the Maecian tribe contained
in it the people of Lanuvium.
4 This may seem at variance with Livy's
statement, who says that they were admitted to
the rights of Roman citizens on the same footas the people of Lanuvium. But it is true that
Lanuvium, immediately after the war, did receive no more than the civitas sine suffragio;
it could not enjoy the full franchise till its people were admitted into some tribe; and this
did not take place till the next census. But
that from the time of the next census, Lanuvium was in a different condition from Aricia,
and, probably, also from Pedum and Nomentum, appears from the famous article " Municipium" in Festus; Niebuhr's commentary on
which (Vol. II. chap. 4, pp. 55-60, Eng. Transl.)
is one of the best specimens of his unrivalled
power in discerning the true political relations
of the ancient world. I would refer the reader
continually to this passage in Niebuhr for a fill
explanation of the various rights included sometimes under the common term of "municipium."




ï~~CHAP. XXIX.]

SETTLEMENT OF LATIUM.

273

been zealous supporters of the late war, while the people were well disposed
to the Romans. Accordingly, the walls of the town were de-        voelitr'.
stroyed,48 and all the senators deported beyond the Tiber, with a heavy penalty
upon their return to Latium. All their lands, whether domain or private property, were taken from them and given to some Roman colonists who were sent
to supply their place. Yet the people of Velitrae appear to have received the
full Roman citizenship five years afterwards, and to have been included at that
time in the new Scaptian tribe.49
Larentum, which had taken no part in the war, remained, as before, municipally
independent,0 enjoying an interchange of all the private rights of  Laureum.
citizenship with Rome, but bound to aid, or in other words, to
serve, the Romans as an ally: and this, probably, was the condition also of
Arden.
The relations of some Volscian and Campanian towns, which Relations ovof Volseian
had taken part in the late contest, were also fixed at this time.  an Campaniantowns.
The people of Antium5' were obliged to surrender all their ships of war, and
forbidden to send any more to sea for the time to come... col- Antum.
ony was to be sent thither, but the Antiatians might themselves, if  Ant.
they chose, be enrolled amongst the colonists; that is to say, their territory was
to be divided into lots, according to the Roman method of assignation, and all
former limits or titles of property were to be done away; but every Antiatian
might receive a portion of land in the new allotment, as a member of the Roman
colony of Antium. The municipal independence of Antium ceased, as a matter
of course; the Roman laws superseded the old laws of the city; and the Antiatians became Roman citizens in all their private relations, but with no political
rights.
Fundi and Formie,2 which had remained neutral, Capua, for whose fidelity its
own aristocracy would be a sufficient guarantee, and several otherundi, Formie, &c.
Campanian towns, such as Cuma, Suessula, Atella, and Acerrm, Fend,  F  &c.
were either now, or shortly afterwards, made capable of enjoying the private
rights of Roman citizens, but retained their own laws and government. Their
soldiers in war formed distinct legions,53 and were not numbered amongst the

4 Livy, VIII. 14.
S The Octavii belonged to the Scaptian tribe
(Suetonius in Augusto, 40), and their original
country was Velitre. The tale which Suetonius
adds, of their having come to Rome in the time
of Tarquinius Priscus, and having been made
patricians by Servius Tullius, but afterwards
havin chlsen to become plebeians, is merely
one of the ordinary embellishments of a great
man's pedigree, invented after he has risen to
eminence.
so " Cum Laurentibus renovari fcedusjussum,
renovaturque ex eo quotannis post diem decimum Latinarum."    Livy, VIII. 11.
51 Livy, VIII. 14. Antium became a maritime colony, and as such was exempted from
furnishing soldiers to the legions (Livy, XXVII.
38); it was obliged, however, to furnish seamen for the naval service. (Livy, XXXVI. 8.)
With regard to the prohibition to send ships to
sea, it must be understood only of triremes and
quinqueremes; for that the Antiatians after this
period not only had many smaller vessels, but
were accustomed to sail even as far as the Greek
seas, appears from the complaints of their piracies addressed to the Romans successively by
Alexander and by Demetrius Poliorcetes. Strabo, V. p. 232.
52 Livy, VIII. 14, compared with Festus in
" Municipium." Acerre is mentioned by Livy,
VIII. 17, and by Festus in " Municipium," and
in " Municeps." Atella is mentioned by Festus
18

in " Municeps." Festus says expressly of Fundi,.
Formia, Cume, and Acerrn, that after a certain
number of years they became Roman citizens,
that is, in the full sense of the term, being enrolled in a tribe, and being made eligible to all
public offices. But the "certain number of
years" was about a century and a half; for the
date of the admission of Fundi and Formia to
the full citizenship happens to be known, and
it did not take place till the year 564. (Livy,
XXXVIII. 36.) What can be meant by the expression that the people of Cume and Acerrn
after some years became Roman citizens, it is
not easy to decide; but it may be that they received the full franchise later than the period
included in the last remaining book of Livy;
and for that subsequent period we have no detailed information.
53 "In legione merebant,?' says Festus,, in
" Municeps."  The Campanian soldiers who
made themselves masters of Rhegium alittle before the first Punic war, are called by Livy,
Legio Campana; and the name of their leader,
Decius Jubellius, is clearly Campanian. Yet
these same soldiers are called by Polybius (L
6. 7), and by Appian (Samnitic. Fragm. 9),
" Romans," and Orosius calls them.the " eighth
legion" (IV. 3); nor should it be forgotten, that
Polybius, in his list of the forces at the disposal
of the Romans in the great Gaulish war of 529,
reckons the Latins and the other Italian nations
separately, but classes the Romans and Cam




ï~~274

HISTORY OF ROME.

CHAP. XXIX

auxiliaries; a distinction which perhaps entitled them to a larger share of the
plunder,--possibly also these states may have even received portions of conquered land to add to their domain.
Equestrian statues of the two consuls by whom this great war had been brought
Honors paid to the con. to a conclusion, were set up in the Forum;54 and the beaks of the
ils. T.rostra.  Antiatian ships were affixed to the front of the circular stand or
gallery, between the comitium and the Forum, from which the tribunes were accustomed to address the people. From this circumstance it derived its wellknown name of rostra, or the beaks.
Three years were sufficient to finish forever the most important war in which
The war with Latium Rome was at any time engaged; whilst with the Samnites the con-.a. eded nratera test was often renewed, and lasted altogether for more than sevparties.      enty years. It was not that the Samnites were a braver people
than the Latins, but that the Latin war found immediately its natural termination
in a closer union, which it was hopeless and not desirable to disturb; whereas,
in the Samnite contest, such a termination was impossible; and the struggle
could end in nothing short of absolute dominion on one side, and subjection on
the other. The Samnites were complete foreigners, remote in point of distance,
with a different language and different institutions; they and the Romans were
not likely to form one people, and neither were willing to be the others' mere
subjects. But between Rome and Latium nature had given all the elements of
union; and the peculiar circumstances of the Latins precluded that mischievous
national pride which has sometimes kept two nations apart, when nature, or
rather God speaking in nature, designed them to be one. Had Latium been a
single state like Rome, neither party" would willingly have seen its distinct nationality merged in that of the other; but the people of Tusculum or Lanuvium
felt no patriotic affection for the names of Tibur or Prmneste: they were as ready
to become Romans as Tiburtians; and one or the other they must be, for
a mass of little states, all independent of each other, could not be kept together;
the first reverses, appealing to the sense of separate interest in each, inevitably
shattered it to pieces. Those states that received the full Roman franchise became Romans, yet did not cease to be Latins; the language and manners of their
new country were their own. They were satisfied with their lot, and the hope
of arriving in time at the same privileges was a prospect more tempting even to
the other states than any thing which they were likely to gain by renewed hostilities. Tibur and Preneste, thus severed from their old confederates, could not
expect to become sovereign states; they must, according to the universal practice of the ancient world, be the allies of some stronger power; and if so, their
alliance with Rome was at once the most natural and the most desirable. Thus

panians together, and names the amount of
their joint force. This seems to show that the
connection between Rome and Campania from
the great Latin war to the invasion of Hannibal
was unusually intimate; and we know also that
a mutual rite of intermarriage prevailed between the inhabitants of both countries. Livy,
XXIII. 4.
b4 Livy, VIII. 18, 14. For the description of
the rostra given in the text, see Niebuhr, Vol.
III. note 263; and particularly Bunsen, "Les
Forum de Rome," p. 41. Bunsen, judging from
the views of the rostra given on two coins in his
possession, supposes that it was a circular building, raised on arches, with a stand or platform
on the top bordered by a parapet; the access
to it being by two flights of steps, one on each
side. It fronted towards the comitiui, and the
rostra were affixed to the front of it, just under
the arches. Its form has been in all the, main
points preserved in the ambones, or circular pulpits, of the most ancient churches, which also

had two flights of steps leading up to them, one
on the east side, by which the preacher ascended,
and another on the west side, for his descent.
See Ducange, Glossar. Med. et Infim. Latinit.
in " Ambo." Specimens of these old pulpits
are still to be seen at Rome in the churches of
St. Clement, and S. Lorenzo fuori le mure.
Bunsen aptly'compares the platform of the rostra, on which the speaker moved to and fro, as
he wished to address different parts of his audience, to the hustings of an English election.
5 The rights of succession in an hereditary
monarchy may affect a union between two
countries, by the crown of each devolving on
the same person, which would have been utterly impracticable had either of them been a
republic. As it was, the union of the crowns of
England and Scotland preceded the union of
the kingdoms by more than a century; and had
not the crowns been united, what human power
could ever have effected a union of the two parliaments?




ï~~CHAr. XXX.]

ALEXANDER'S CONQUESTS IN ASIA.

275

the fidelity of the Latins was so secured that neither the victories of Hannibal,
nor the universal revolt of all Italy in the social war, tempted it to waver: one
strong proof amongst a thousand, that nations, like individuals, cheerfully acquiesce in their actual condition, when it appears to be in any degree natural, or
even endurable; and that their desire of change, whenever they do feel it, is less
the wish of advancing from good to better, or a fond craving after novelty, than
an irresistible instinct to escape from what is clearly and intolerably bad, even
though they have no definite prospect of arriving at good.
CHAPTER XXX.
GENERAL HISTORY TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND SAMNITE WARPRIVERNUMi-PAL2EPOLIS-A. U. C. 418-428-418-423, NIEBUHR.
Tiiv  k  pieAov f'jlarty sT i r s pi dsift a  scrdAepov vopiecv o K KaPSws a  tcatet.--To  p q ipy'o Acs
tfprat ae&&era, ca  tesrt obUic  icoxe lv tk4vriiv K t 3 va.-TITHUCYDIDES, V. 26.
ACCORDING to the synchronism of Diodorus, the same year which witnessed the
final settlement of Latium, was marked also by the first military Alexander's conquest.
enterprises of Alexander, by his expedition against the Illyrians, and in Asia cont emporary
" with the period immehis conquest of Thebes.   During the twelve following years, the aittle rlowingo the
period nearly which I propose to comprise within the present chap- Latin war.
ter, Asia beheld with astonishment and awe the uninterrupted progress of a hero,
the sweep of whose conquests was as wide and as rapid as that of her own barbaric
kings, or of the Scythian or Chaldean hordes; but far unlike the transient
whirlwinds of Asiatic warfare, the advance of the Macedonian leader was no less
deliberate than rapid: at every step the Greek power took root, and the language
and the civilization of Greece were planted from the shores of the.Egmean to the
banks of the Indus, from the Caspian and the great Hyrcanian plain to the cataracts of the Nile; to exist actually for nearly a thousand years, and in their
effects to endure forever.' In the tenth year after he had crossed the Hellespont, Alexander, having won his vast dominion, entered Babylon; and, resting
from his career in that oldest seat of earthly empire, he steadily surveyed the
mass of various nations which owned his sovereignty, and revolved in his mind
the great work of breathing into this huge but inert body the living spirit of
Greek civilization. In the bloom of youthful manhood, at the age of thirty-two,
he paused from the fiery speed of his earlier course; and for the first time gave
the nations an opportunity of offering their homage before his throne. They came
from all the extremities of the earth, to propitiate his anger, to celebrate his greatness, or to solicit his protection. African tribes' came to congratulate and bring
presents to him as the sovereign of Asia. Not only would the people bordering on Egypt upon the west look with respect on the founder of Alexandria and
the son of Jupiter Ammon, but those who dwelt on the east of the Nile, and on
the shores of the Arabian gulf, would hasten to pay court to the great king
I leave out of sight the question as to the ties afforded by the diffusion of the Greek langreater or less influence exercised upon the civ- guage and civilization in Asia and Egypt to the
ilization of India by the Greek or semi-Greek early growth of Christianity.
kingdoms of the extreme eastern part of Alex-  ' See Arrian, VII. 15,
ander's empire, and refer merely to the facili



ï~~27 6

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXX

whose fleets navigated the Erythrman sea, and whose power was likely to affect
so largely their traffic with India. Motives of a different sort influenced the barbarians of Europe. Greek enterprise had penetrated to the remotest parts of
the Mediterranean; Greek traders might carry complaints of wrongs done to
them by the petty princes on shore, or by pirates at sea, to the prince who
had so fully avenged the old injuries of his nation upon the great king himself.
The conqueror was in the prime of life; in ten years he had utterly overthrown
the greatest empire in the world: what, if having destroyed the enemies of
Greece in the east, he should exact an account for wrongs committed against his
nation in the west? for Carthaginian conquests, for Lucanian devastations, for
Etruscan piracies? And he would come, not only having at his command all the
forces of Asia, whose multitude and impetuous onset would be supported in time
of need by his veteran and invincible Macedonians, but already the bravest of the
barbarians of Europe were eager to offer him their aid; and the Kelts and Iberians, who had become acquainted with Grecian service when they fought under
Dionysius and Agesilaus, sent embassies to the great conqueror at Babylon, allured alike by the fame of his boundless treasures and his unrivalled valor. It
was no wonder, then, that the Carthaginians,' who had dreaded a century earlier
the far inferior power of the Athenians, and on whose minds Timoleon's recent
victories had left a deep impression of the military genius of Greece, dispatched
their ambassadors to secure, if possible, the friendship of Alexander. But some
of the Italian nations, the Lucanians and the Bruttians, had a more particular
cause of alarm. They had been engaged in war for some years with Alexander,
king of Epirus, the uncle by marriage of the conqueror of Asia. Alexander of
Epirus had crossed over into Italy as the defender of the Italian Greeks against
the injuries of their barbarian neighbors: in this cause he had fallen, after havino
long and valiantly maintained it, and his great kinsman could not have heard
without indignation of the impious cruelty with which his enemies had outraged
his lifeless body.4 Thus the Lucanians and Bruttians are especially mentioned
as having sent embassies to Alexander at Babylon: it is not unlikely that their
kinsmen, the Samnites, who had been their allies in the war, joined with them also in
their endeavors to escape the dreaded vengeance, although their name was either
not particularly known, or not thought worthy of especial record by the great
Macedonian officers who were their king's earliest and best historians.
"The Tyrrhenians also," said Aristobulus and Ptolemmeus, "sent an embassy
Embassies from Italy to to the king to congratulate him  upon his conquests."  The ports
Alexander in Babylon. of the western coast of Italy swarmed at this time with piratical
vessels, which constantly annoyed the Greek traders in those seas, and sometimes ventured as far as the eastern side of the Ionian gulf. This reproach was
not confined to the Etruscans; it was shared certainly by the people of Antium;
it may be doubted whether Ostia, Circeii, and Tarracina were wholly free from it.
These piracies had been reported to Alexander,' and he sent.remonstrances to
SArrian, VII. 15.                      bring the death of Alexander of Epirus to the
SLivy, VIII. 24. Livy sets the death of Alex- consulships either of M. Valerius and M. Atilius
ander of Epirus in the consulship of Q. Pub- in 420 (415), or of T. Yeturius and Sp. Postulilius and L. Cornelius. This consulship, ac- mius, in the year following. Yet the treaty of
cording to Diodorus, synchronizes with Olymp. Alexander of Epirus with Rome is placed in the
113-3 and he places the embassies to Babylon consulship of A. Cornelius and Cn. Domitius,
and the death of Alexander two years later, in that is, in 422 (417); and this is likely to be a
Olymp. 114-1. But his reckoning in this place sure synchronism, because the treaty would
is confused, and his Fasti differ from those of naturally contain the names of the Roman maLivy; for with him there is a year between the gistrates who concluded it. It seems impossiconsulships of Publilius and Cornelius and Poe- ble to fix exactly the date of the death of Alextelius and Papirius, which, according to Livy, ander of Epirus, but it seems from every calcuwere next to one another. Again, Livy places lation that we may safely place it so early as to
the death of Alexander of Epirus in the same make it certain that his nephew must have heard
year with the foundation of Alexandria. But of it at the time when he received the Italian am
Alexandria, according to Arrian, was founded bassadors at Babylon.
in Olymp. 112-1, and, according to Diodorus  Strabo,V. p. 232. Altrcp rai 'AVfavclpos rpre.
une year later, in Olymp. 112-2, which would pov y aYXv 7 rkatSAe, Kai AeprTrpto5 5UTrppo. Some




ï~~084p* Xxx]

WAR WITH THE SIDICINIANS.

277

the Romans on the subject. Perhaps his name was used by his kinsman Alexander of Epirus, with whom, in the course of his campaigns in Italy, the Romans
co  hluded a treaty. But having, on the one hand, to justify themselves from the
charge of supporting pirates to the injury of the Greek commerce, and being able,
the other hand, to plead the merit of their alliance with the king of Epirus,
there is every reason to believe that among the Tyrrhenian ambassadors mentioned by Alexander's historians there were included ambassadors from Rome.
Later writers,' yielding to that natural feeling which longs to bring together the
great characters of remote ages and countries, and delihghts to fancy how they
Would have regarded one another, asserted expressly that a Roman embassy did
appear before Alexander in Babylon: that the king, like Cineas afterwards, was
o struck with the dignity and manly bearing of the Roman patricians, that he informed himself concerning their constitution, and prophesied that the Romans
jOuld one day become a great power. This story Arrian justly disbelieves; but
Hstory may allow us to think that Alexander and a Roman ambassador did meet
a abylon; that the greatest man of the ancient world saw and spoke with a
tzen of that great nation, which was destined to succeed him in his appointed
work, and to found a wider and still more enduring empire. They met, too, in
abylon, almost beneath the shadow of the temple of Bel, perhaps the earliest
taonument ever raised by human pride and power, in a city stricken, as it were,
by the word of God's heaviest judgment, as the symbol of greatness apart from
ad Opposed to goodness. But I am wandering from the limits of history into a
hgher region; whither, indeed, history ought forever to point the way, but within
Which she is not permitted herself to enter.
During the period of Alexander's conquests, no other events of importance
PPened in any part of the civilized world, as if a career so bril- Pro of th e Sam.
oat had claimed the undivided attention of mankind. The issue flteSontheUpperLiris.
O the Latin war at once changed the friendship between the Romans and Samlutes into a hollow truce, which either party was ready to break at the first favorable moment: neither was any longer needed by the other as a friend, to bring
aid against a common danger; the two nations from this time forward were only
'vals. The Samnites had made conquests from the Volscians, as the Romans
aofd enlarged their dominion in Latium and Campania; they had won a portion
ou the upper valley of the Liris, and, as it seems, were still carrying on the war
0n their own behalf in this quarter, after the Romans on the one side, and the
Latins and Campanians on the other, had retired from the contest.  They even
osed the Liris,' had taken and destroyed Fregell upon the right bank, and
Sa thus acquired a position of no small importance; for Fregells stood on the
rtnroad, the direc t line of communication between Rome and Samnium, on the?roatier of the Hernicans, at the point where the valley of the Trerus or Sacco
Jlois that of the Liris.  This was not unnoticed by the Romans, and they kept
e1r eyes steadily on the advance of the Samnite dominion in a quarter so
aarig.
M eantime the embers of the great Latin war continued to burn for a time on
he frontiers of Campania. The Sidicinians still remained in arms,' We,
th what hopes or from what despair we know not; they attacked a..coQn prs aae
e Auruncans, who had submitted to Rome, and destroyed theirCo.
principal city; and the Romans were so slow or so unsuccessful in opposing them,
ters have understood this Alexander to be  ' Westphal places Fregelln at Ceprano, a small
t--xander of Epirus; but it is quite clear from  frontier town of the pope's dominions, just on
e bo's languae that he meant the most emi- the right bank of the Liris; but says that there
er;et t an of the name of Alexander, as well as is no vestige of the ancient city m existence.
Slmo~t eminent Demetrius; that is to say, Mr. Keppel Craven is disposed to identify Freee auduer the Great, and Demetrius Polior- gellse with some remains about four miles lower
Adown, below the junction of the Trerus, near to
An VII. 15.                 _       the present village of S. Giovanni in Carico.
'vy, VIi. 28. Dionysius, XV. 12, Fragm.  ' Livy, VIII. 15.




ï~~278

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XXX

that they were in the next year joined by the Opicans of Cales,1Â~ whom Livy
A...4.     calls Ausonians.  Cales stood on the edge of the plain of Capua,
A.U.c. 419.  not more than ten miles from the city:11 its example might become contagious, and therefore the Romans now roused themselves in earnest,
and sent both consuls to act against this new enemy; and, having driven both the
Sidicinians and the Ausonians within their walls, they chose M. Valerius Corvus
as consul for the succeeding year, and committed the war especially to his charge.
He laid regular siege to Cales, and took the place: but although both he and
his colleague, M. Atilius Regulus, proceeded afterwards to attack the Sidicinians,
yet on them they could make no impression. And although Cales was immediately made a colony, and garrisoned with 2500 colonists,'2 yet the Sidicinians
held out during the two following years; their lands were wasted, but their principal city, Teanum, was not taken, and as neither victories nor triumphs over
them appear in the annals or in the Fasti, and the termination of the war is never
noticed, we may suppose that they, after a time, obtained favorable terms, and
preserved at least their municipal independence.
Before the close of this contest it was noticed in the annals1 that Samnium
Lege etween  was become suspected by the Romans. This was in 421, and the
League between the
Romans and Alexander same thing is remarked of the year following; so that the Romans
of Epirus.    heard with pleasure in that year, that Alexander, king of Epirus,
brother of Olympias, and thus uncle to Alexander the Great, had landed in LuA.. c. 4.  cania,'4 near Peestum, and had defeated the united armies of the
A.U..422   Lucanians and Samnites. Immediately after this battle, the Romans concluded a treaty of peace with the conqueror; a treaty which could have
no other object than to assure him of the neutrality of the Romans, and that the
alliance, which had so lately subsisted between them and the Samnites in the
Latin war, was now virtually at an end. Whether there were any stipulations
for a division of the spoil, in the event of his making territorial conquests in Italy,
must be merely matter of conjecture; but the Romans, at any rate, took advantage of Alexander's invasion; and when, in 424,i the Volscians of Fabrateria
sent an embassy to solicit their protection against the Samnites,. u.c.44. 2'  they received it favorably, and threatened the Samnites with war
if they did not leave Fabrateria unmolested. And yet the Samnites, in attacking it, were but putting down the last remains of the Latin confederacy on the
upper Liris, exactly as the Romans had done in Campania; the Volscians of
Fabrateria and the Sidicinians had been alike allied with the Latins against Rome
and Samnium, and as Rome was now engaged with the latter for her own separate advantage, so it was just that Samnium should gain her own share of the
spoil by conquering the former. But the Romans treated the Samnites now as
they treated the.Etolians after the battle of Cynocephale, or the Achmans
after the defeat of Perseus: as soon as the common enemy was beaten down, the
allies who had aided Rome in his conquest became her next victims. Two years
afterwards, in 426,16 the Romans went a step further, and actually planted a
colony of their own at Fregelle, a Volscian city, which, as we have seen, had
been taken and destroyed by the Samnites, so that its territories were now lawfully, so far as the Romans were concerned, a part of Samnium. But fortune
had now turned against Alexander of Epirus, and his power was no longer to be
dreaded; the Samnites, therefore, were in a condition to turn their attention to
1o Livy, VIII. 16.                     's In 422 it is said that "Samnium jam alte' Cales is the modern Calvi, six Neapolitan rum annum turbari novis consiliis suspectum
miles from the modern Capua, and therefore erat."-Livy, VIII. 17.
about eight Neapolitan miles from the ancient  14 Livy, VIII. 17.
Capua, which stood on the site of the modern  15 Livy, VIII. 19. Fabrateria is the modern
village of S. Maria di Capua. But eight Nea- Falvaterra, standing on a hill on the right bank
politan miles are about ten English ones, the of the Trerus or Tolero, a little above its junE
Neapolitan mile being nearly 14 English mile.  tion with the Liris.
21 Livy, VIII. 16.                      " Livy, VIII. 22.




ï~~CHAP. XXX.]

WAR WITH PRIVERNUM.

279

other enemies; the war between Rome and the Greeks of Palapolis and Neapolis immediately followed, as we shall see presently, and this led directly to an
open renewal of the contest between Rome and Samnium.
In the mean time the Romans had gained a fresh accession of strength nearer
home. The unconnected notices of these events recorded"1 that in war with Priverum.
424 a war broke out with the people of Privernum, in which the A. U. c.424.
people of Fundi took a part, notwithstanding the favorable terms of their late
treaty with Rome. Not a word of explanation is given as to the causes of this
war, but the name of its leader has been recorded: Vitruvius Vaccus, a citizen
of Fundi, who, availing himself of the interchange of all private rights of citizenship between the inhabitants of the two countries, had acquired property at Rome,
and actually possessed a house on the Palatine Hill. His influence at Privernum,
as well as the fact of his having a house at Rome in such a situation, prove him
to have been a man of great distinction; and probably he was ambitious of being
admitted to the full rights of a Roman citizen,"8 and like Attus Clausus of Regillus in old times, of becoming a member of the senate, and obtaining the consulship. Disappointed in this hope, he would feel himself slighted, and seek the
means of revenging himself. Privernum had been deprived of a portion of its
domain after the late war, and had seen this land occupied by Roman settlers;
motives, therefore, for hostility against Rome were not wanting; and hopes of
aid from Samnium might encourage to an attempt which otherwise would seem
desperate. But either these hopes were disappointed, or Vitruvius had rashly
ventured on an enterprise which he could not guide. He was defeated in the
field, and fled to Privernum after the battle: his own countrymen, the people of
Fundi, disclaimed him, and made their submission; but the Privernatians held
out resolutely against two consular armies till the end of the Roman civil year;
and the new consuls, who continued to beset Privernum with the whole force of
Rome, did not finish the war for some months afterwards. At length Privernum
submitted;"9 Vitruvius Vaccus was taken alive, kept in the dungeon at Rome till
the consuls' triumph, and then was scourged and beheaded; some others were
put to death with him; the senators of Privernum, like those of Velitre, were
deported beyond the Tiber: the consuls, L..Emilius and C. Plautius, triumphed,"
and.AiEmilius obtained the surname of Privernas, in honor of his conquest over so
obstinate an enemy.
What follows is almost without example in Roman history, and though, like
every other remarkable story of these times, its details are in some respects uncertain, yet its truth in the main may be allowed," and it is well worthy of mention,

17 Livy, VIII. 19.
1s The case of L. Futl:us of Tusculum, a very
few years later, seems to throw light upon the
views of Vitruvius V accus. It is mentioned of
Fulvius, that in one year he commanded a Tusculan army against Rome, and in the next was
himself elected Roman consul, having in the
interval obtained the full citizenship of Rome.
Circumstances favored him, and were adverse
to Vitruvius; but the object in view was, in both
cases, probably the same.
19 Livy, VIII. 20.
20 See the Fasti Capitolini, which also give the
consul Emilius his title of Privernas.
The coins of the Plautian family, struck at the
very end of the seventh century of Rome, still
record the triumph over Privernum; in the
legend, C. HVPSAE. COS. PREIVER. CAPT.
Ilyps'us was one of the cognomina of the Plautian family, and in later times the prevailing
one; but the conqueror of Privernum, according to the Fasti, was C. Plautius.L)ecianus.
That is, apparently, he was a Decius adopted
into the Plautian family, so that his name at

full length would have run, C. Plautius Hypsnus Decianus.-See Eckhel, Doctr. Num. Vol.
V. p. 27'5.
2 The details are uncertain, because Dionysius places its date in the year 898, and ascribes
the questions put to the Privernatians, not to a
Plautius or Emilius, but to a Marcius; that is
to say, to C. Marcius Rutilus, the first plebeian
dictator and censor. There are also some variations in the circumstances of the story. It appears to me that the story itself was of Privernatian origin, and that when the Privernatians
became Roman citizens, they used to relatewith
pride this instance of the unflattering nobleness
of their fathers.  When it became famous at
Rome, the Romans, as it reflected credit on them
also, were glad to adopt it into their history, and
then the several great families which had conducted wars at different periods against Privernum, were each anxious to appropriate it to
themselves. Thus the Marcii wanted to fix it
to the earlier war with Privernum, which had
been carried on by an ancestor of theirs; while
the Emilii and Plautii claimed it for the last wary




ï~~280

HISTORY OF ROME.

[cur. XXX

Story of the bold lan. as a solitary instance of that virtue, so little known to the Romans,
goug ased by e PeI; respect for the valor of a brave enemy. After their triumph,
s-e retion deputy befero
the Roman senate.  the consuls brought the case of the people of Privernum  before the senate, and urging their neighborhood to Samnium, and the likelihood
of a speedy war with the Samnites, recommended that they should be gently
dealt with, to secure their fidelity for the future.  Some of the senators were
disposed to adopt a less merciful course; and one of these called to the Privernatian deputies,whb had beeh sent to Rome to sue for mercy, and asked them,
"Of what penalty, even in their own judgment, were their countrymen deserving?"  A Privernatian boldly answered, "Of the penalty due to those who assert
their liberty." The consul, dreading the effect of this reply, tried to obtain
another of an humbler strain, and he asked the deputy, "But if we spare you now,
what peace may we expect to have with you for the time to come?"     "Peace
true and lasting," was the answer, "if its terms be good; if otherwise, a peace
that will soon be broken." Some senators cried out that this was the language
of downright rebellion: but the majority were moved with a nobler feeling, and
the consul, turning to the senators of highest rank who sat,near him, said aloud,
"These men, whose whole hearts are set upon liberty, deserve to become Romans." Accordingly, it was proposed to the people, and carried, that the Privernatians should be admitted to the rights of Roman citizenship: in the first
instance, probably, they were admitted to the private rights only, but ten years
afterwards two new tribes were formed, and one of these, the Ufentine, included
among its members the inhabitants of Privernum."
The year 425 is further marked by an alarm of a new Gaulish invasion, which
Alarm of anew Gaulish was thought so serious, that the workmen in the several trades, and
inion.        even those whose business was altogether sedentary,"3 are said to
have been enlisted as soldiers; and a large army, composed in part of such materials, marched out as far as Veii to look out for and oppose the expected enemy.
A similar alarm"4 had led to the appointment of a dictator, and to an unusual
strictness in the enlistment of soldiers, three years before; but in neither instance
did any invasion actually take place. Polybius says,"5 that at this period, "the
Gauls, seeing the growing power of the Romans, concluded a treaty with them:"
he does not mention what were the terms of this treaty, and Livy seems to have
known nothing of its existence. Probably the Gauls found that their arms might
be turned against other nations with more advantage and less risk than against
Rome; while the Romans, looking forward to a war with Samnium, would be
glad to purchase peace on their northern frontier by some honorary presents to
the Gaulish chiefs, and by engaging not to interfere with them, so long as they
abstained from attacking the Roman territory.
On theim - southern frontier, the Romans, still with a view to the expected war
The Rns foud with the Samnites, secured their direct communications with CamTho  osonytAn.orTar- pania, by sending a small colony or garrison of three hundred
racng      settlers to occupy the important post of Anxur," or Tarracina.
Each man received as his allotment of land no more than two jugera, so that the
whole extent of ground divided on this occasion did not exceed 400 English
acres. We are not to suppose that these three hundred colonists composed the
whole population of the town; many of the old inhabitants, doubtless, still resided there," and had continued to do so ever since the place had become subject
mn which their ancestors had been the consuls, a Roman colony given by Servius,,En. I. 12,
The Privernatian story, in all probability, men- that " deducti sunt in locum certum  dificiis
tioned no Roman general by name.       munitum." The colonists were sent to inhabit
S Festus, in "Oufentina."            a town already in existence, not to build a new
2 " Sellularii." Livy, VIII. 20.      one for themselves; and thus by the very na4 Livy, VIII. 17.                    ture of the case, they would generally form a
25 Livy, II. 18.                      part only of the whole population of such a:n Livy, VIII. 21.                    town, as the old inhabitants would rarely be alo' It is a part of the well-known definition of together extirpated.




ï~~CHAP. XXX.]  WAR WITH THE GREEKS OF PARTHENOPE.

281

to the Romans; but they had ceased to form a state or even a corporate society;
all their domain was become the property of the Roman people, and they were
governed by a magistrate or prefect sent from Rome. The Roman colonists, on
the other hand, governed themselves and the old inhabitants also; they chose
their own magistrates and made their own laws: and over and above the grant
of two jugera to each man, a portion too small by itself to maintain a family,
they had, probably, a considerable extent of common pasture on the mountains,
the former domain of the city of Anxur, and of which the colonists would have
not, indeed, the sovereignty, but the beneficial enjoyment. It should be remembered, too, that as they retained their Roman franchise, they could still purchase
or inherit property in Rome, and intermarry with their old countrymen; and thus,
if any of them returned to Rome at a future period, they would easily enrol their
names again amongst the members of their old tribe, and so resume the exercise of all their political rights, which had been suspended during their residence
in the colony, but not actually forfeited.
Two years after the war with Privernum, there began that course of events
which finally involved the Romans in open hostilities with the Sam- War with the Greeks
nites. When the Latin confederacy was broken up by the victory of Parthenope.
of Manlius and Decius, Capua, as we have seen, was punished for her accession
to it by the loss of her domain land; and the territory thus ceded to Rome had
been partly divided out by the government to the commons in small portions of
three jugera to each settler, and partly had been occupied, after the usual manner, by families of the aristocracy. Thus a large body of strangers had been
introduced into Campania; and disputes soon arose between them and the inhabitants of.the Greek towns of the sea-coast.Y8 Of these, Palaepolis and Neapolis,
the old and new towns of Parthenope, were at this period almost the sole survivors. They were both Cumean colonies; but Cumie itself had, about eighty
years before, been taken by the Samnite conquerors of Capua; and since that
period it had ceased to be a purely Greek city: a foreign race, language, and manners were intermixed with those of Greece, and lately Cumin, like the neighboring
towns of Capua and Acerrae, had become intimately connected with Rome. The
two Parthenopean towns, on the contrary, had retained,their Greek character
uncorrupted; when their mother city had been conquered, they opened their
gates to the fugitives29 who had escaped from the ruin, and received them as
citizens of Parthenope; and although a short time afterwards they formed an
alliance with the Samnites, perhaps from dread of the ambition of Dionysius of
Syracuse, yet this connection had not interfered with their perfect independence.
They kept up also friendly relations with the people of Nola, whose admiration
and imitation of the Greeks was so great as to give them, in some respects, the
appearance of a Greek people.""  Now, for the first time, they were brought into
contact with the Romans, who accused them of molesting the Roman settlers
in Campania, and demanded satisfaction for the injury. Certainly the Greeks
had no scruples to restrain them from making spoil of the persons and property
of barbarians; but the hostility was generally mutual; the Greek cities in southern Italy had suffered greatly from the attacks of their Lucanian neighbors; and
the Roman settlers and occupiers of land in Campania might sometimes relieve
their own wants by encroaching on the pastures or plundering the crops of the
Greeks of Parthenope.
What account the Neapolitans gave of the origin of their quarrel with Rome,
we know not; but the Roman story was, that when their feciales were sent to
2$ Livy, VIII. 22. Dionysius' statement rep-  29 Dionysius, XV. 6. Fragm. Mai.
resents the wrong as offered to the Campa-  o Nwsaivdpo3pa rv; EXarvas oralophev.
nians themselves; and that the Romans took Dionys. XV. 5. The coins of Nola closely reup the cause of their dependent allies, or, in the semble those of Neapolis, and the legend is in
well-known Greek term, of those who were the Greek, not in the Oscan character.
b&xcKoo rmk 'Pwyeahov ye oviac. See Dionys. XV.
4. Fragm. Mai.




ï~~282

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XXX.

It involves the Romana Palepolis31 to demand satisfaction, the Greeks, being a tongueinawar with the Sam- valiant people, returned an insulting refusal. Upon this the senate
nite.        submitted to the centuries the resolution that war should be declared with the people of Palaepolis; and the centuries having approved of it, war
was declared accordingly. Both consuls were sent into Campania; Q. Publilius
Philo to attack the Greeks, L. Cornelius Lentulus to watch the Samnites, who
were expected to aid them. It was said that a Samnite garrison of 4000 men,"
together with 2000 men from Nola, were received into Palmpolis; and L. Cornelius reported to the senate that enlistments of men were ordered all over Samnium, and that attempts were making to excite the people of Privernum,
Fundi, and Formim to rise in arms again against Rome. Upon this, the ambassadors
were sent by the Roman government to the Samnites, to obtain redress for their
alleged grievances. The Samnites wholly denied their having tampered with
Privernum,33 Fundi, and Formime; and the soldiers who had gone to Palapolis were,
they said, an independent body, who had volunteered into the Greek service,
and had not been sent by any public authority. This was probable enough, at
a period when Campanian, or Opican, or Samnite mercenaries,-for the same
men were called indifferently by all these names,-bore such a high renown for
valor, and were enlisted into the service of so many different nations. But the
Samnites further charged the Romans with a breach of the treaty on their part,
in having planted a Roman colony at Fregelle; a place which, having been conquered by the Samnites from the Volscians in the late war with the Latin confederacy, belonged rightfully to them as their share of the spoil. The Roman
annalists seem to have known of no adequate answer that was made to this
charge: the Romans proposed, it is said, to refer the question to the decision of
some third power, keeping possession, however, of Fregelle in the mean time.
But the Samnites thought their right so clear, that it was idle to refer the matter
to any arbitration,4 and to allow the Romans in the mean while to exclude them
from entering upon their own land.   They replied, that no negotiations, and no
mediation of any third party, could decide their differences; the sword alone
must determine them.    "Let us meet at once in Campania," they said, "and
there put our quarrel to issue."  The answer was characteristic of the Romans:
' Our legions march whither their own generals order them, and not at the
bidding of an enemy." Then the Roman fecialis, or herald,35 stepped forward:
" The gods of war," he said, "will judge between us." And then he raised his
hands to heaven and prayed, "If the Roman commonwealth has received wrong
from the Samnites, and shall proceed to take up arms because she could obtain
no justice by treaty, then may all the gods inspire her with wise counsels, and
prosper her arms in battle! But if Rome has been false to her oaths, and declares
war without just cause, then may the gods prosper neither her counsels nor her
arms!"  Having said thus much, the ambassadors departed; and L. Cornelius,
it is said, crossed the frontier immediately, and invaded Samnium.
But the year passed away unmarked by any decisive actions. Q. Publilius
Q. Pblius Phulo is established himself between Palaepolis and Neapolis, so as to inmado pro-consul.  tercept all land communication between them, and to be enabled
to lay waste their territory. He did not venture, however, to besiege either city,
81 Dionysius, in all his account of these olis, was founded in a more advantageous sitaffairs, makes mention only of Neapolis; the nation, the old town, or Palapolis, went to dename of Palupolis does not once occur in cav.
his narrative. In the Roman story, Palaepolis  '2 Livy, VIII. 23.
holds the more prominent place; for no other  3 Livy, VIII, 23.
reason, apparently, than because Palnpolis was  4 See the answer of the Corinthians when
conquered by force, and enabled Publilius to the Corcyrmans, like the Romans, first beobtain the honor of a triumph, while Neapolis sieged Epidamnus, and then offered to refer
entered into a friendly treaty with Rome. But the dispute to the arbitration of some third
Palapolis must really have been a very insig- party. Thucyd. I. 39.
nifi ant place; for it followed almost as an in- 35 Dionysius, XV. 13. Fragm. Mai.
falli ale rule, that whenever a new town, Neap



ï~~CHAP. XXX.]  ATTEMPT TO INFRINGE THE LICINIAN LAW.

283

and as the sea was open to their ships, they were not likely to be soon reduced
to famine. Thus when the consular year was about to close, Q. Publilius was
empowered to retain his command as proconsul," till he should have brought the
war to a conclusion; and this is the first instance on record of the name and office of proconsul, and proves the great interest which Publilius must have had both
in the senate and with the people at large; for certainly no urgent public necessity required that he should receive such an extraordinary distinction. It might
have seemed of much greater consequence to leave the same general in the command of the army in Samnium; but Cornelius7 was only excused from returning
to Rome to hold the comitia, and was required to nominate a dictator for that
purpose; as soon as the new consuls came into office, the conduct of the war
was committed to them.
The consul named as dictator M. Claudius Marcellus, a man who had been
himself consul four years before, but was of a plebeian family. Patrician  eneole. aAnd here we may observe a confirmation of Niebuhr's opinion, gane t a plebeian diethat the spirit of the senate at this period was very different fromtatr
that of the more violent patricians, or probably of a majority of the order. The
senate had just conferred an unprecedented honor on the man whom the patricians most hated-on the author of the Publilian laws. This probably excited
much bitterness; and although M. Claudius Marcellus seems to have given no
personal cause of offence, yet as he was a plebeian, the more violent patrician party
determined to vent their anger upon him. They could not stop the proconsulship of Publilius, for that was solely within the cognizance of the senate and
people; but the dictatorship of Marcellus might be set aside by a power which
was still exclusively patrician, and for that very reason was likely to be animated by a strong patrician spirit, the college of augurs. Reports were spread
abroad that the dictator had not been duly appointed, that some religious impediment had occurred; and of this question the augurs were alone judges. It
was referred to them, and they pronounced that in the appointment5 the auspices
had not been properly taken, and that it was therefore void. The dictator accordingly resigned his office; but the decision of the augurs, although not legally
questionable, was openly taxed with unfairness. The consul, it was said, was in
the midst of his camp in Samnium; he had arisen, as was his custom, at the
dead of night, and had named the dictator when no human eye beheld him..He
had mentioned nothing of evil omen to vitiate his act; there was no witness
who could report any, and how could the augurs, whilst living quietly at Rome,
pretend to know what signs of unlucky import had occurred at a given time and
place in Samnium?   It was plain to see that the real impediment to the dictator's appointment consisted in his being a plebeian.
The patricians appear to have been so encouraged by this victory, as to venture upon another attempt of a far more desperate nature: they Attempts to set aside
seem to have tried to set aside the Licinian law, and to procure the Licinian law.
the election of two patrician consuls. This at least is the most likely explanation of the fact that after the dictator's resignation, when the comitia were
to be held by an interrex, the election was so delayed9 that thirteen interregna, a period of more than sixty-five days, were suffered to elapse before the
new consuls were appointed. The fourteenth interrex was L. Ah milius Mamercinus, a man whose family, since the days of the good dictator Mamercus.Emilius, had always been opposed to the high patrician party, who was himself a
friend40 of Publilius Philo, and whose brother had been Publilius' colleague and
associate in the year in which he had passed his famous laws. He brought on
the election without delay, and took care that it should be conducted according
3 Livy, VIII. 23.                     s' Livy, VIII. 23.
SLivy, VIII. 23.                      40 He had named Publilius his master of the
'Â~ Livy, VIII. 23. " Vitiosum videri dicta- horse a few years earlier, when he was himself
torem pronuntiaverunt."               dictator. Livy, VIII. 16.




ï~~284

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XXX1

to law; and thus the efforts of the patricians were baffled, and a plebeian con.
sul, C. Pcetelius,41 was elected along with the patrician L. Papirius Mugillanus.
It was an untimely moment for the renewal of party quarrels, when Rome was
Feelingeofbothnations entering upon her second and decisive war with Samnium. In the
at the beginning of the first contests the two nations had met without animosity, and the
second Sasenite war.
war was ended between them soon and easily.     But in the fourteen years which had since elapsed their feelings had become greatly changed.
They were now well aware of each other's power and ambition; their dominions
were brought into immediate contact; neither could advance but by driving back
the other. The Latin states were now closely united with Rome, and it was become a question which of the two races, the Latin or the Sabellian, should be
the sovereign of central and southern Italy. The second Samnite war, therefore,
was carried on with feelings of bitter hostility; and instead of ending, like the
first, within three years, it lasted, amidst striking vicissitudes of fortune, for more
than twenty.
CHAPTER XXXI,
SECOND S ANMNITE WAR-L. PAPIRIUS CURSOR-AFFAIR OF THE FORKS OR PASS
OF CAUDIUM-BATTLE OF LAUTIUL -Q. FABIUS, AND THE WAR WITH ETRURIA.-A. U. C. 428-450: 428-444, NIEBUHR.
"Samnites quinquaginta annis per Fabios et Papiriospatres, eorumque liberos, ita subegit at
domuit (populus Romanus), ita ruinas ipsas urbium diruit, ut hodie Samninumn in ipso Samnio
requiratur; nec facile appareat materia quatuor et viginti triumphorum."-FLoRus, I. 16.
THE second Samnite war brings us to the middle of the fifth century of Rome,
Chronology of th see- and within little more than three hundred years of the Christian
ond sanz ito war.  ara. Alexander died almost before it had begun; and neither
Aristotle nor Demosthenes were living when the Romans, in the fifth year of the
contest, were sent under the yoke at the memorable pass of Caudium. At its
conclusion, sixteen years later, we are arrived at the second generation of Alexander's successors; Eumenes and Antipater were dead, Demetrius Poliorcetes was
in the height of his renown; and Seleucus and Ptolemy had already assumed
the kingly diadem, and founded the Greek kingdoms of Syria and of Egypt. So
completely had Greece arrived at the season of autumn, while at Rome it was
yet the early spring.
The war on which we are going to enter lasted, on the lowest computation,
General nature and oh. about twenty years. It was full of action, but its events present
jeots of the war.  so complicated a tissue, that it is not easy to comprehend its general principle. Here, however, as in the Peloponnesian war, it was a great object
with either party to tempt the allies of the other to revolt; and thus the Roman
armies were so often employed in Apulia, and in the valley of the upper Liris,
while the Samnites were eager at every favorable opportunity to pour down into
Campania. At first the fidelity even of the Latin states to Rome seemed doubtful; but that was secured by timely concessions, and Rome and Latium, firmly
united, were enabled to send out armies so superior in number to those of the
Samnites, that while revolt from the Romans was an attempt of the greatest
4 Livy, VIII. 25.




ï~~CHA. XXXI.]

THE ALLIES OF ROME.

285

danger, revolt to them was prompted both by hope and fear. The Etruscan war,
like ll the other military attempts of that divided people, offered no effectual
diversion; and at last Samnium saw her allies stripped, as it were, from around
her, and was obliged herself to support the havoc of repeated invasions. She
then yielded from mere exhaustion; but was so unsubdued in spirit that she only
made peace till she could organize a new force of allies to assist her in renewing
the struggle.
Q. Publilius Philo,1 in his new office of proconsul, was continuing his land
blockade of the Greeks of Parthenope; while the new consuls of e        anins an
The Lucanians and
the year 428 with their united armies were ordered to invade Apdians b ecome the
Samnium.    But the Romans, according to the policy which they aioom.
invariably pursued in their later wars, did not choose to carry on a systematic
war in their enemy's country till they had secured the alliance of some state in
his immediate neighborhood. Thus, before they commenced their operations,
they concluded treaties of alliance' with the Lucanians and Apulians, or, at any
rate, with some particular states or tribes of these two nations.  The Lucanians,
although a kindred people to the Samnites, were politically distinct from them;
and they had, moreover, their own internal factions,3 each of which would gladly
apply for foreign aid to enable it to triumph over its rival. Besides, they were
the old enemies of the Greek cities on their coasts; and as Rome was now in
open war with Neapolis, and on the brink of a quarrel with Tarentum, this very
circumstance would dispose the Lucanians to seek her alliance. As for the Apulians, they were treated by the Samnites, it is said, almost as a subject people;4
and they might, therefore, as naturally look to Rome for deliverance, as the
allies of Athens in the Peloponnesian war were ready to revolt to Lacedmmon.
But the Samnite government had not the active energy of the Athenian; and the
Romans were still more widely distant from the pusillanimity and utter unskilfulness which marked the military plans of Sparta.
We know nothing but the mere outside of all these transactions; the internal
parties whose alternate triumph or defeat influenced each state's Endofthe warwiththe
external relations, are mostly lost in the distant view presented gee iob mtheoo
y                  p          Neapolis becomes the
by the annalists of Rome.    But it is recorded5 that the war with ay of the Romans.
the Greeks of Parthenope was ended by the act of a citizen of Palaepolis, who,
preferring the Roman to the Samnite connection, found means to admit the Romans into hii city. Publilius obtained a triumph for his conquest, and Palaepolis is no more heard of in history; but Neapolis, warned in time by the fate
of her sister city, did not allow one of her own citizens to place her at the
enemy's mercy, but at once concluded peace for herself, and was admitted into
the Roman alliance.6   From   that day forward the political history of Neapolis
is a blank to us, till, in the revolutions of ages, the Chalcidian colony became
the seat of an independent duchy, and afterwards of a Norman kingdom.
The people of Tarentum,' it is said, were greatly concerned at the issue of
1 Livy, VIII. 25.                      (Diodorus, XVI. 62-88.) But of the subsequent
2 Livy, VIII. 25.                      relations between Tarentum and the Lucinians
S This, Niebuhr observes, appears from the we have not a word; the whole of the 17th and
statement that Alexander of Epirus, during his 18th books in their present state being devoted
wars in Italy, was attended by about two hun- exclusively to the affairs of Greece and Asia;
dred Lucanian exiles; and that tnese exiles and the portion of the history which treated of
treated with the opposite party, and purchased the contemporary events in Sicily and the west,
their return to their several estates by betray- having been entirely lost.
ing him and murdering him.-Livy, VIII. 24.  4 Livy, IX. 13. See chap. XXVIII. of this
It is vexatious that Diodorus, or rather his work history, note 28.
as it now remains to us, makes no mention of  Livy, VIII. 25.
the affairs of Italy during this period. He no-  6 Livy, VIII. 26, speaks of a " fcedus Neapolitices the war between the Lucanians and Taren- tanum," not "Palepolitanum," which he actum in the 110th Olympiad, in which Archid- counts for by saying, "Eoenim (sell.Neapolin),
amus, the king of Sparta, fought on the side of deinde summa rei Grcorum vent." But see
the Tarentines and was killed; and which was chap. XXX. note 81.
exactly contemporary with the battle of Chero-  ' Livy, VIII. 27.
tea, and the beginning of the great Latin war.




ï~~286

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XXXI.

The Lucanians revolt this war, and were anxious by every means to stop the alarming
from Rome, nod again growth of the Roman power. A strange story is told of their
oin the Samnites.  deceiving the Lucanians by false representations of outrages offerred by the Roman generals to some Lucanian citizens; and the effect of their
trick, it is said, was so great, that the whole Lucanian nation, in the very same
year in which they had concluded their alliance with Rome, revolted and joined
the Samnites. But the Samnites, mistrusting this sudden change, obliged them
to give hostages for their fidelity, and to receive Samnite garrisons intotheir
principal towns.
It is quite evident that we have not here the whole explanation of the conduct
Obsurity of these ar- of the Lucanians. Some internal revolution must have prepared
counts. Operations of the way for it, and then any stories, whether true or false, of the
the first campaign,. a     t      hn        ~      reum    reo            h
the first campaign  insolence of the Roman generals might be successfully employed
to excite the popular indignation. But how the Roman party was so suddenly
and completely overthrown, and why neither of the consular armies made any
attempt to restore it, it is impossible to conjecture. The whole account of the
operations of the two consuls is confined to the statement, that they penetrated
some way from Capua up the valley of the Vulturnus, and took the three towns
of Allifm, Callifae, and Rufrium. But no success was obtained of sufficient importance to deserve a triumph, and the conquered towns were in all probability
immediately abandoned, for the Romans could not as yet hope to maintain their
ground permanently on the upper Vulturnus; and it appears that fifteen years
afterwards Allife was still held by the Samnites.  Thus, at the end of the first
campaign, the aspect of the war was not favorable to Rome.
The next year opened still more unpromisingly; for the Vestinians9 joined the
A. U. C. 429. Second Samnite confederacy; and if the Romans attacked them, it was
capign. woar with likely that the Marsians, Marrucinians, and Pelignians, would all
the Vestinians.
take up arms in their defence. These four nations lay on the north
and northwest of Samnium, and their territory reached from the coast of the
Adriatic to the central chain of the Apennines, and to the shores of the lake
Fucinus. If they were hostile, all communication between Rome and Apulia
was rendered extremely precarious; and Samnium was secured from invasion
except on the side of the valley of the Liris, or from Campania. The Romans,
therefore, boldly resolved to declare war at once against the Vestinians, and by
a sudden attack to detach them from the Samnite alliance. One of the new
consuls, Dec. Junius Brutus, marched immediately into their country; the
neighboring nations remained quiet, and the Vestinians, overpowered by a superior force, saw their whole country laid waste; and when they were provoked
to risk a battle they were totally defeated, and were reduced for the rest of the
season to disperse their army, and endeavor only to defend their several cities.
Two of these,'0 however, were taken, and although it is not mentioned that the
Vestinians sued for peace, yet the communication between Rome and Apulia
seems for the future to have been carried on through their country without interruption.
Meanwhile the other consul, L. Furius Camillus, who was to have invaded
L.Papirius Cursor dic- Samnium,ll. was taken ill, and became unable to retain his comtator.        mand.   Being then ordered to name a dictator, he fixed upon L.
Papirius Cursor, who accordingly appointed Q. Fabius Rullianus his master of
the horse, and marched out to attack the Samnites. Livy's carelessness, and the
extreme obscurity of the small towns and villages in Samnium, make it impossiLivy, VIII. 25.                     included that highest part of the whole range
9,..Livy, VIII. 29.                   of the Apennines known by the name of "Il
' Cutina and Cingilia.-Livy, VIII. 29. Both gran Sasso d' Italia." But the sites of the
names are entirely unknown, and both, there- several small towns in it, which in all probabilfore, as usual, are given with great variations ity had perished long before the Augustan age,
in the MSS. The country of the Vestinians lay it is impossible to ascertain now.
on the left bank of the river Aturnus, and it  1 Livy, VIII. 29.




ï~~CHAP. XXXI.]

L. PAPIRIUS AND Q. FABIUS.

287

ble to ascertain the seat of this campaign exactly. We cannot even tell whether
the Romans invaded Samnium," or were obliged themselves to act on the defensive, and to meet the Samnite army in the valley of the upper Anio, under the
Imbrivian or Simbrivian hills, about half way between Tibur and Sublaqueum.
The faint and obscure outline of the military transactions of this campaign affords a strong contrast to the lively and full picture of the dispute story of his severity
between the Roman dictator and his master of the horse, which tow ards Q.Fabius, his
the annals have given amongst the events of this year. As the masterofte horse.
story would be considered honorable to both the actors in it, the traditions and
memoirs of both their families would vie with each other in recording it; and the
historian, Fabius Pictor, in honor of his own name and race, was likely to give
it a place in his history.  It is told by Livy with his usual power and feeling;
but here, as in the story of T. Manlius and his son, it will be best merely to repeat the outline of it, as we have no other knowledge of it than what we derive
from Livy himself, and to give it again in detail would be either to translate him,
or to describe with less effect what in him is related almost perfectly.
When the auspices were taken,'3 as usual, by the dictator at Rome, previously
to his marching out to war, the signs of the will of the gods were  Fabisappealto
not sufficiently intelligible.  It whs necessary, therefore, to take  i bus and te peo
ple, by their entreaties,
them over again; and as they were auspices14 which could only be previ o n the dictator
taken lawfully within the precinct of the old Ager Romanus, the to spare his life.
dictator was obliged for this purpose to return to Rome. He charged his master of the horse to remain strictly on the defensive during his absence; but Fabius disobeyed his orders, and gained some slight advantage over the enemy; an
advantage which the annalists magnified into a decisive victory, with a loss to the
Samnites'1 of 20,000 men. However, Papirius, as soon as he heard of this breach
of his orders, hastened back to the camp, and would have executed Fabius immediately, had not the violent and almost mutinous opposition of the soldiers
obliged him to pause.   During the night Fabius fled from the camp to Rome,
and immediately summoned the senate to implore their protection; but ere the
senators were well assembled, the dictator arrived, and again gave orders to arrest
him. M. Fabius, the father of the prisoner, then appealed to the tribunes for
their protection, and declared his intention of carrying his son's cause before the
assembly of the people. Papirius warned the tribunes not to sanction so fatal a
breach of military discipline, nor to lessen the majesty of the dictator's office, by
allowing his judgments to be reversed by any other power. The tribunes hesi
' Livy fixes the scene of action in Samnium,
and calls the place at which the action was
fought "Imbrinium." VIII. 30. But Niebuhr'
observes, that the circumstances of the story
which follows, imply that the Roman army
could have been at no great distance from
Rome; and the Imbrivian or Simbrivian hills
of the upper valley of the Anio are well known.
In this Samnite war, wherever we have any details of a battle, the geography of the campaign
is generally more perplexed than ever; because
such details always come from stories preserved by the several families of the aristocracy,
whether in writing or traditionally; and these,
caring nothing for the military history of the
previous operations, only sought to describe
the deeds of their hero in the battle.
13 Livy, VIII. 80.
14 This appears from the well-known passage
in Varro, in which he gives the augurs' division
of all countries, according to the rules of their
art; that is, according to the several kinds of
auspices which were peculiar to each of them.
The ager Romanus and the ager Gabinus are
classed apart, because in these two districts the
suspices might be taken in the same way. All

other countries were either ager peregrinus, or
ager hosticus, or ager incertus; and these required different auspices.-See Varro, V. Â~ 33.
Ed. Miiller.
11 Livy, VIII. 30. Some writers, not content
with this, asserted that two pitched battles had
been fought during the dictator's absence, and
that Fabius had been twice signally victorious.
" In quibusdam annalibus tota res pretenruissa
est," says Livy; that is, the action was of no
importance in itself, and therefore was omitted
in those annals which did not enter into the details of the story of Papirius and Fabius. But,
as it made a necessary part of that story, it was
mentioned, of course, in every version of it;
and both the Papirian and the Fabian traditions would be disposed to exaggerate its importance: the latter, from an obvious reason;
but the former would be disposed to do it
equally, for the glory of the character of Papirius was placed in his unyielding assertion of
the sacredness of discipline; and this would be
rendered the more striking, in proportion to
the brilliancy of the action, which he, notwith
standing, treated as a crime, because it had been
fought contrary to his orders.




ï~~288

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CuAP. XXXI

tated; they were unwilling to establish a precedent of setting any limits to the
absolute power of the dictator, a power which was held essential to the office;
and yet they could not bear to permit an exercise of this power so extravagantly
severe as to shock the sense and feelings of the whole Roman people. They
were relieved from this difficulty by the people themselves;" for the whole assembly, with one voice, implored the dictator to show mercy, and to forgive Fabius
for their sakes. Then Papirius yielded; the absolute power of the dictator, he
said, was now acknowledged: the people did not interfere to rescind his sentence,"1 but to entreat his mercy. Accordingly, he declared that he pardoned
the master of the horse; "and the authority of the Roman generals was established," says Livy, "no less firmly by the peril of Q. Fabius than by the actual
death of the young T. Manlius." This is true, if by peril we understand not
only that he was in danger, but also that he was no more than in danger, and
that he did not actually perish; for the execution of Fabius would, perhaps,
have been more ruinous to discipline than any other possible result of the transaction, as the reaction of feeling produced by laws of extreme severity has a direct tendency to utter lawlessness. It may be observed also, that, according to
this story, the tribunes possessed the power within the city of staying the execution, even of a dictator's sentence; and there is no doubt that in him, no less than
in an inferior magistrate, it would have beeh a breach of the solemn covenant of
the Sacred Hill to have touched the person of a tribune. And, in the same manner, the people in their centuries could, undoubtedly, have taken cognizance of
the offence of Fabius themselves, and removed it out of the jurisdiction of the
dictator. But neither the tribunes nor the people wished so to interfere, because
it was held to be expedient that the dictator's power should be, in practice, unrestrained; and, therefore, it was judged better to save Fabius by an appeal to the
clemency of Papirius, rather than by an authoritative reversal of his sentence.
From this story we return again to the meagerness of the accounts of the war.
Successes o f Papirius. It is said, that whilst Papirius'8 was absent in Rome, one of his
Truce for ayear.  foraging parties was cut off by the Samnites; and that after his
return to the army, the soldiers were so unwilling to conquer under his auspices,
that in a bloody battle, fought under his immediate command, with the enemy,
the fortune of the day was left doubtful. Then, said the story,"9 Papirius saw
how needful it was to win the love of his soldiers; he was assiduous in his attentions to the wounded; he commended them by name to the care of their respective officers; and he himself, with his lieutenants, went round the camp, looking
personally into the tents, and asking the men how they were. The affections of
the army were thus completely regained; another battle followed, and the victory of the Romans was so decisive, that the Samnites were forced to abandon
the open country to the ravages of their enemies, and were even driven, so said
the stories of the Papirian family, to solicit peace.  The dictator granted an armistice, and ambassadors from the Samnites followed him to Rome, when he
returned thither, about the end of February," to celebrate his triumph. But as
the terms of a lasting peace could not be agreed upon, nothing more was concluded than a truce for a single year; a breathing-time which both parties might
find convenient.
The new consuls, however, were engaged in hostilities with the Samnites in
the course of their magistracy, so that the Roman annalists accused
Third campaign. Confion of the history ofi the Samnites of having broken the truce as soon as Papirius went
this year. A. U. C.431. out of office."  In the utter confusion of the chronology of this
period, and the obscurity of its history, we cannot tell whether the charge was
"6 Livy, VIII. 85.                     1 Livy, VIII. 86.
'7 "Non noxa eximitur Q. Fabius, sed noxte '2 See the Fasti Capitolini.
damnatus donatur populo Romano, donatur tri-  m Livy, VIII. 87. " Nec earum ipsarum (inbunicite potestati, precarium non justum aux- duciarum) sancta fides fuit: adeo, postquam
ilium ferenti."-Livy, VIII. 85.        Papirium abisse magistratu nuntiatum est, ar,
SLivy, VIII. 35.                      recti ad bellandum animi sunt."




ï~~CHAP. XXXI.]

RISING OF THE CITIES NEAR ROME.

289

well founded or no. But the events of this year, 431, according to the common
chronology, have been more than ordinarily disguised and suppressed, for the
annalists represent it as a year marked by no memorable action; whereas, in fact,
it witnessed a coalition against Rome, which was indeed quickly dissolved, but
in the mean time had exposed the republic to the most imminent jeopardy. We
must attempt to restore the outline at least of the real but lost picture.
The Samnites had employed the year of the truce in endeavoring to procure
assistance for themselves amongst the allies and subjects of Rome. The consuls march into
They succeeded, either wholly or in part, with the Apulians: some Apulia and Samnium.
of whose cities"2 revolted from the Romans, and called in the Samnites to assist
in reducing those who refused to join them. Thus when the truce was either
ended, or broken, Q. Aulius Cerretanus,3 one of the consuls, was obliged to march
with one consular army into Apulia; whilst the other consul, C. Sulpicius Longus, was sent into Samnium. Whether he made his attack on the side of Campania, or from the country of the Pelignians and Marsians, we know not; but it
appears, at any rate, that both consuls were engaged at a distance from Rome,
and their communications with it would, therefore, be liable to great interruption.
Five years had now elapsed since the rights of Roman citizenship had been
bestowed on the people of Privernum; thirteen years had passed Geat ioefthcitic,
since the same privileges had been given to the Tusculans. But near R.    tolaie theo
full rights of citizenas this citizenship extended only to private rights, and conferred ship. L.Fulv.soconsl
no political power (for neither the Privernatians nor the Tuscu- of the T
lans were as yet included in any Roman tribe, and,'consequently, they enjoyed no
rights of voting), so it was felt to be a degradation rather than a benefit; or, at
any rate, it was fitted only for a temporary measure, which ought to pave the
way for a more perfect union. We may conjecture also, from what has taken
place in other countries, that hopes had been held out, or even promises made,
by the Romans, of which the fulfilment was afterwards indefinitely delayed; and
the nobility of Privernum and Tusculum, connected with those of Rome in their
private relations, and aspiring to share with them also their political distinctions,
were especially impatient of their actual condition. The Samnite war, and, above
all, the absence of both the consular armies in remote parts of Italy, seemed to
afford them an opportunity of enforcing their claims, and obliging the Romans
to grant them a full equality of rights. Suddenly, therefore, like the Irish volunteers of 1782, the people of Tusculum and Privernum flew to arms; and the
spirit which actuated them must, indeed, have been general, if it be true that the
people of Yelitre,24 although already included in a Roman tribe, were yet persuaded to join them. One of their leaders was L. Fulvius Curvus, of Tusculum,
and, like the leaders of the Italian allies in the great war of the seventh century,
he was invested with the title of consul.25 A Privernatian leader was, probably,

22 Livy, VIII. 37.
23 Livy calls him Q. AEmilius Cerretanus, but
says "Aulium quidam    annales habent."  He
himself calls him Aulius, however, when he
mentions his second consulship in the year
429.-Livy, IX. 15.
24 In the bill proposed afterwards by M. Flavius for the punishment of the Tusculans, it
was proposed to punish all those " quorum ope
no consilia Veliterni Privernatesque populo Romano bellum fecissent." This can only allude
to the short war of this year; but the account
of these events in Livy is so meager that if we
only followed his narrative the allusion would
be unintelligible; for not a word had been said
of Privernum since the war of 425, nor of Velitra since the great Latin war. Drakenborch,
therefore, is naturally at a loss to understand
the meaning of the passage; but as the state19

ment of the language of the bill is likely to be
authentic, we might venture, even from that
alone, to supply the defects of the other part of
Livy's narrative, even if we had not Pliny's remarkable notice of L. Fulvius, which throws a
light upon the whole transaction.
21," Est et L. Fulvius inter insignia exempla.
Tusculanorum  rebellantium  consul; eodemque honore quum transisset exornatus confertim a populo Romano: qui solos eodem anno
quo fuerat hostis Rome triumphavit ex iis querum consul fuerat."  Pliny, Histor. Natur. VII.
44. Now, the title of consul was Roman exclusively, and not Latin; the Latins had pritors
and dictators, but no consuls; which would naturally be the case, if the origin of the name at
Rome were as accidental, and as connected with
the peculiar circumstances of the time, as I have
supposed it to have been. See p.120. If, then,




ï~~290

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Ch AP. XXX1

associated with him in this dignity, in intimation that Tusculum and Privernum
were resolved to form a distinct Roman commonwealth of their own, they too
being Roman citizens, if the inhabitants of the capital persisted in excluding them
from the government and honors of their common country.
Their measures seem to have been taken with the most careful secrecy, and
Night march of L. Fl- the execution of them fell upon the Romans like a thunderbolt.
m  ns of tRomeThe    a   finsur
denod atls tfoe mor In the dea ofte iht, an alarm was given that an enemy was
gents are granted,  before the walls of Rome;26 the citizens arose in haste, each man
seized his arms, and ran to the Capitol, or to defend the walls and secure the
gates of the city. The attempt of L. Fulvius to surprise Rome, not less bold than
the march of C. Pontius Telesinus upon the Colline gate, was timely baffled;
and, finding the city secured against a surprise, he retreated as rapidly as he had
advanced. But although this single blow had failed, it still revealed the magnitude of the actual danger. If Velitr e had joined in the revolt, what hope was
there that the other cities of Latium would remain faithful? and if the whole
storm of the Latin war should again gather, when the Samnites were no longer
allies of Rome, as in the last war, but her deadly enemies, what prospect was left
of victory?  The pride of the Roman aristocracy was obliged to yield; and the
self-same conduct which in Vitruvius Vaccus five years before they had punished
with death, they were now obliged, in the case of L. Fulvius Curvus, to reward
with the consulship.  What security they could give that they would keep
their plighted faith, we know not; but L. Fulvius was so satisfied that he went
over to the Romans, and his countrymen and their allies, assured that their demands would be granted, laid down their arms. A mad, if not a treacherous,
attempt to disturb this understanding was made by M. Flavius,27 one of the tribunes; he proposed a law for visiting with condign punishment those citizens of
Tusculum who had been the instigators of the late insurrection. This must, undoubtedly, have included L. Fulvius himself; and had the law passed, the Latins,
in indignation and despair, would have risen as one man; and the quarrel would
have become utterly irreconcilable. One tribe, the Pollian, voted in favor of
it, and even expressed its wish for a still bloodier vengeance on the whole people of Tusculum, such as the Athenians had taken upon the revolted Melians and
Scioneans. But all the other tribes, to the number of eight and twenty, had
the wisdom to reject the bill. In the very next census the Tusculans28 and Privernatians received the full rights: of citizenship; but L. Fulvius obtained the
object of his ambition even without this short delay; he was elected at once Roman consul; and the man who in one year had led a hostile army to assail the
very walls of Rome, was in the next year invested with the highest civil and military power in the Roman commonwealth.

Fulvius was really called consul, and not pretor, the title must have been chosen with the
same feeling as in the Italian war; when the
Italian allies, claiming to be the true representatives of the Roman nation, elected their two
consuls and twelve pretors in opposition to the
consuls and prators of the city of Rome.
2 Livy, VIII. 87. " Rome nocturnus terror
ita ex somno trepidam repente civitatem excivit,
ut capitolium atque arx metniaque et porte plena armatorum fuerint, et cum concursatum conclamatumque ad armna omnibus locis esset, prim   luce nec auctor nee causa terroris comparuit."  The story thus given is a mere absurdity; but it is probable enough, if explained as
in the text. We read of a similar night attack
macde by the Equians upon Tusculum towards
the close of the third century of Rome, Livy,
III. 283; and in the same manner Appius Herdonius had actually surprised the Capitol at
Rome in the year 294. It may be that Fulvius
expected to be joined by a party within Rome
itself, and the failure of this co-operation.may

have ruined his design. That he should have
retreated instantly, as soon as he found that he
was discovered, was, of course, necessary; and
thus there would have been no enemy to be
seen from the walls of Rome when the day
broke; and yet the alarm in the night was any
thing but imaginary.
7 Livy, VII. 87.
' This is known with regard to the Privernatians, because they were included in the tribe
Ufentina, or Oufentina, which was created it
436. See Livy, IX. 20. Diodorus, XIX. 10. With
regard to the Tusculans it is only a conjecture;
but we never hear of them afterwards, except
as full citizens; and their being enrolled in the
Papirian tribe (which is known from Livy, VIII.
87) seems to suit with the supposition that they
were admitted to the full franchise by L. Papirius Cursor, who, as appears from the Fasti Capitolini, was one of the censors of the year 436,
when the Falerian and Ufentine tribes were created.




ï~~CHAP. XXXI.]  FOURTH CAMPAIGN.-ROMAN VICTORIES.

291

What became of the consular armies in Samnium and Apulia, while these important events were passing in the neighborhood of Rome, we have
Fourth campaign of the
no means of discovering.  It is certain that they gained no victo- wor. Victorios of the
ries; it is possible that they may have sustained some defeats, Romans.
and that their ill fortune may have helped to break the spirit of Roman government, and to enforce a compliance with the demands of the Tusculans. But
when the seeds of dissension near home were destroyed, and Tusculum and the
other neighboring cities were cordially united with Rome, the war in Samnium
assumed a different aspect. The Roman annals represent the year 432 as one
marked by most brilliant victories; although some accounts" ascribed the merit
of them to the consuls, Q. Fabius and L. Fulvius, while others gave it to a dictator, A. Cornelius Arvina. All agreed, however, in saying that the Samnites
sustained a bloody defeat, insomuch that the party in Samnium which was favorable to peace obtained, for the moment, an ascendency. This party resolved to
purchase the friendship of Rome by the humblest concessions: all prisoners3t and
all plunder taken from the Romans were to be restored; all the demands of the
Romans before the war were to be fully satisfied; and Brutulus Papius, the
leader of the war party, was to be given up to the Romans, as the man who had
broken the peace between the two nations. Brutulus Papius, it is said, would
not be given up alive; he killed himself, and only his lifeless body was offered
to the vengeance of his enemies.  But the Romans, thinking that a party which
could yield so much would not dare to refuse any thing, rejected even these
terms, and would be contented with nothing less than that the Samnites should
acknowledge their supremacy, and become their dependent allies."1 One unsuccessful campaign was not enough to reduce so brave a people to such a humiliation; the whole nation resolved to try the chance of war once more; and their choice
of an imperator, or captain-general, for the approaching campaign fell on a man who
has deserved.,to be called the Samnite Hannibal, or Caius Pontius of Telesia.3
The military history of the ensuing year is more than ordinarily obscure, because the annals were filled with nothing but the stories about the Fifth. The
Fifth campaign. The
disaster of Caudium; and, as usual, these stories never think of Romans invado Samconnecting the event to which they relate with the circumstance 0um from Campania.
which led to it, but plunge into the midst of it at once. The two new consuls,
it is said, T. Veturius and Sp. Postumius, at the head of two consular armies,
consisting each of two Roman legions, and a considerable force of auxiliaries,
marched from Rome into Campania; as if it was intended to strike a blow at the
great Samnite cities on the southern side of the Matese at Caudium, and Telesia,
and Beneventum, or, as it was then called, Maleventum. The last campaign in
Apulia had, probably, recovered the revolted cities in that country, and the Roman party amongst the Apulians was supposed to be strong enough to retain
their countrymen in their alliance with Rome.   Thus the seat of war was removed entirely to the southern frontier of Samnium; and C. Pontius, the Samnite general, was prepared to defend the passes which lead from the plain of
Naples to Beneventum and the higher valleys within the line of the Apennines.
But, in order to tempt the Romans to plunge blindly into these defiles, Pontius contrived to mislead them  by a false report that the whole They enter toe pass of
Samnite army was gone off into Apulia,3" ard was there busily ca iunm.
engaged in besieging Luceria; as if trusting to the natural strength of their own
2s9 Livy, VIII. 38, 39.               a descendant of the Pontius who defeated the
3o Livy, VIII. 39. D)ion Cassius, Fragm. Romans at the pass of Caudium.
Ursin. 143.                              3 Livy, IX. 2. At what period in this cam31 Appian, III. Fragm. 4.             paign, or by what forces, Luceria was really won
32 He is called Pontius Telesinus by the an- over to the Samnite alliance, it is not possible
thor of the little work "de Viris Illustribus," to say. A part of the Samnite forces may have
in the notice of Sp. Postumius. The great Sam- been in Apulia when the Romans entered Samnite leader who fought so obstinately against nium; and C. Pontius may have won his vicSylla was also Pontius Telesinus, and, possibly, tory with an army much inferior in numbers to




ï~~292

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXZ

country to withstand the invasion of the Roman consuls. The consuls believed
this story, and, thinking on the one hand, that the danger of their allies made it
necessary to choose the shortest route into Apulia, while the absence of the Samnite army would enable them to force their way through Samnium without difficulty, they entered the fatal pass of Caudium. This was a cut or valley in the
outer line or wall of the Apennines, leading from the plain of Campania under
the foot of Tiburnus to Maleventum. The modern road from Naples to Benevento still runs through it, and it is now called the valley of Arpaia.34
In this valley the Roman army found itself on a sudden surrounded by the
They are defeated, and enemy, who showed themselves on both flanks and on the rear, as
ethietreatiscutoff. soon as the heads of the columns were stopped by the obstacles
with which the Samnites had blocked up the road in front of them.  Thus
entangled in a situation nearly similar to that of Flaminius at Thrasymenus, the Romans were completely defeated."5  Night, however, saved them from total destruction; but to retreat to the plains was impossible: the pass in their rear, by
which they had entered the valley, was secured by the enemy; so that they had
no other resource but to encamp in the valley, not far from the scene of their
defeat, and there hopelessly to abide the issue. The Samnites, having thus got
them in their power, waited quietly till famine should do their work for them.
Occupying the road, both in front and on the rear of the Romans, and guarding
every possible track by which the enemy might try to escape over the hills on
either side of the valley, they easily repulsed some desperate attempts made by
the Romans to break out; and a large army, surprised on its march, with all its
communications cut off, and hemmed in within a single narrow valley, could not
possibly have the means of subsistence beyond a very short period. Accordingly, the Romans soon threw themselves on the mercy of the conqueror: "Put
us to the sword,"" they said, "sell us as slaves, or keep us as prisoners till we
are ransomed: only save our bodies, whether living or dead, from all unworthy
insults." They might have remembered how their own countrymen were accustomed to lead their captive enemies in triumph, and to execute them in cold blood
in the common prison; nay, how they had lately demanded even the lifeless body
of a noble Samnite, Brutulus Papius, to be given up to them, and had deprived
it of the rites of burial. But now they could understand that it became a noble
nature to show mercy, and that an unfortunate enemy deserved to be treated
with compassion.

that of the Romans. But the history of this
campaign cannot be completely restored.
34 The situation of the pass of Caudium has
been a matter of dispute. Mr. Gandy, in a memoir published by Mr. Keppel Craven, in his
tour through the southern provinces of Naples,
p. 12-20, places it in a narrow gorge on the little stream of the Isclero, above Sant' Agata
de' Goti. But Niebuhr adheres to the common
opinion that it was the valley between Arienzo
and Arpaia, through which the present road
from Naples to Benevento runs. A village in
the midst of this defile is still called Forchia,
and Niebuhr says that the defile itself was, even
in the middle ages, distinguished by the name
of la Furcula Caudina. The dispute has been
only occasioned by the supposition that Livy's
description of the scene was topographically
correct, and by the difficulty of reconciling it
with the actual character of the valley of Arpaia.
But Livy's descriptions, unless we can be sure
that they are taken from some writer who was
careful about such matters, deserve no credit;
and the picture which he gives of the pass of
Caudium is but a representation of almost all
mountain valleys, which contract at intervals
into mere gorges, and expand between these
gorges into something almost deserving the

name of a plain. It is said that the valley of
Arpaia is too open to suit such a description.
Both Niebuhr and Mr. Keppel Craven call it,
however, a narrow valley, and the Romans, as
they have disguised every other part of the
story, were likely also to exaggerate the natural
difficulties of the ground, in order to lessen the
shame of their defeat.
3 Livy, as is well known, makes the Romans
surrender without a blow, overcome by the insuperable difficubties ofthe ground where they had
been entrapped. ButAppian, when he enumerates the officers who signed the capitulation afterwards, names only twelve military tribunes, and
says that those who signed were all who were
surviving;   revdiravres Saot p7ar ros  h0bapp vov
pxov.-III. Fragm. 4, Â~ 6. Now two consular
armies consisted of four legions, andhad twentyfour military tribunes; so that half of the full
number must have been either killed or disabled by their wounds. And Cicero, in two
places, quoted by Niebuhr (De Officiis, III. 30,
and De Senectute, 12), expressly says that there
was a battle of Caudium, in which the Romans
were defeated.
3 Appian, III. Fragm. 4. Â~ 2. Compare Dionysius, XVI. 4. Fragm. Mai.




ï~~CHAP. XXXI.]

C. PONTIUS OF TELESIA.

293

They spoke to one who could feel this in the hour of triumph, and not merely
when fortune had turned against him. The father of C. Pontius
C. Pontius of Telesia.
had been no stranger to the philosophy of Greece; his intercourse He offers terms to the
with the Tarentines had made him acquainted, it was said, with Roman...
Archytas:37 nay, he had even taken part in a philosophical conversation, respecting pleasure, so went the story, not with Archytas only, but with Plato. These
particulars may not be historical: but the connection with Tarentum was likely
to have an influence on the most eminent Samnites; and C. Pontius was probably far more advanced in cultivation of mind than any Roman general of that
age. He resolved to use his victory generously, and to make it, if possible, the
occasion of an equal, and therefore of a lasting peace.8 "Restore to us," he
said to the consuls, "the towns and the territory which you have taken from us;
and call home your colonists whom you have unjustly settled upon our soil; and
conclude with us a treaty which shall acknowledge each nation to be alike independent of the other. If ye will swear to do this, I will spare your lives, and
let you go without ransom; each man of you giving up his arms merely, and
keeping his clothes untouched; and you shall pass in sight of our army as prisoners whom we had in our power, and whom we set free of our own will, when
we might have killed them, or sold them, or held them to ransom."
When Pontius had announced these terms, he called for the Roman fecialis,
whose office it was to conclude all treaties and to take the oaths The consuls accept
in behalf of the Roman people."9   But there was no fecialis with them.
the army; for the Romans had resolved to make no peace with the Samnites,
and to receive no proposals from them but their absolute submission. So the
consuls and all the surviving officers took the oaths; and six hundred Roman
knights were to be delivered as hostages to the Samnites to insure the ratification
of the peace by the Roman people.
When the Spartans were hopelessly cut off from all aid in the island of Sphacteria, the Athenian commanders agreed to a truce,40 in order to
But the Roman governallow time to the Spartan government to send an embassy to ment wasnot telyto
Athens, and to purchase, if they could, the deliverance of their observe them.
soldiers by consenting to reasonable terms of peace. Why Pontius did not act
in a similar manner, and insist upon treating, not with the generals of the blockaded army, but with the senate and people of Rome, whose consent was obviously essential to the validity of any treaty of peace, the suspicious and imperfect accounts of the Roman writers will not enable us to explain. Did he know
so little of the Romans as to expect that they would ratify the treaty because its
terms were so moderate, and because he had spared the lives of so many thousands of their citizens? But, according to Roman notions, no peace was endurable unless they themselves dictated its conditions; and the mercy of an enemy was a deadly insult, because it reminded them that they had been vanquished.  Or did he trust to the force of natural affection; that the six hundred knights whom he had demanded as hostages, and who were probably the sons
Cicero, deSenectute, XII. Â~41. Ciceromakes life of Archytas, speaks of a discussion on
Cato relate this story on the authorityofNearchus bodily pleasures between him and Polyarchus,
of Tarentum, whom he had himself person- and he seems to give a reality to the conversaally known, and who had repeated it to him on tion, by stating that Polyarchus came to Tarenthe authority of some old men, as a Tarentine tum on an embassy, which had been sent thither
tradition. Cato is made to add, that according by the younger Dionysius. (Athenteus, XII.
to his own calculation, Plato's visit to Taren- 64.) At any rate, as Niebuhr himself allows,
tum had taken place in the consulship of L. the very introduction of the name of C. Pontus
Camillus and App. Claudius; that is, in the into a philosophical dialogue with Archytas
year of Rome 406, according to the common and Plato would show that the eminent Samreckoning. Niebuhr thinks that Nearchus' nites had acquired, through their intercourse
story only means that Nearchus had himself with Tarentum, an interest in and an acquaintwritten a dialogue,repi ovi, in which Archy- ance with the Greek philosophy.
tas, Pontius, and Plato were made the speakers.  30 Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. IV. Â~ 5. Livy,
(Vol. III. note 878.) But Aristoxenus, a scholar IX. 4.
of Aristotle, and therefore removed from the  39 Appian, Samnit. Fragm. IV. Â~ 5
time of Archytas only by one generation, in his  40 Thucydides, IV. 15, 16.




ï~~294

RISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXs

or near relations of the most influential members of the senate, would be so fat
regarded by their fathers, as to tempt them for their sakes to impair the majesty
of Rome? But those fathers were the countrymen and contemporaries of T.
Manlius, who had ordered his son to be put to death, even when victorious,
rather than allow of any example which might be injurious to military discipline;
how, then, could the lives of sons who had degraded themselves by becoming
prisoners to the Samnites be purchased at the price of national humiliation? Or
was Pontius really guilty of no such imprudence; and was it his only fault that
he relied on the solemn faith of a people whose care was not to observe their
treaties honestly, but to devise some pretext by which, whilst they. broke the
spirit, they might still save the letter? It is expressly mentioned4" that not only
the officers of the army, but two of the tribunes of the commons, gave their sanetion to the treaty; and it seems certain that they gave it as tribunes, and that
they were not merely elected tribunes after the surrender, having been at the
time no more than tribunes of the soldiers. But if two tribunes of the commons,
as such, signed the treaty, how came they to do so, or how was it that during
the term of their sacred office they were abroad with the army, and not within
the walls of Rome? Were they sent to the camp for the very purpose of
deceiving the Samnite general, by accepting the treaty, and assuring him that it
would be ratified; and did he, knowing their sacred character, and that they
were the leaders and representatives of the Roman commons, rely too confidently
on their word, without requiring that formal authority for it, which alone, according to the casuistry of the Romans, could make the nation responsible?
When the consuls, queestors, tribunes of the soldiers, and the two tribunes of
S  the commons, had taken the oaths, the first fulfilment of the
The Romans give up
their ane and mar   h treaty immediately followed. The Romans gave up their arms,
out n  or oke.  and marched out of their camp wearing or carrying with them
nothing but one single article of clothing,4" the campestre or kilt, reaching from
the waist to the knees, and leaving the upper part of the body naked, now that
the soldiers had been obliged to give up their coats of mail. Even the consuls
were obliged to appear in this humble plight, for their war cloaks, paludamenta,
were taken from them, and their lictors ordered to leave them the instant they
came out of the camp. The six hundred knights were then delivered up to the
Samnites, and the rest of the Roman army, stripped of their arms and baggage,
passed in order through an opening purposely made for them  in the Samnite
lines of blockade.43 Two spears were set upright in this opening, and a third was
fastened across them at the top; and through this gateway the vanquished army
marched out, as a token that they had been conquered in war, and owed their
lives to the enemy's mercy. It was no peculiar insult devised for this occasion,
but a common usage, so far as appears, in all similar cases;4 like the modern cere
41 Cicero, de Officiis, III. 30, Â~ 109. Cicero's
words are, " Eodemque tempore, Ti. Numicius,
Q. Mlius, qui tum tribuni plebis erant, quod
eorum auctoritate pax erat facts, dediti sunt, ut
pax Samnitium repudiaretur." The expression,
"quod corumauctoritate pax erat facta," shows,
I think, that they were tribunes of the commons when they signed the treaty, and that the
"auctqritas" here spoken of was the sanction
of their sacred office. Livy also mentions the
fact, that two men who were tribunes of the
commons in that year were amongst those who
signed the treaty, IX. 8.
a2 "Eaurov S,v, olv iarto.--Appian. Samnit.
Fr. IV. Â~ 5, " cum  singulis vestimentis inermes."  Livy, IX. 5. In this state Livy calls
them " seminudi," IX. 6, because all the upper
part of their bodies was naked: Dion Cassius
less correctly calls them yvvovs-'EKcXvoV abroe
sim r abr  vy vyovyvoli de~msAOeh olrp iAenOivre~
AodO1av. Frag. Mai. XXXVII. It may be

observed that this condition of allowing each
soldier to march out with a single article of
clothing was granted by the Athenian commanders to the Potideans, when Potidea was
taken in the second year of the Peloponnesian
war; and that the Athenian government complained of the treaty as too favorable to the vanquished:-See Thucydides, II. 70.
a '0 piV II6vrto rapaAvr'ag rt roI &aretLX-.
paro.  Appian, Frag. IV. Â~ 6.  Asardxwpea,
"a cross or dividing wall," because the Samnite
blockade would be effected merely by carrying
two lines across the valley, one above the Roman camp and the other below it. The nature
of the ground rendered a circumvallation, or
7Â~pr7,,rxtO7ea, unnecessary.
4 This is shown by the story of Cincinnatus,
which represents the Equians as made to pass
under the yoke by Cincinnatus under similar
circumstances. And Dionysius expressly calls
it a Roman custom to make an enemy who had




ï~~CHAP. XXXI.]  THEY RESOLVE TO BREAK THE TREATY.

295

mony of piling arms when a garrison or army surrender themselves as prisoners
of war. So far, indeed, was Pontius from behaving with any unusual insolence,
that he ordered carriages to be provided for the sick and wounded of the Roman
army; and furnished45 them with provisions sufficient to support them till they
should reach Rome.
In far different plight, and with far other feelings than they had entered the
pass of Caudium, did the Roman army issue out from it again
They retreat to Capua,
upon the plain of Campania.   Defeated and disarmed, they knew   andfrom thence return
not what reception they might meet with from    their Campanian to Rme.
allies; it was possible that Capua might shut her gates against them, and go
over to the victorious enemy. But the Campanians behaved faithfully and generously;96 they sent supplies of arms, of clothing, and of provisions to meet the
Romans even before they arrived at Capua; they sent new cloaks, and the lictors
and fasces of their own magistrates, to enable the consuls to resume their fitting
state; and when the army approached their city the senate and people went out
to meet them, and welcomed them both individually and publicly with the greatest kindness. No attentions, however, could soothe the wounded pride of the
Romans: they could not bear to raise their eyes from the ground, nor to speak
to any one; full of shame, they continued their march to Rome: when they came
near to it, all those soldiers who had a home in the country47 dispersed and escaped to their several houses, singly and silently; whilst those who lived in
Rome lingered without the walls till the sun was set, and stole to their homes
under cover of the darkness. The consuls were obliged to enter the city publicly and in the light of day, but they looked upon themselves as no longer
worthy to be the chief magistrates of Rome, and they shut themselves up at
home in privacy.
Nor was the blow less deeply felt by the senate and by the whole people.
The actual loss in the battle, and the captivity of six hundred of Grief ad humiliatioan
af the senate and peethe flower of the youth of Rome, were enough of themselves to pie.
throw the nation into mourning; how much more grievous were they when accompanied by such utter defeat and humiliation!4" All business was suspended;
all orders put on mourning; the knights and senators laid aside their gold rings,
and took off the well-known red border of their dress which marked their rank:
in every house there was weeping and wailing for those who had returned home
dishonored, no less than for those who were dead or captive: and all ceremonies of
rejoicing, all festivals, and all private marriages, were suspended, till they could
be celebrated in a year of better omen.    A dictator49 was named to hold the
comitia for the election of new consuls; but the augurs declared that the appointment was null and void; another dictator was then chosen, but the same objection was repeated; till at last, as if the gods abhorred every magistrate of this
fatal year, the elections were held by an interrex. This interrex was M. Valerius
Corvinus, and the consuls chosen'. were two of the most eminent citizens in the
commonwealth, Q. Publilius Philo, the author of the Publilian laws, and L.
Papirius Cursor, who had so sternly upheld military discipline in his late dictatorship.
We cannot suppose that the Samnites would have allowed their victory to remain long unimproved, without assuring themselves whether it Its resoled.  t break
was the intention of the Roman government to ratify the treaty or the treaty and to give
up to the enemy the
no.  But the chronology and history of these events are alike so g..erals and officer
meager, or so wilfully falsified, that it is scarcely possible to ascer- who signed it.
surrendered pass under the yoke, III. 22, p.  47 Appian, Fragm. IV. Â~ 7. Livy, IX. 7.
469, Reiske. The same thing is implied in the  4 Appian and Livy, ubi supra.
definition of the terms "jugum," and "sub  4 Zonaras says, that the consuls were obliged
jugum mitti," in Festus.                to resign their office immediately;,irepatrla
45 Appian, Fragm. IV. Â~ 6.             eraveav, VII. 26.
4 Livy, IX. 6. Dion Cassius, Fragm. Mai,  0 Livy, IX. 7.
XXXVI.




ï~~296

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXX1

tain either the dates or the real character of the transactions which followed. As
soon as the new consuls came into office, the question of the ratification of the
treaty" was brought before the senate. Sp. Postumius, one of the consuls of
the last year, being called upon to deliver his opinion, declared at once that tho
treaty ought not to be accepted, but that himself and his late colleague, T.
Veturius, with every officer who had taken the oaths to the Samnites, should be
given up to them, as having promised what they were unable to perform. The
senate embraced his proposal; and to many of the senators it involved a personal
sacrifice scarcely less than that which he was making himself, inasmuch as they
were exposing their sons, who were amongst the six hundred hostages, to the
vengeance of the enemy. But the Romans were as regardless of their own individual feelings as of the laws of justice and good faith, when either was set in
the balance against national pride and ambition. The consuls and all the other
officers who had sworn with them to the Samnites, were committed to the charge
of the feciales, and were by them conducted into Samnium. They were then
half stripped, as when they passed under the yoke, their hands were bound behind their backs, and the feciales solemnly delivered them over to the Samnites
as men whose persons were justly forfeited to them in atonement for their
breach of faith. No sooner was this surrender completed, than Sp. Postumius
struck the Roman fecialis" violently with his knee, his hands and feet being fettered; and cried out, "I now belong to the Samnites, and I have done violence
to the sacred person of a Roman fecialis and ambassador. Ye will rightfully
wage war with us, Romans, to avenge this outrage." It is hard to say whether
this trickery, at once so base and so foolish, should be ascribed to mere hypocrisy
or to fanaticism; for the fanatic is as prone to falsehood as to cruelty, and justifies to himself the one no less than the other, by holding that the end sanctifies
the means.
Yet it is a fanaticism, less wicked, indeed, but even more extraordinary, when a
Ponties refuses to. man like Livy can describe such a scene, and can represent, as he
cept them.    has done, the conduct of Pontius in such strong contrast with that
of the Romans, without appearing to feel any admiration of the one or any shame
for the other. Pontius refused the offered victims: "They were not the guilty
persons,"'3 he said, "nor would he, by transferring the punishment to them,
acquit their country. The Roman government had reaped all the advantages of
the treaty of Caudium, but refused to fulfil its conditions. Either the legions
should be replaced in their desperate position, from which nothing but that treaty
could have delivered them, or the stipulated price of their deliverance should be

si' Livy, IX. 8.
2 Livy, IX. 10.    Niebuhr supposes that
there must have existed between Rome and
Samnium at this period a relation of isopolity;
that is, that tI- citizens of either country, on
losing or relinqmshing their own franchise,
might take up at pleasure that of the other;
and that in this sense Sp. Postumius, when
given up by the Romans, and so having ceased
to be a Roman citizen, i umediately took up his
franchise as a citizen of Samnium. But this
supposition appears to me unnecessary and improbable. Sp. Postumius could have no choice
of becoming a citizen of Samnium, for he was
given up by the Samnites, deditus, and therefore had no rights whatever in relation to them,
but became their absolute property. See the
lan guage held with respect to the Campanians
when they surrendered themselves to Rome,
according to the Roman story, to obtain protection against the Samnites. Livy, VII. 31. The
meaning of Postumius' action and words was
this: that he now belonged to the Samnites,
and that they were responsible for his actions,
as for those of their slaves. If the Samnite

slaves had plundered the Roman territory, the
Romans would have called upon the Samnites
to give them satisfaction for the wrong; and in
this sense a Samnite slave had now insulted a
Roman fecialis; and Rome had thus received a
wrong, for which she might either demand satisfaction, or seek it herself by arms. The latter
course might lawfully be taken, unless there
was a special treaty by which the contracting
parties had bound themselves to appeal to negotiation in case of any dispute between them,
before they had recourse to arms. And accordingly we find such a clause in the truce concluded between Athens and Lacedamon, in the
ninth year of the Peloponnesian war, Thucyd.
IV. 118, where the parties mutually ergage rd
api oya Kir5 taXtiv avi, vr iov. 1Iut the
Spartans at the beginning of the war had chosen
to follow a different course, and to seek redress
for their alleged grievances by a direct appeal
to arms, without any negotiation.-See Thucyd. I. 86.
5 Dion Cassius, Fragm. Mai, XXXVII. Livy,
IX. 11.




ï~~OHA. XXXI.]

L. PAPIRIUS CURSOR.

297

paid. The gods would not be mocked with the trickery of a childish superstition, which endeavored to abuse their holy names for the support of perfidy and
injustice." So Sp. Postumius and his companions were given back to the Roman
feciales, and returned unhurt to their own army.
Such is the account which the Roman annalists have given of the famous defeat and treaty of the pass of Caudium. It differs in many respects, Exaggerated storks oft
probably, from the truth; yet it is accurate and trustworthy when L.Paprius Cursor
compared with the stories of the transactions which followed. L. Papirius Cursor
was one of the favorite heroes of Roman tradition; his remarkable swiftness of
foot, his gigantic strength, his enormous capacities for food; and the iron strictness of his discipline, accompanied as it was by occasional touches of rough humor,54 all contributed to make his memory popular, somewhat in the same way
as Richard Coeur de Lion has been admired amongst us; and his countrymen
boasted that he would have been a worthy champion to have fought against
Alexander the Great, if Alexander had ever invaded Italy. This favorite leader
was consul in the year immediately following the affair of the pass of Caudium;
so great a warrior must have signally avenged that disgrace; and, accordingly,
he wamade to realize the most sanguine wishes of the national vanity; he retook Luceria,55 the fatal town which had tempted the consuls of the last year to
rush blindly into the defile of Caudium; and in it he recovered all the arms and
all the standards which had been taken from the Romans, and, above all, he
there found the six hundred Roman knights who had been given up as hostages,
and delivered them all safe and sound. Thus every stain of the late disaster was
wiped away; but the pride of the Samnites must also be humbled: seven thousand Samnite soldiers were taken into Luceria, and were sent away unhurt after
having been made to pass half naked under the yoke, and C. Pontius himself, by
the especial favor of the gods, was their commander, so that the ignominy which
he had inflicted on the Romans was now worthily returned upon his own head.
No wonder, after such a marvellous victory, L. Papirius should have entered
Rome in triumph; and never, since M. Camillus had triumphed over the Gauls,
had there been seen, it was said, so glorious a spectacle. The two triumphs,
indeed, may well be compared with one another; both are equally glorious, and
both also are either wholly or in part the inventions of national vanity.
The Fasti Capitolini for this year are, unluckily, only partially legible; but it
is remarkable that they contain the names of three dictators, of But the Romans wer.e
only one of whom there is the slightest notice in Livy, and that.they really very successful.
place the triumph of L. Papirius not in this year, but in the following, when, according to them, he was for the third time elected consul. One of the three dictators was L. Cornelius Lentulus; and as the Cornelian house was very numerous and powerful, there were not wanting writers who claimed for him the glory
of all the supposed victories56 of this year, which others had given to L. Papirius. Victories as unreal as the pretended conquest of Luceria might well be
ascribed to different' persons; that town had only been just taken by the Samnites, and it is impossible to believe that they would have kept their most precious trophies and the whole number of their hostages in a foreign and conquered
city, rather than in the cities of Samnium itself. Besides, there is reason to doubt
whether Luceria was recovered at all before the year 440, at which time Livy
places what, according to him, was its second recapture, as it had just before revolted to the enemy. The real events of this year cannot be ascertained; but
there is every probability that the Romans were, in truth, successful; that they
did much to remove the feeling of discouragement from the minds of their own
SSee the character given him by Livy, IX. are to be found in Dion Cassius, Fragm. Mai,
16, and the anecdotes related there, and by Dion XXXVIII., in Dionysius, Fragm. Vaticana,
Cassius, Fr. Mai, XXXIX.              XXXVI., and in Florus, I. 16.
5 Papirius' campaign is given at length by  6 Livy, IX. 15.
TA v. TX 1-15is Trseo nf the  arne, s stnrv




ï~~HISTORY OF ROME.

[CUAP. XXX1

soldiers, and to lower the confidence of the Samnites. It appears that the victory
of the pass of Caudium had not been a solitary advantage to the enemy; for
they had also taken Luceria in Apulia, and driven the Roman colonists out of
Fregelle,6 the occupation of which place had been one of the immediate causes
of the war. The people of Satricum58 also, in the heart of Latium, are said to
have revolted to the Samnites; a fact which is thus barely noticed, with the remarkable addition, that the Satricans took an active part in the recovery of Fregelle. Thus the consuls, Publilius and Papirius, had an arduous task to accomplish; and they well justified the confidence of their countrymen, who had selected them above all other citizens to retrieve the honor and the fortune of
Rome.
Fregelle, on the upper Liris, and Satricum, in the heart of Latium, the one
The Roman consuls in on the upper road, the Via Latina, from Rome to Capua, the other
Apulia.      nearly on the lower road, by Anxur and Fundi, were now fallen
into the power of the enemy; and the war might, at any moment, by the revolt
of the Hernicans, or of a greater number of the Latin or old Volscian cities, be
brought under the very walls of Rome. Yet the Romans resolved at once to fix
the seat of war in Apulia, in the same spirit of courage and wisdom which made
them send troops to Spain, even when Hannibal was in the heart of Italy. Luceria had fallen, and unless the Romans could effectually support their party in
Apulia, that whole country would soon be lost to them and strengthen the power
of their enemy. Accordingly, L. Papirius Cursor marched"9 into Apulia by the
longer but uninterrupted route through the country of the Vestinians and along
the coast of the Adriatic; while Q. Publilius was to force his way through Samnium, and so effect a junction with his colleague. If the main force of the Samnites was employed in Apulia, it is possible that a Roman consular army, consisting of two Roman legions and an equal number of allied troops, might have
found no army in Samnium strong enough to obstruct its march; and it would
of itself avoid engaging in the siege of any of the Samnite cities. But the account
of Publilius' exploit is so extravagant, and at the same time so vague,60 that we
cannot tell by what line he reached Apulia: it is only certain that both consuls
were engaged on the other side of Italy during the whole campaign, and that,
whether they retook Luceria or not, the progress of revolt in Apulia was effectually checked.
Meanwhile the neighborhood of Rome could not be left defenceless; and the
Successive dictatorships dictators of this year were, probably, appointed to provide for the
atRome for the protec- safety of the capital, and to prevent the example of Satricum from
ton of thecity,  spreading amongst the other cities of Latium. But traces of the
old patrician party spirit may here be again observed, as in the dictatorship of
M. Marcellus six years before. Q. Publilius had named C. Mwnius61 as dictator,

57 Livy, IX. 12.
" Livy, IX. 12, 16.
10 Livy, IX. 14. "Locis maritimispervenerat Arpos."
6o The account is vague, for it names no scene
of action more definite than Samnium. "Publilius in Samnio substitit adversus Caudinas legiones."  Livy, IX. 12. " Adversus Caudinas
legiones" is also a vague expression, for it may
signify either the troops that had lately been
engaged at Caudium under C. Pontius, or the
forces of the city of Caudium, or of the whole
tribe or district of the Caudinians, one of the
great divisions of the Samnite nation. And it
is extravagant, because it represents the Samnites as flying from the field of battle in Samnium directly into Apulia, when they were in
such a state of total rout that they did not venture to defend their own camp. Had this been
the case, they would rather have fled for shelter to their own cities, than have gone to a for
eign country, which was at that very time the
seat of active warfare: to say nothing of the absurdity of an army accomplishing a march of
such a distance in a disorderly and scattered
flight. "Apuliam dissipati pettibre."
0 Only fragments of the Fasti Capitolini are
here legible, so that the names of the three dictators of this year, and of their masters of the
horse, are mutilated, and stand thus:
C. MA...
M. Fos...
L. CoRxN...
L. PArnmIu.
T. MANLI..
L. PAPIRI.U.
That the first dictator and master of the horse
were C. Menius, spelt Mainius in the Fasti,
and M. Foslius, admits of no doubt, as the Fasti,
in noticing the dictatorship of C. M enius six
years later, call him then dictator for the second
time. [II. DIrCT.] The second dictator is clearly




ï~~CHAP. XXXI]j

TRUCE FOR TWO YEARS.

299

a man of a plebeian family like himself, and who, together with himself, was made
the subject of a more violent attack from the patricians in his second dictatorship six years afterwards. The augurs, no doubt, declared his appointment to
have been invalid, as they had done in the case of Marcellus; and, accordingly,
he resigned, and a patrician was appointed to succeed him, P. Cornelius Lentulus.  Thus far the accounts are intelligible; but why Lentulus also should
have resigned, and the consuls have been required to make a third choice, it is
not so easy to discover. This third dictator was T. Manlius, apparently the same
Manlius who eighteen years before had gained the great victory over the Latins
by Mount Vesuvius; and it is probable that by him were held the comitia for
the following year, at which L. Papirius Cursor was again elected consul, together with Q. Aulius Cerpetanus. It may be that the patrician party were anxious
to secure the re-election of Papirius; and that P. Lentulus had been opposed to
it. Manlius, on the contrary, so much resembled Papirius in the sterner points
of his character, that he was likely to agree with those who thought his re-election desirable.
Papirius, in his military conduct, justified the confidence of his countrymen.
He recovered Satricum, while his colleague carried on the war
with continued success in Apulia.    The authors of the revolt of     e...ofSatricu.
Satricum were executed; the people were disarmed, and the town secured by a
strong garrison. Thus again the sparks of a Latin insurrection, the greatest of
all dangers, were put out before they could burst into a flame.
In the next year the Samnites62 are said to have concluded a truce with the
Romans for two years; but it may be that this truce only re- Trueor two year.
strained the two parties from directly invading each other's terri-  cfotwoy.
tories, while it left them at liberty to support their respective allies in Apulia.
At any rate, the war continued in that country without intermission, but with uniform success on the side of the Romans.     Teanum, Canusium, and Forentum,64
submitted to Rome, and became her dependent allies; and Apulia was so far reduced that the consuls, towards the end of the second year of the truce, 437-8,
proceeded to carry the war into Lucania, and took a place called Nerulum.65 But
no further progress was made in that quarter.
During these two years of truce the Romans were engaged in consolidating
their power in their own immediate neighborhood.     The censors, Two new Roman tribes
L. Papirius Crassus and C. Mmnius, created two new tribes" in created.
the years 436-7, the Ufentine and the Falerian, and enrolled in some of the old
tribes an accession of citizens.  The R, man settlers in Campania, who had received grants of land there after the Lain war, were put under the government
of a prefect, who was yearly sent to Capua to administer justice amongst them
and amongst the Roman citizens residing in Capua itself, according to the Roman
law;61 and a new constitution was given to the colony of Antium, probably imL. Cornelius Lentulus, who is mentioned by therefore, that the second L. Papirius, who was
Livy, and the third is as certainly T. Manlius; master of the horse in this year, must have been
but the two L. Papirii, who are named succes- L. Papirius Mugillanus; the same man whom
sively as masters of the horse, are very uncer- some annals, according to Livy, made consul
tain. Sigonius makes the latter of them to have instead of L. Papirius Cursor in the year folbeen L. Papirius Crassus, who was censor two lowing.
years afterwards, and the former, he thinks, was  2 Livy, IX. 16.
L. Papirius Cursor, the son of the consul, who  - Livy, IX. 20.
was himself afterwards so distinguished in the  64 Livy, IX. 20.
third Samnite war. But the annals which Livy  so Livy, IX. 20. If this place was the Nerunotices as having made L. Papirius Cursor mas- lum of the Itineraries, the consuls must have
ter of the horse to L. Cornelius,. meant, un- penetrated deeply into Lucania; for the Nerudoubtedly, L. Papirius the father, and not the lum of the Itineraries lay far to the south, nearly
son. This, however, could not have been the between the Greek cities of Laos on one sea,
meaning of the Fasti Capitolini; for it is plain and Sybaris on the other.
that they made L. Papirius consul in this year,  6 Livy, IX. 20. Diodorus, XIX. 10.
although the names of the consuls do not exist  6 Livy, IX. 20, and compare Niebuhr, Vol.
on our present fragments, inasmuch as in the III. 339.
next year they call him "Cos: III.-I imagine,




ï~~300

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXZ

proving the condition of the old Volscian population. The importance of Antium
as a naval station made it desirable to leave there no seeds of disaffection; the
more so, if the Tarentines, as is not improbable, furnished the Samnites with
some naval assistance at this period, and made occasional descents on the coast
of Latium.
Whether there had been any interference of the Romans in the domestic affairs
Unsettled state of men's of the Campanian cities which excited jealousy; or whether the
mindsin Campania.  increasing success of Rome in the war of Samnium created a general alarm amongst her allies, lest they should be left without any power capable
of checking her absolute ascendency, we find at any rate that about this time there
was a general restlessness amongst the Campanians, and that the Samnites were encouraged to adopt the wiser policy of carrying the war into the territory of their
enemies' allies, rather than abide the storm passively at home. The Falerian
tribe, which had been recently created at Rome, included that part of Campania
known by the name of the Falerian territory; the Roman settlers there would
certainly be enrolled in it, while it did not comprise the inhabitants of Cales,
Fundi, or Formime. Privileges granted to some are a source of discontent if denied to others; and the creation of a Roman tribe so near to them, into which
they were not admitted, might make the Campanian towns more impatient of
their relation of mere alliance. Thus Nuceria had revolted in the preceding
year, and other towns were ready, on the first opportunity, to follow its example.
But here again the chronology and history are both involved in inextricable
confusion. Livy's account is so imperfect and so unreasonable
The Samnites are sucessf  l onl the pper that it is clearly impossible to rely on it, that of Diodorus is far
iari       more sensible, yet it also has omissions which it is difficult to supply. As soon as the truce was over, the Samnites resolved to act on the offensive, and turned their attention to the valley of the Liris, where, as we have seen,
they had recovered and still held Fregelle.     They attacked and stormed the
town of Plistia,69 an unknown place, but apparently situated somewhere in that
neighborhood; they then prevailed on the Volscian population of Sora to massacre the Roman colonists who held their town, and to join the Samnite confederacy. It is impossible to believe that while these events were taking place, the
Roman consuls were sitting idle at Rome; it is much more likely that one consular army was, as usual, in Apulia, and the other either watching the Samnites
in the valley of the Liris, or invading Samnium from the side of Campania. But
when the news arrived of the fall of Plistia and the revolt of Sora, it was judged
necessary to appoint a dictator; and L..AEmilius,1o who was the dictator fixed
upon, immediately began to act on the offensive, and laid siege to Saticula.
Whether this town belonged to the Samnites, or was only in alliance with them,
and was still possessed by the old Opican population of Campania, is not easy to
determine.   The Samnites made a desperate effort to relieve the place, but they
were defeated by the besieging army with considerable loss, and Saticula was
obliged to surrender.
6 Diodorus, XIX. 65. Compare Livy, IX. stating, that in the following year, which, ac88, 41.                                  cording to the Fasti, was the year of Rome 438
" Diodorus, XIX. 72.                   or 439, according to the common reckoning, and
'" Fasti Capitolini, and Livy, IX. 21. But 484 according to Niebuhr, L. Papirius Cursor
Livy makes the appointment o1 L.  milius pre- and Q. Publilius Philo were again elected concede the fall of Phstia and the revolt of Sora. suls together; and Diodorus places the battle
I have followed the order of Diodorus, who, of Lautuke expressly in their consulship. Niewithout naming.Amilius, places the siege of buhr's latest criticism (Vol. II. p. 627, 2d edit.)
Saticula, which he conducted, after the other seems to have rejected this consulship as an
two events.                              interpolation; and it is remarkable that Livy,
Saticula stood within the first line of hills although he certainly makes a year intervene
which rise immediately from the plain of Na- between the consulship of Sp. Nantius and M.
ples, in a small valley which divides these first Popilius, and that of M. Pcetelius and C. Sulhills from the higher and bolder mountains of picius, does not give the consuls' names. He
Taburnus.                                says, moreover, that they, like the consuls of.1 The Fasti Capitolini and Diodorus agree in the preceding year, stayed at Rome and did




ï~~CHAP. XXXI.]

REVOLT OF CAPUA, ETC.

301

After the fall of Saticula the consuls of the new year, if these events really
belong to two distinct years, proceeded on the one hand to in- Thoy defeat the Rovade Samnium    on the side of Saticula, and on the other to mansat Lantul.
march as usual into Apulia. The army which invaded Samnium overran the
country in the neighborhod of Saticula, and then either forced its way into
Apulia, or turned aside to the left up the valley of the Vulturnus, and from
thence crossed over by the line of the Latin road to the valley of the Liris, and
advanced upon Sora, in the hope of punishing it for its revolt. A movement was
made, at any rate, which left Campania open; and the Samnites, seizing the opportunity, called out, it is said,72 their whole population within the military age,
and without withdrawing their armies from Apulia and Sora, they burst down
into Campania with this third army, which, though hastily raised, was strong in
its numbers and in its determined courage.  All Campania was at once in a ferment, and the Romans were obliged to name Q. Fabius Maximus dictator, and
to send him out with all speed with such a force as could be found or raised in
and near Rome, in order to check the spirit of revolt. Fabius advanced beyond
Anxur, and occupied the pass of Lautulte between Anxur and Fundi, already
noticed as a post of importance on the coast road from Rome to Campania. Here
the Samnites attacked him, and notwithstanding his high military reputation,
they defeated him with great slaughter. Q. Aulius Cerretanus, the master of
the horse, sacrificed his life nobly in covering the retreat, but the Samnites
remained masters of the country, and it is stated in general terms that every
place in the neighborhood revolted to them,"3 and that all through Campania,4
and even at Capua itself, the party opposed to the Roman alliance began to obtain the ascendency.
How the consuls effected their retreat from Apulia and from Samnium we
know not, nor how far the Samnites either improved or neglected consequences o t hi
their present opportunity. The Roman citizens of the new Fale- defeat.
rian tribe must have been exposed to the greatest dangers; for the open country of Campania was now in the power of the enemy, and as the Roman settlers
had no strong towns of their own, they must have either taken shelter in the
several cities of their allies, or have made their escape within the pass of Tarracina into the old Volscian country, now the Ufentine tribe, or even to Rome
itself. But within the limits of the Campagna we hear of no disposition to
revolt; there the timely gift of the full Roman franchise had converted Volscians
and Latins into Romans, and neither Privernum nor Tusculum gave any cause for
suspicion in this emergency. The new consuls were C. Sulpicius Longus and
M. Poetelius Libo; the latter had not till now commanded an army; the former
had indeed been already twice consul, and must now have been advanced in
years; but we do not know that he had acquired any remarkable distinction.
The principal seat of the war in the next campaign appears to have been the
country between Tarracina and the Samnite frontier; and both of Peolt of capu and
the consuls were employed in this quarter.    Their business was  othe oher twn fCapnto watch the Samnites, and to protect the allies of Rome, but pa'
they did not for some time venture to encounter the enemy in the field. In spite
of all their endeavors, however, Suessa Aurunca and Calatia5 either revolted or
nothing, which in a time of such danger as this second battle after the defeat at Lautule.year must have been, even according to his own IX. 23.
account, is an absolute impossibility. Diodo-  7' Livy, IX. 25, 26.
rus places the revolt of Sora, the siege of Sati-  7 This appears, because Calatia is mentioned
cula, and the battle of Lautulme, all in the same as retaken by the Romans in the following
your which according to him was the year year; and a Roman colony was sent to Suessa,
of the consulship of Papirius and Publilius. which, it is said, "Auruncorum fuerat." That
Amidst all this confusion it is impossible to de- a colony was sent there implies that the place
termine the order of events with certainty,  must have been conquered by the Romsns,
72 Diodorus, XIX. 72.                  which could not have happened, unless it had
7 " Circa omnia defecerunt," are the words previously revolted from them, or been otherwhich Livy puts into the mouth of Fabius, wise in the enemy's power.
when he is urging his soldiers to venture a




ï~~302

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXX,

were taken; and Capua itself, as if judging that the battle of Lautulm was now
proved to have decided the fate of the war, broke off its alliance with Rome, and
declared for the Samnites." This last misfortune obliged the Romans to name
a dictator; and C. Manius, who had once before filled that office, was now
again invested with it, and was sent out with a third army to act especially
against Capua. An obscure report, barely noticed by Livy," has acquainted us
with the existence of another danger which beset Rome at this time, and which
must have been more alarming than all the rest. Cabals, and even conspiracies,
were formed amongst some of the Roman aristocracy, to turn the perilous crisis
of their country to their own personal advantage. Who were the individuals concerned in these plots, or what was their special object, we know not; we can
scarcely be mistaken, however, in supposing that Appius Claudius, who was
censor two years afterwards, was one of them; and his subsequent conduct
makes it probable that he wished to make a party amongst the lowest of the
people, and by their help, combined with the strength of the more violent patricians, to overthrow the actual constitution, and restore the exclusive ascendency of the old burgher aristocracy. Disasters in war excite discontent, and discontent readily attacks the existing order of things, however unconnected it may
be with the immediate evil; and in this manner the defeat of Lautulm might be
made instrumental to a patrician revolution.
But the domestic and foreign danger was alike dispelled by the military sucTe Ason cities are cess of the consuls. While an aristocratical conspiracy at Rome
eThe Ausonian the Re- was threatening the most extreme evils, a similar conspiracy in,etrayes to the Ro- waS threatening the most extreme evils, a similar conspiracy in
mans.         the Ausonian cities of Ausona, Minturne, and Vescia, occurred
most critically to revive the cause of Rome in the neighborhood of Campania.
Twelve of the young nobility" of those towns, dreading nothing so much as the
ascendency of their political adversaries through Samnite assistance, offered to
the Roman consuls to betray their respective countries into their hands. By
their means Roman soldiers were put in possession of the gates of the three
cities, and the mass of the people in each were put to the sword. Thus the Romans gained three places of considerable importance from their position; and the
bloody execution done upon the inhabitants would spread the impression among
the neighboring states, that to revolt from Rome might even yet be attended
with danger.
Still the Samnite force was yet unbroken, and availing themselves of the effect
ret vito of the produced by their victory at Lautulm, the Samnite armies were
Romns atc ina. Sub- still acting on the offensive.  Where the great battle was fought
mission of capua. which effectually turned the tide, it is not possible to ascertain.
Livy places"9 the scene at the edge of the plain of Naples, where the road from
Capua to Beneventum first ascends the hills of Samnium, apparently not far from
the piss of Maddaloni. Diodorus fixes it at a place which he calls Cinna,6Â~ a
name wholly unknown, nor will his account enable us so much as to guess its
situation. But whatever was the scene of the action, the victory, of the Romans
was complete, and the threatening consequences of the defeat at Lautulm were
entirely prevented. The news of the battle instantly struck terror into the Campanians, and they at once"' made their submission to the dictator, and agreed to
give up to him the principal instigators of their revolt. Amongst these are particularly named two men of one of the noblest families in Capua, Ovius and
Novius Calavius. They, like Vibius Virrius and his associates in the war of Hannibal, chose to perish by their own hands, rather than by the axe of the dictator's lictors, and the principal offenders: having thus atoned for their revolt, the
Btate of Capua was pardoned, and readmitted to its former alliance with Rome.
1 Diodorus, XIX. 76.                  7 Livy, IX. 25.
" IX. 26. "Nec Capua ipsa crimine caruit:  79Livy, IX. 27.
quin Romam quoque et ad principum quosdam  1o Livy, XIX. 76.
inquirendos ventum est."                8 Diodorus, XIX. 76.




ï~~CHAP. XXXI.]   COMMISSIONERS FOR NAVAL AFFAIRS.

303

The strength of the two parties in the Samnite w itr was so essentially unequal
that the loss of a battle pressed far more severely on the one than  onnue  e  o
Continued successes of
on the other.  Accordingly, after the defeat which rendered their the omaons. colonies
p~lanted at Lueeria, Su
victory at Lautulre fruitless, the Samnites were again reduced to e,,..ramn,'.a
the defensive, and saw the towns which they had won successively caino.
wrested from them.   In the next two years2 Fregelle, one of the original causes
of the war, Sora,3 which had revolted just before the battle of Lautule, and Atina,84
another Volscian city situated among the mountains which look down on the
valley of the Melfa, one of the early feeders of the Liris, were all taken by the
Romans; while in Campania and its neighborhood they made themselves masters
of Suessa Aurunca, of Nola, and Calatia;85 and in Apulia they finally obtained
possession of Luceria.    They resolved, too, to secure these conquests by permanent occupation; and thus 250081 colonists were sent to Luceria; another
colony was planted at Suessa Aurunca; a third in the island of Pontia;88 and
two more, to consist of 2000 colonists each, were ordered to be founded at Interamna on the Liris, and at Casinum on one of the feeders of the Liris.
These three last colonies were settled on ground which had formerly belonged to
the Volscians: Interamna and Casinum were an advance of the Roman frontier
on the upper road into Campania; but Pontia must have been colonized with a
different object. Two years afterwards we find that two commissioners"- for
naval affairs were for the first time created by the Romans; and this appointment, coupled with the occupation of Pontia, make it probable that during the
war with Samnium the Roman coasts were exposed to continual plundering descents, and the Roman merchant-vessels often intercepted on their voyages.
Whether this annoyance proceeded from the Lucanians, or whether the Tarentines had really lent to the Samnites the aid of their maritime power in this long
struggle, are amongst the many points in the history of these events of which we
must be content to be ignorant.
The Samnite war lasted eight years longer; nor was even this latter period of
the contest unchequered by some changes of fortune; still Rome Superiority of the Rowas 3ontinually becoming more powerful, and the various attempts         tatothent  o feppoÂ~
made by several of the Italian nations to check her growing su- t0it.
premacy served only to set in a clearer light the greatness of her resources.
Etruria, which had remained at peace for nearly forty years, now, as if alarmed
by the danger of the Samnites, exerted her whole strength against Rome, but
in vain. The Umbrians, a people whose name we have scarcely hitherto had
occasion to mention, attacked the Romans in entire ignorance of their own and
their enemy's power, and were defeated and struck down in an instant.      The
Hernicans, so long united with Rome in a close alliance, revolted only to become more completely subjected; the hardy nations of the Marsians, Pelignians,
and Marrucinians, after having from jealousy stood aloof hitherto from their Samnite kinsmen, now at last endeavored to aid them when it was too late, and did
but involve themselves in their humiliation. Northwards, and southwards, in
the central Apennines, and on the coast of the Adriatic, the Roman power was
alike irresistible, and Rome towered above the nations who were jointly or severally assailing her, like one of the heroes of the Homeric poems:when beset by
a multitude of common men.
To those who estimate the power of a nation by its geographical extent, this
82 Livy, IX. 28. Diodorus, XIX. 101.  rather of rocks, in the largest of which, now
8 Livy, IX. 24.                        Ponza, the Roman colony was founded. Ponza
' Livy, IX. 28.                        has a good harbor, and was taken possession
6 Livy, IX. 28. Diodorus, XIX. 101.    of by the British in 1813. It is volcanic, and is
8 Diodorus, XIX. 72. Livy, IX. 26.     about 14 Neapolitan miles in circumference
7 Livy, IX. 26.                        (nearly 17a British), and exhibits several re88 Livy, IX. 28. Diodorus, XIX. 101-105. mains of ancient buildings. See Giustiniani,
Niebuhr observes, that the plural form, "Pon- Dizionario del Regno di Napoli, in Ponza.
tine," belongs only to the group of islands, or  d Livy, IX. 80.




ï~~304

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXL

It. causes;the greater constant superiority of Rome may appear extraordinary: for unuation the ocentrald doubtedly the portions of Italy possessed by the Etruscans, Umposition of Rome, and brians, and Samnites, were many times larger than the territory
the unity of its governmneot.        of Rome and her allies. But their superiority in population was
by no means equally great; nor is it likely that either Etruria or Samnium were
peopled as densely as Latium and Campania. Livy does not.give the returns of
the several census taken at this period, but he states generally, that the number
of Roman citizens averaged about 250,000;90 to which the Latin and Campanian
allies are to be added.  Now we do not know what was the population of Samnium or Etruria at this time; but if we may at all be guided by the famous
return of the military force of the several nations of Italy in the great Gaulish
war of 529,91 we may conclude that it fell far short of that of the Romans and their
confederates. To this must be added the still greater advantages on the side of
Rome, of a central position, a unity of counsels, and a national spirit, as systematic as it was resolute. A single great nation is incomparably superior to a
coalition; and still more so when that coalition is made up not of single states,
but of federal leagues; so that a real unity of counsels and of public spirit is
only to be found in the individual cities of each league; which must each be
feeble, because each taken separately is small in extent and weak in population.
The German empire alone, setting aside the Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian
dominions of the house of Austria, could never, even with the addition of the
Netherlands, have contended on equal terms with France.
The sudden breaking out of the Etruscan war at this period was determined,
no doubt, by the expiration of the forty years' peace which had
Etruscan war. Agra
Etrscan ar.mybesiege been concluded with the Tarquinians in the year 404. As usual,
Sutrium. Campaign of
Q. Emiliu en the when the term of peace was drawing to a close, there would be
Etruscan frontier, and
of. Juanus in Sam- some negotiation between the two countries,"2 to ascertain whether
lim.          the treaty would be renewed, or whether its close was to be followed by immediate war; and this explains Livy's statement," that in the consulship of M. Valerius and P. Decius there arose rumors of hostilities with Etruria;
and that great preparations were made by both nations, although no actual attack
was begun by either till the year following. But if we may trust the Roman
accounts,4 not Tarquinii only, but all the Etruscan cities except Arretium  took
part in the renewed quarrel. This probably was owing to a jealousy of the
Roman power on the one hand, and to the cessation of the Gaulish inroads into
northern Etruria on the other, so that Clusium and Perusia and Cortona were no
longer prevented by a nearer danger, as in the last war with Veii, from giving
their aid to the cities on the southern frontier. Accordingly a
A U. c.433. B. c..great Etruscan army laid siege to Sutrium," which was still, as it
had been nearly eighty years before, the most advanced point of the Roman do
I Livy, IX. 19. "Censebantur ejus etatis
lustris ducena quinquagena millia capitum."
8 The return of free citizens within the military age, gave for the Samnites, Lucanians,
Marsians, Marrucinians, Frentanians, and Vestinians, the number of 120,000 foot soldiers,
and 14,000 horse. Polybius, II. 24. The Umbrians were 20,000; the Etruscans and Sabines together (the number of the Etruscans
separately is not given) were 50,000 foot and
4000 horse. Here we have a total of 190,000
foot and 18,000 horse. But the same return
reckons the Romans, Latins, and Campanians
at 330,000 foot and 28,000 horse, besides the
forces actually at that time in the field, which
amounted to 50,000 Romans and Campanians
more, and probably too at least 20,000 Latins,
with not more than 40,000 of the Samnites, Lucanians, &c., on the very highest calculation,
and probably much less. Thus the Romans,
Latins, and Campanians, at the time of the

great Gaulish war, were more numerous than
the Etruscans, Umbrians, Samnites, and Lucanians, nearly in the proportion of two to one.
And although in the course of the eighty o
ninety years which elapsed between the second
Samnite war and the Gaulish invasion, the population of Etruria and Samnium may be supposed to have decreased, while that of Rome
undoubtedly had increased by the accession of
the Hernicans,.Equians, and a large part of the
Sabines, to the rolls of Roman citizens, yet still,
with every possible allowance that can be made,
we must believe that the Romans and their
allies in the second Samnite war considerably
surpassed their enemies even in more numbers.
12 See of this history, chap. xvi. note 48, and
chap. xviii. p. 147.
P IX. 29.
" Livy, IX. 82.
9 Livy, IX. 82.




ï~~OCP. XXXI.]

ETRUSCAN WAR.

305

minion on the side of Etruria. Q..Emilius Barbula, one of the consuls, marched
with a single consular army to protect the Sutrians, and a battle was fought with
no decisive result; but it was most obstinately contested, and the loss on both
sides was immense. The Etruscans, however, continued to besiege Sutrium, and
they apparently coistructed lines around it, as the Romans had done at Veii, in
which they proposed to keep a part of their army through the winter, that the
blockade might not be interrupted. Meantime the campaign of this year in
Samnium had been decidedly favorable to the Romans, although the details are
utterly uncertain; for, if we compare Livy's account with that of Diodorus, no
one would suspect that both writers were describing the events of the same war
and the same period. According to Livy,96 the scene of action lay in Samnium,
and one consular army only, that of C. Junius Bubulcus, was engaged. By this
Sarmy, Bovianum, the chief city of the Pentrian Samnites, on the north side of the
Matese, is said to have been taken; and afterwards, when the Samnites had
nearly surprised the consul by an ambuscade, the practised valor of the soldiers
repelled the danger, and even obtained a complete victory. According to Diodorus,9 both consuls were employed, and the seat of war was Apulia. Here
the Romans, after a battle which lasted two days, gained a complete victory, and
from that time forwards they remained masters of the field, overran the open
country without opposition, and took by storm or by the terror of their arms
several of the enemy's cities. In order to reconcile these apparent contradictions,
we must suppose that Diodorus describes the winter campaign, and Livy that of
the summer following: that both consuls, after entering upon their office in September or October, were employed in Apulia during the winter, which, as Niebuhr has observed, is the best season for military operations in that country;
that in the summer of the following year the Etruscan war broke out, and that
then Q. Emilius was sent to relieve Sutrium, while O. Junius carried on the war
in the centre of Samnium. The siege of Bovianum, where the climate is so cold,
that the snow must render military operations impracticable till very late in the
spring, and the ambuscade formed by the Samnites to surprise the Romans while
pursuing the cattle into the high mountain pastures; clearly imply a summer
campaign. And when C. Junius marched home with his army to celebrate his
triumph on the 5th of August, he probably found his colleague still engaged
with the Etruscans on the side of Sutrium.
Q. Fabius Maximus was elected one of the consuls for the new year; the same
person who, when master of the horse fourteen years before, had A. U. c. 444. camso nearly forfeited his life for his disobedience to the orders of the pVia of Q.rab
dictator, L. Papirius Cursor. As the Fabian house was both
powerful and popular, he was a favorite hero in the stories of these times; and
his exploits in this campaign have been disguised by such exaggerations that it
is difficult to appreciate his real merit justly. We can hardly believe that he defeated the whole united force of the Etruscan nation in a great battle under the
walls of Perusia, with such slaughter that sixty thousand Etruscans were killed
or taken; nor were the Ciminian mountains so impassable a barrier as to justify
the statement, that, before the daring expedition of Fabius they had not even
been crossed by any Roman traders, and that the country beyond was as unknown
as the wilds of Germany before the conquests of Drusus. Yet the campaign of
Fabius was, doubtless, in a very high degree, able, enterprising, and successful,
and the triumph which he obtained in the following year for his victories over
the Etruscans was assuredly well deserved,
According to Diodorus,98 both the consuls, R. Fabius and his colleague, C. Marcius Rutulus, marched together to relieve Sutrium; and it was by He resolves to pene.
their joint force that the Etruscan besieging army, which had yen- trato into the heart
tured to attack them, was beaten and obliged to take refuge within th ey o.

" IX. 81.

9 XIX. 28.

08 XX. 85,

20




ï~~306

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Caxr. XXX1

its lines. But the employment of both the consular armies in Etruria was not
unobserved by the indefatigable Samnites. They poured down into Apulia, and
ravaged the territory of the allies of Rome in that country without meeting with
any opposition.   This obliged the Romans to recall C. Marcius from Sutrium.
and to send him with his army against the Samnites. Fabius was thus left alone,
and the Etruscan lines before Sutrium were too strong to be attacked with success. But it struck him that a sudden and rapid invasion of central Etruria might
oblige the enemy to recall their army from Sutrium, and would, at the same
time, enrich his soldiers with the plunder of a wealthy and untouched country.
It was thus that Hannibal hoped to relieve Capua by his unexpected march upon
Rome; and the same policy led Scipio into Africa, as the surest method of
obliging Hannibal to evacuate Italy. Fabius sent to Rome to acquaint the senate
with his purpose, that an army of reserve"9 might be raised to cover the Roman
territory during his absence: he had also previously sent his brother10Â~ across the
Ciminian mountains to collect information, and to persuade, if possible, some of
the Umbrian states to ally themselves with Rome. His brother could speak the
Etruscan language, and in the disguise of a shepherd, accompanied only by a
single slave who had been brought up withhim from a child, and also was acquainted
with Etruscan, he penetrated through Etruria as far as Camerte or Camerinum in
Umbria, a town on the northern side of the Apennines, near the modern road
from Foligno to Ancona. The Camertians received him in the most friendly
manner, and desired him to assure the consul, that if he came into their neighborhood their entire force should join his army, and that they would supply him
with provisions during a whole month.    With this encouraging message the Roman officer returned to his brother, and Q. Fabius resolved to lose no time in
carrying his plan into execution, suspecting, perhaps, that if he delayed he might
receive a peremptory order from the senate not to risk his army in so hazardous
an enterprise.
The Ciminian hills, for we should scarcely call them mountains, are the ridge which
divides the valley of the Tiber from the basin of the lake of Bolsena,
Fabius crosse them, and from the valley which runs from the foot of the lake down to
and carries the war into
Etruria. His victories the sea.  Where the road from Viterbo to Rome crosses them
there.         they are still covered with copse-wood, and the small crater of the
lake of Vico, which lies high up in their bosom, is surrounded by the remains of
the old forest.  In the fifth century of Rome the woods were far more extensive;
and the hills, having now become the boundary between the Roman and Etruscan nations, were, perhaps, studiously kept in their wild state in order to prevent
collisions between the borderers of both frontiers. They are a remarkable point,
because, as they run up to a crest, with no extent of table-land on their summits,
they command a wide view on either side, reaching far away to the southeast
over the valley of the Tiber, even to the Alban hills, whilst on the north and west
they look down on the plain of Viterbo; and the lake of Bolsena is distinctly
visible, shut in at the farthest distance by the wild mountains of Radicofani.
SThat such an army was raised, appears from left bank of the Tiber, between Todi and AmeLivy, IX. 89; and Niebuhr well observes, that lia, is proved decisively, if, indeed, it could ever
the mission of five senators, accompanied by have been reasonably doubted, by an inscriptwo of the tribunes of the commons, who arrived tion found at Camerino, in which the Camerin the camp before Sutrium too late to stop the tians express their gratitude to the emperor
expedition into Etruria (Livy, IX. 36), seems to Severus, for having confirmed to them " the
imply that some earlier communications had equal rights of their treaty," "jure equo foedepassed upon the subject, and that Fabius hay- ris sibi confirmato:" an allusion to their welling shown a disposition to disobey the prohibi- known fcedus sequum, concluded at this very
tion of the senate, the two tribunes were sent to time of the first Roman invasion of Etruria, and
arrest him, which they alone, by virtue of their which existed to the end of the commonwealth,
inviolable character, could do with safety.  and nominally, at least, as the inscription above
' Livy, IX. 36. That the Camertians, who quoted shows, to the third century of the Chrisconcluded the treaty with the Romans on this tian era. It was in the territory of Camerinum
occasion, were the people of Camerinum, the also that L. Scipio was defeated by the Gauls
modern Camerino, and not, as Dr. Cramer sup- and Samnites in the third Samnite war. The
poses, of the obscure place of Camerata, on the above inscription is given by Orelli, No. 920.




ï~~CHAP. XXXI.]  PAPIRIUS CURSOR APPOINTED DICTATOR.

307

Fabius, having sent on his baggage and infantry during the night, followed himself with his cavalry about the middle of the day following; and on the next
morning the whole army crossed the summit of the Ciminian ridge, and poured
down into the plains beyond. Some of the Etruscan chiefs5' assembled their
peasantry, and attempted to stop the plunder of their lands; but they were defeated with great loss; and the invaders overran the country far and wide, and
carried off cattle and prisoners in great numbers. How far they penetrated into
Etruria is uncertain. According to Livy it was a mere plundering inroad, and
could not have extended beyond the territory of Vulsinii; but, according to Diodorus,1'2 the Roman army advanced into the very heart of Etruria, fought a great
battle, and won a decided victory in the neighborhood of Perusia; insomuch that
the siege of Sutrium was raised, and three of the greatest of the Etruscan cities,
Pexusia, Arretium, and Cortona, sued for peace, and concluded a truce for thirty
years. Livy ' represents the decisive victory as having been won near Sutrium
after the return of the Romans from their expedition; an immense army of Etruscans, joined by the forces of some of the states of Umbria, hastened to pursue
and take vengeance on the invaders, but did not overtake them within the Etruscan territory, and thus followed them to their old position in the neighborhood of
Sutrium. Both accounts agree in describing the victory as signal, and in stating
that it was followed by a peace with three of the principal cities of Etruria.
Meanwhile, the war was raging with no less fury in Samnium. C. Marcius,
after having been recalled from Sutrium, had marched with his Samnium. The Romans
army into Apulia,'Â~4 and there at first relieved the allies of Rome " pidfeaedoa, ani sL.
from the plundering incursions of the enemy. But the Samnites pointed dictator.
had no intention to act merely on the defensive; they were eager to crush the
army of Marcius, while Fabius was engaged in Etruria; and they attacked him
with such vigor'Â~' that the Roman annals themselves acknowledge that the issue
of the battle was doubtful, and that it seemed to be unfavorable, owing to the
loss of several superior officers, and especially as the consul himself was wounded.
The truth is sufficiently evident that the Romans were, in fact, defeated. When
the news of this battle reached Rome, the senate resolved immediately that L.
Papirius Cursor should be again appointed dictator; but it was necessary that
one of the consuls should name him, and as nothing certain was known of the
fate of C. Marcius, a deputation was sent to Fabius in Etruria, to request that he
would perform this office. Fabius and Papirius were personal enemies: the consul had not forgotten how nearly he had once fallen a sacrifice to Papirius' inexorable temper; and political difference had since, perhaps, contributed to keep
alive the personal quarrel. The deputation sent to Fabius consisted, therefore, of
senators1Â~6 of consular rank, whose private influence with him might be supposed
likely to aid the expressed wish of the senate, and to induce him to sacrifice his
own personal feelings. He heard the senate's decree read, and listened to the
arguments with which the deputies urged him to obey it; but he gave them no
answer, either by look or word, and retired abruptly from the interview. In the
dead of the night, however, according to the usual form, he pronounced the
nomination of Papirius; but when the deputies ventured to thank him for his
noble conquest over his feelings, he again heard them in silence, and finally dismissed them without any answer.
The dictator found an army at once disposable in the troops which had been
raised to cover Rome when Fabius began his march across the His great victory an4
Ciminian hills. With this force he marched into Samnium; there sptendidtriumph.
Cm  h The character of the Etruscan government and Poland, formed the bulk of the national ar
is well given in Livy's short statement, "ttu- mies.
multuarie agrestium Etruscorum cohortes re-  1t 2Livy, XX. 85.
pente a principibus regionis ejus concitate,"  1 0 IX. a7.
IX. 86. These " principes" were the Luco-  104 Diodorus, XX. 85.
menes or nobles of Etruria, and the " agrestium  10 Livy, IX. 88.
cohortes" were their serfs, who, as in Russia  lo Livy, IX. 38.




ï~~308

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Car. XXX]

he was joined by the wreck of the consul's army, and by the contingent of the
Campanian allies of Rome; but he did not immediately venture upon a battle.
Again all the previous movements of both armies are unknown, nor is even the
scene of the battle mentioned, but we are told'07 that after a short time a general
action took place, in which the dictator Papirius, his master of the horse, C.
Junius Bubulcus, and his two lieutenants, M. Valerius and P. Decius, both men
of consular rank, all alike distinguished themselves; and which ended in a complete victory on the side of the Romans. Papirius triumphed on the 15th of
October;' and his triumph was distinguished by the splendor of the captured
arms which were carried in the procession. There were a number of gilded and
silvered shields'09 which had been borne by two different bands of Samnites in
the late battle; the silvered shields had belonged to a band, each man of which
had been pledged by solemn oaths, accompanied by a ceremonial of the most
mysterious and appalling character, to return victorious or to die. As sacred
soldiers, these men had worn in the field coats of white linen, and silvered arms;
and had their station on the right wing, which was the post of honor. The band
with gilded shields had worn coats of various colors, like a plaid; and both bands
had plumes of an imposing height waving on their helmets. All these particulars of the Samnite arms are mentioned for the first time at the triumph of
Papirius; which proves that on no former occasion had the Samnites sustained
so great a defeat, or had attached such great importance to the issue of the contest, as to adopt the unwonted expedient of a sacred or devoted band. It is added
that these gay shields were divided out amongst the several silversmiths in the
Forum,1Â~ that they might hang them     up to decorate their shops on those great
festivals when the Forum was dressed up as a part of the pageant.
The chronology is here again involved in confusion.   According to the Fasti
conf..ioa again in t  Capitolini, L. Papirius held his dictatorship for a whole year, durchronoogy. Submi-ing m  which there were no consuls; and Q. Fabius commanded in
son of Etruria.  Etruria as proconsul, and triumphed in that office on the 13th of
November. To this version of the story belongs, apparently, the account of a
second Etruscan campaign of Q. Fabius, of a great victory gained by him over
the Umbrians, and of a second gained over the Etruscans at the lake of Vadimon; then of the revolt and subsequent submission of Perusia, of the occupation of that strong city by a Roman garrison, and of embassies sent from the
other cities of Etruria to sue for peace. It would be difficult indeed to find room
for all these great achievements in the single year of Fabius' consulship; but, on
the other hand, this second Etruscan campaign is unknown to Diodorus, and both
he and Livy agree in making the second consulship of Q. Fabius follow immediately after his first, without any such interval as that mentioned in the Fasti.
It is remarkable, also, that the little lake of Vadimon should have been the scene
of two victories over the Etruscans, within a period of about thirty years; and
we are tempted to ask whether the first of these battles has not been greatly
exaggerated. Yet the Etruscans must have been signally humbled by Fabius;
for, in the next year, when P. Decius invaded Etruria, he met with little opposition; the people of Tarquinii obtained a peace for forty years,'t and the other
Etruscan cities were glad to obtain a truce for a single year; and even this they
107 Livy, IX. 40.                      towns of Italy at this day. The shields were
o Fasti Capitolini.                   hung up on the outside front of the square
lo Livy, IX. 40.                       piers, or pikle, looking towards the Forum. The
11no These shops of the silversmiths lined the butchers' shops, which, in the time of the deVia Sacra, which, on its course from the Velia cemvirs, had occupied this side of the Forum,
to the foot of the Capitol, ran along the north- had lately disappeared with the growing magern side of the Forum. They were like cells, nificence of the city, and had been succeeded
open in front, built of peperino, and with a row by the shops of goldsmiths and silversmiths.
of square massy supports, or piers, in front of See Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, Vol. III 2d
them, supporting the first story of the houses.. part, p. 25.
above; exactly like the covered passages in  Livy, IX. 41. Diodorus, XX. 44.
which the shops are ranged in so many of the




ï~~CHAP. XXXI.]

WAR WITH THE SALLENTINES.

309

purchased at the price of giving a year's pay to the consul's army, and two coats
to each soldier.
Q. Fabius, who had been chosen consul for the third time as the colleague of
P. Decius, had this year the conduct of the war in Samnium. But onue scesses o
the Samnites were so weakened, that their speedy subjugation thRoman Shortwar
seemed inevitable; and this, we may suppose, filled the neighbor-iththmbi.
ing nations with a sense of their own danger if Samnium should fall, and induced not only the Marsians and Pelignians'12 to take part with the Samnites,
but even shook the long-tried friendship of the Hernicans with Rome, and aroused
the Sallentines, at the southern extremity of Italy, to look on the Samnite cause
as their own. But all was of no avail, and the success of the Romans was uninterrupted. Nuceria Alfaterna, in Campania, which had revolted seven years before, was now recovered, the Marsians and Pelignians were defeated, and Fabius
was enabled to leave his province without danger, and to hasten into Umbria;"'3
the Umbrians, it is said, having raised so formidable an army as to threaten to march
straight upon Rome, and P. Decius having thought it necessary to retreat from
Etruria, in order to watch over the safety of the capital. Here, again, we cannot
but suspect some exaggeration; for Fabius is said to have won an easy victory
over the Umbrians, and the Umbrian towns immediately submitted. This may
be doubtful; but it is certain that the people of Ocriculum concluded an alliance
with Rome, and that Fabius obtained no triumph either for his victory over the
Umbrians, or for those which he is said to have won in Samnium. Yet his command in Samnium was continued to him for another year, with the title of proconsul: the new consuls were Appius Claudius and L. Volumnius.
As the Etruscan war was now over, and Q. Fabius continued to command the
army in Samnium, only one of the consuls for this year was re- war with theo sullen.
quired to take the field. This was L. Volumnius, and he was sent tines.
against the Sallentines,"4 an Apulian or lapygian people, who dwelt, as we have
seen, at the extreme heel of Italy, and who were now attacked by the Romans,
under pretence, we may suppose, of their having annoyed some of the Apulian
allies of Rome. But Volumnius did nothing worthy of notice, although, according to Livy, he gained some victories, took several towns, and made himself very
popular with his soldiers by his liberality in the disposal of the plunder. The
Fasti Capitolini, however, show that he obtained no triumph; and one of the
annalists, Piso,"5 omitted his consulship altogether, as if he doubted its reality.
Fabius,"'6 on his part, defeated the Samnites near Allifre, and obliged their
army to surrender. The Samnites themselves he disarmed, and Th Hrnicns bcome
The Hernicans become
then dismissed them unhurt; but all the other prisoners, to what- souspected by tho eRo.
ever nation they belonged, were sold for slaves. Amongst this mans.
number, there were several who declared themselves to be Hernicans, and these
were immediately sent off to Rome, and, by order of the senate, were committed
to the custody of the several allied cities of the Latins. Q. Fabius then led his
army home; but either his victory has been exaggerated, or it was balanced by
some defeats which the Roman writers did not choose to mention, for he obtained
no triumph.
The new consuls were Q. Marcius Tremulus, and P. Cornelius Arvina. They
brought the case of the Hernican prisoners before the senate, which, The
says Livy,  so exasperated the whole nation, that the people of
Anagnia summoned a general council of deputies from every Hernican city, and
all, with three exceptions, voted for war with Rome. It is manifest that something is omitted in this narrative, the decision of the senate upon the case which
was brought before them. This it was, no doubt, which so exasperated the Hernicans; and no wonder, if, as there is every reason to believe, it ordered the pris1' Livy, IX. 41.                      11 Livy, IX. 44.
ns Livy, IX. 41.                      li Livy, IX. 42.
214 Livy. IX. 42.                     "7 Livy, IX. 42.




ï~~310

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXX1

oners to be scourged and beheaded. Such a bloody execution would naturally
excite a deep and general indignation, and the common feeling of the Hernican
people would call aloud for vengeance.
Meanwhile the indomitable spirit of the Samnites kindled at the prospect of
Combined operations of this accession to their league against Rome; and they thought that if
tiominoerni ain s an oa-ertef~-s-r
a Hernaie nd Sam- they could clear the valley of the Liris, and thus open their commuite armies.  nications with the country of the Hernicans, their combined forces
might possibly again carry the war into the heart of Latium, through the great
mountain-portal by Prameste. Accordingly, they attacked anrd carried the two
posts of Calatia, on the Vulturnus, and Sora, on the upper Liris, and sold the
prisoners as slaves."s Thus the communication with the Hernicans was opened,
and a Samnite army must have taken up its position in the valley of the upper
Liris, on the edge of the Hernican country. The Romans then hoped, by a combined operation of both the consular armies, to penetrate into the heart of the
enemy's seat of war in two different directions; and Q. Marcius proceeded to
invade the Hernican territory from the side of Latium, while P. Cornelius was to
ascend the valley of the Liris from Campania, and to dislodge the Samnites from
Sora. But the enemy held their ground so well," and availed themselves so
effectually of their central position, that the consuls could make no progress; and,
being kept in total ignorance of each other's movements, it is likely that each
successively sustained a severe check from a concentration of the enemy's force
against his particular army. This state of affairs excited great alarm at Rome;
all citizens within the military age were enlisted, and two regular armies of two
legions each were raised, to be ready for any emergency.
Thus supported, Q. Marcius soon overbore the resistance of the Hernicans,
The Hernicans solicit and obliged them to purchase a truce for thirty days by furnishand obtain a truce. ing the Roman army with two months' pay and rations of corn,
Sanmium ravaged for
five montht by two and with clothing for each soldier. They then sued for peace,
con..lar armies.  and were referred by the senate to the consul, who received accordingly their entire submission. He hastened to effect his junction with his
colleague, and the Samnite army, oppressed by their united forces, was defeated
with great slaughter.2" Marcius returned to Rome and triumphed on the 30th
of June,"' and his services were accounted so eminent that an equestrian statue
was set up in honor of him in the Forum,"' in front of the temple of Castor, or
rather of the twin heroes, Castor and Pollux. After his triumph, he rejoined
his colleague in Samnium, and their two armies being completely masters of the
field, ravaged, the whole country with the utmost perseverance for the space of
nearly five months;123 cutting down the fruit-trees, burning the houses that were
not secured within the fortified towns, and doing all the mischief in their power,
in the hope of forcing the enemy into submission. The consuls were thus detained so long in the field, that a dictator was named to hold the comitia; and L.
Postumius and Ti. Minucius were elected consuls for the year following.
Before the close of this year the senate had decided the fate of the Hernicans."2
Three cities which had taken no part in the late war were left in
Finai submission nd
iettlemn. t of toHe. the enjoyment of their municipal independence; but Anagnia and.ans.       the other towns were obliged to receive the Roman franchise without the right of voting; or, in other words, to become the subjects of Rome,
without any share either in the general government or in their own municipal
administration. They were forbidden to hold any common meetings, or to intermarry with one another, and their magistrates were prohibited from exercising
any other function than that of superintending the performance of the rites of
religion.
u Livy, IX. 43. Diodorus, XX. 80.    The temple of Castor was on the southern side
m Livy, IX. 43.                     of the Forum, opposite to the line of the Via
2o Livy, IX. 43.                     Sacra.
22 Fasti Capitolimn.                  12 Diodorus, XX. 80.
SLivy, IX. 43. Piny, Hist. Nat. XXXIV. 6.  4 Livy, IX. 48.




ï~~CHAP. XXXI.]  PEACE BETWEEN ROME AND SAMNIUM.

311

The long contest with the Samnites was now drawing to a conclusion..Before
the new consuls took the field, and after Marcius and Cornelius
Decisive campaign i$
had returned home, the Samnites revenged in some degree the teeeart of S..nium.
devastation of their own country, by making several plunderingBovi       tkn.
inroads into the plain of Campania."'    But when the legions opened the campaign, the power of the Romans was again irresistible. The seat of the war was
now in the very heart of Samnium, on the north side of the Matese, in the country of the Pentrians; and the two consuls attacked the two cities of Tifernum
and Bovianum. One last desperate effort was made by the Samnite imperator or
captain-general, Statius Gellius, to relieve Bovianum: but it was vain, although
the battle was so stoutly contested, that the Roman consul Ti. Minucius was
mortally wounded, and did not live to reap the fruits of his victory. But Gellius
was himself taken prisoner, and the greater part of his army destroyed. Bovianum then surrendered, and the consuls, on their return home, recovered the
towns which had been lately lost in the valley of the Liris, Sora, Arpinum, and
an unknown place, Cerennia,'6 or Censennia.
This campaign was decisive. The new consuls were P. Sulpicius and P. Sempronius, and Sulpicius immediately took the field in Samnium.'27 ThSm        their
"     p          YThe Samnite, and their
He gained some advantages, small perhaps in themselves, but im- allies  bmit to the Roportant, as the last drop poured into the brimming vessel and mans.
causing the water to overflow. The Samnites at last sued for peace, and the
Marrucinians, Marsians, Pelignians, and Frentanians followed the example. They
were all obliged to become the allies of Rome, but the alliance was no longer on
equal terms;" they became, in fact, politically subject, and consented to acknowledge and respect the majesty, or, in other words, the supremacy of Rome.
In comparison with such a full confession of the superior strength of the Romans, any partial acquisitions of territory were of slight import- Accessi ogainedo the
ance. But the Romans had obtained in the course of the war theRo dmanominion in tohe
important position of Luceria in Apulia, which secured their as-course of the war.
cendency in that part of Italy; and they had also won the whole line of the
Liris, all those Volscian towns which had been the Samnite share of the spoil at
the conclusion of the great Latin war. Campania had been retained, and its
connection with Rome was rendered closer than ever; and above all, the timely
extension of the full Roman franchise to so many of the Latin and Volscian cities
in the neighborhood of Rome, had made the Roman power sound at the heart,
and had consolidated that mass of citizens, and of allies scarcely less true than
citizens, within the confines of Latium, of which neither the arms nor the arts
of Hannibal could tempt a single individual to join his standard.
The conquest of the Hernicans gave the Romans, it is pirobable, a considerable
accession of territory in the,forfeited domain land of the several cities; and it
put an end to the old equal alliance which entitled the Hernicans to a share of
all plunder taken by the armies of the allied nations. The victories over the
n1o Livy, IX. 44. Diodorus, XX. 90.    year 401, he says that the Samnites solicited
1 Dioclorus calls it Serennia. Is not this the friendship of Rome; that "Legatis corum
place the " Cisauna" in Samnium, mentioned comiter ab senatu responsum; federe in sociein the inscription on the tomb of L. Scipio tatem accepti." VII. 19. In the same manBarbatus?                               ner he misrepresents the early relations between
1 This appears from the Fasti Capitolini, Rome and Latium. But the negotiations had
which state that Sulpicius obtained a triumph broken off in the year 432 on this very point,
for his victories over the Samnites in this year. because the Samnites would not become the
S Dionysius, Excerpt. de Legation. p. 2331. dependent allies of Rome; and as the Romans
Reiske. His words are, speaking of the Sam- never receded from the conditions on which
nites, -ons brrlKUeov l boAoyicavrascÂ~GeOat. Livy they hacd once insisted, we may be sure that
says, "Foedus antiquum Samnitibus redditum." they would have granted no peace to the SamThis is because he never seems to have con- nites which did not include their complete subceivecd that any nation could ever have been mission; nor can we suppose that the Samthe equal ally of Rome, but that from the very nites would have persevered so long in carrying
beginning it must have acknowledged the Ro- on the war amidst such repeated disasters, if
man supremacy. Thus, when he speaks of the they could have ended it on any terms less infirst treaty between Rome and Samnium in the tolerable.




ï~~312

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXI

Etruscans and Umbrians had revealed the secret of the comparative weakness of
those once dreaded nations, and had taught the Romans that their frontier
might be extended as soon as they chose beyond the Ciminian hills.
Thus in the twenty years of the second Samnite war Rome had risen to the
m.wasnow the first first place, beyond dispute, amongst the nations of Italy. And
power in  tly.  amidst the divisions and corruption of the several kingdoms which
had grown up out of the fragments of Alexander's empire, there was scarcely a
power in the civilized world, except Carthage, which could have contended successfully with Rome single-handed.
Half a century was yet to elapse before Carthage entered upon the contest.
Meanwhile the Roman power was yet to be sharply tried; what Etruria and
Samnium could neither singly nor by their joint efforts effect, they were to try
again with the help of the Gauls; what they had ailed to accomplish through
barbarian aid, they were to attempt in their last struggle with the assistance of
the arms and discipline of the Macedonian phalanx, and guided by the genius of
Alexander's genuine successor, the hero-king of the race of Achilles.
CHAPTER XXXII.
INTERNAL HISTORY FROM 428 to 454-ABOLITION OF PERSONAL SLAVERY FOR
DEBT-DICTATORSHIP OF C. MAENIUS-CENSORSHIP OF APPIUS CLAUDIUSCENSORSHIP OF Q. FABIUS AND P. DECIUS-THE OGULNIAN LAW.
" Nothing has contributed more than this lenity to raise the character of public men. Ambition is of itself a game sufficiently hazardous and sufficiently deep to inflame the passions,
without adding property, life, and liberty to the stake."-EDINBURGH REVIEW, No. XCV. p. 161.
WE have seen that min the year immediately preceding the first campaign of the
Altered position of Samnite war, several symptoms had been manifested by a strong
parties at Romeo. The party amongst the patricians of the old jealousy towards the
new or lower popular
party.        commons; M. Marcellus, a plebeian, had been forced to resign his
dictatorship by the augurs, on the alleged reason that his appointment was invalid from some religious objection; and the most obstinate attempts were made
to set aside the Licinian law, and to procure the election of two patrician consuls. In the course of the Samnite war occasional traces of the same feeling are
discernible. But its shape was no longer what it had been in the earlier days
of the commonwealth. It was no longer a struggle between an aristocracy in the
exclusive possession of the government, and a people impatient of their own exclusion from it. It was no longer a struggle between the whole patrician order
on one side, and the whole body of the commons on the other. A considerable
portion of the patricians and a majority of the senate were well reconciled to the
altered state of things, and cordially received the distinguished commoners who
had made their way to the highest offices in the commonwealth, and composed a
new nobility fully worthy to stand on equal terms by the side of the old. Thus
the moderate patricians, the new nobility of the commons, and the mass of the
old plebeians were now closely linked together; and their union gave that energy
to the Roman councils and arms, which marks in so eminent a manner the middle of the fifth century. But as these elements had tended more and more
towards each other, so they parted off on either side from other elements with
which, at an earlier period, they had been respectively connected. The moderate




ï~~OHAr. XXXII.]

RISE OF A NEW POPULAR PARTY.

313

patricians stood aloof from the high or more violent party, who still dreamt of
recovering the old ascendency of their order: whilst a new popular party, though
as yet very inconsiderable in power or influence, was growing up distinct from
the old plebeians, regarding them with envy,1 and regarded by them in turn with
feelings of dislike and suspicion. This new party consisted of freedmen, and of
citizens engaged in the various trades and occupations of a city life, who were
despised by the old agricultural plebeians as a low and unwarlike populace, and
who, by a strong public opinion, were excluded from all prospect of political distinctions. Many of these persons, indeed, had not even the right of voting, as they
were not included in any tribe; and they bore this exclusion as impatiently as
the old plebeians had borne their exclusion from the highest curule offices. This
was a class which was daily becoming more numerous, in proportion as Rome
grew in wealth and population, and it formed the origin of the popular party of
the later period of the commonwealth; a party very different, both in its character and feelings, from the commons of its earlier history.
These extremes of civil society, the highest aristocrats and the lowest populace,
have often made common cause with each other against that mid- oon oe two eCoalition of the two exdle class which both hate equally. And when the malcontent tree partien againas
aristocratical families are few in number, but of the highest nobil- the moderate party.
ity, any ambitious individual among them is tempted to court the populace for
objects more directly personal; he tries to make them the instrument, not of the
greatness of his order, but of his own. Thus. it was commonly remarked of the
tyrants of the ancient world, that they began by playing the demagogue. In
such a union between the highest and the lowest classes of society, the gain is
mostly for the former; the latter derived little advantage from the alliance, except the pleasure of the horse in the fable, when he saw his old enemy, the stag,
effectually humbled. But the coalition is not solely one of political expediency;
it arises partly out of certain moral affinities existing between those whose social
and political conditions are the extremest opposites. The moral bond between
them is their common impatience of law and good government; that anarchical
and selfish restlessness, which sees in the existing order of society an equal restraint
upon the pride and passion of the highest, and on the needy cupidity of the lowest.2 This is the feeling which has so often brought together the proudest despot
or the most insolent aristocrat and the lowest and most profligate populace; and
it was this, though in a far milder degree, which associated in one common party

I This is the progress of all popular parties,
from the necessity of the case. As the ruling
body in the earliest state of society is extremely
exclusive, the popular party then comprises
what Sieyes would call the nation minus a
privilegedindividual or a very small privileged
class. Each success of this party satisfies the
wishes of a portion of its members, and thus
makes them for the future its enemies. And a
repetition of this process would at last place the
anti-popular party ii that same position which
was at first occupied by their adversaries; they
would, in their turn, become the nation, minus
a very small excluded class, a class, in fact, excluded by nothing but their own ignorance or
profligacy. This would be the natural perfection of a state, but, unhappily, this as yet has
never been attained to; the process has gone on
healthfully in its first stages, satisfying successively all those whose exclusion was wholly unnatural, that is, who were excluded by distinctions purely arbitrary, or overbalanced by
many more points of resemblance and fitness
for political power. But when it reaches those
who differ really from the governing body, as
in the case of the rich and the poor, then convulsion and decline have mostly followed. The
work of smoothing down these real differences

is so difficult, that it has rarely or never been
attempted; the excluding party, strengthened
by all those who were once excluded, is now
extremely powerful, and its power is moral as
well as physical; the excluded or popular
party, no longer a nation contending against a
caste, but yet much more than a worthless faction contending against a nation, are conscious
of a wrong done to them, and are embittered
by this feeling; but being unable to carry their
point, and, from their very inability to obtain a
share of the benefits of society, becoming more
and more morally unfit to enjoy them, their triumph and their continued exclusion are alike
deplorable. Their triumph is but the triumph
of slaves broken loose, full of brute ignorance
and wickedness; their continued exclusion is a
perpetual cancer, wasting away the nation's
life; and it is a moral evil, moreover, because it
involves injustice. The great and hardest problem of political wisdom is to prevent any part
of society from becoming so socially degraded
by poverty, that their political enfranchisement
becomes dangerous, or even mischievous.
2 6     rV7revia AvdyK r v rv6Aav,rapixovea,
'  i ovvia i/3ro9 TvOy  ove.avy Kai 0 ep4Iar,..
ifayovov C rocs neivrvofs. Thucydides, II.




ï~~314

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXII

at Rome, in the period now before us, the humblest of the city populace and
the representative of the proudest family in the commonwealth, Appius Clau
dius.
But in these coalitions, which are forever occurring in history, the two coacharacteor of succoa. lescing parties are far from deserving the same judgment. Hisutins.      torians have justly pronounced their full condemnation on the selfish hypocrisy of the tyrant, who talks of liberty in order to establish his own
despotism. And for those who, despising all the honors and benefits of society
which are fully open to them, aspire to a rank and greatness of a higher and
more exclusive sort than the nature of society allows, no condemnation can be too
severe, for no wickedness can be greater. But the lowest class, when they are
misled into such alliances, deserve even in their worst excesses a milder sentence.
Not only are they entitled to all the excuse which may be claimed by ignorance,
and an ignorance arising rather from their condition than from their choice; but
in their quarrel against the existing order of things, there is, and ever will be,
amidst much of envy, and cupidity, and revenge, a certain mixture also of justice.
Nothing is more horrible than the rebellions of slaves; yet it is impossible to regard even these with unmixed abhorrence. Nor can we ever place on the same
level those who, being excluded from the benefits of society, do but seek a share
of them, and those who, enjoying all these benefits in ample measure, cannot
rest without something more. Neither are the middle classes apt to be wholly
guiltless in their treatment of those below them; when they have established
their own rights against the aristocracy, they become a new aristocracy themselves, and having themselves passed through the door, they shut it against those
who would fain follow. But here, as in their own earlier contest with the old
aristocracy, the fault does not consist in denying political rights to those who
are not yet fit for them, for this may be often necessary and just; but in preventing them from ever becoming fit, by retaining institutions which have an
inevitable tendency to keep the lowest classes morally degraded, or, at the best,
by taking no pains to introduce such as may improve them.
In the high aristocratical party at Rome during the period now before us, two
Eminent men of thiindividuals are eminent: L. Papirius Cursor, and Appius Claudius.
period.. Of the high But their objects seem to have been different. Papirius appears
aristocratical party, L.
gopriusCs, Ap-?. to have been sincerely attached to the old aristocratical constitupiua Claudju  tion, and to have honestly wished to restore what in his eyes was
the uncorrupted discipline of the Roman commonwealth. Appius, like his ancestor the decemvir, or Dionysius of Syracuse, wished to overthrow the existing
order of things, not in favor of the old patrician ascendency, but of his own personal dominion.
The moderate or middle party, composed as it was of the majority of the sen2. of te middleo or ate and of the whole body of the old commons, numbered amongst
moderate party,  its members most of the distinguished men of the time. To this
party belonged Q. Fabius Maximus, eminent alike in peace and in war, and who
Q. Fabius Maximus. enjoyed the love3 of his countrymen no less than he commanded
their admiration and esteem. With him stood his friend P. Decius
Mus, thrice his colleague in the consulship when Rome needed the services of her.Deooas.   bravest and ablest generals against her foreign enemies; and his. Doius.  colleague also in that memorable censorship, which required and
found in them all the statesman's wisdom. P. Decius might have disputed the
palm of happiness in Solon's judgment with Tellus the Athenian. Born to the
truest nobility, the son of that P. Decius, who, when consul, had devoted himself
SWhen he died the people contributed by Fabius Gurges, the son of the old Q. Fabius,
subscription a large sum for the expenses of his employed the money in giving a public enterfuneral, which seems to have been a method of tainment to one part of the people, epulum,
expressing the public feeling towards the dead, and in sending portions of meat to the rest, viseven when his family was too wealthy to require ceratio. See the writer "do Viris Illustribus,"
it as an actual assistance. On this occasion, Q. in his life of Q. Fabius.




ï~~CRa. XXXII.]

EMINENT MEN OF THIS PERIOD.

315

to death for his country in the great battle with the Latins, he, like his father,
obtained the highest honors with the purest fame; and after having performed
the greatest services in peace and in war, and having been rewarded in the fullest
measure with the respect and affection of his fellow-citizens, he too, like his
father, devoted himself to death to save Rome from defeat, and so consigned the
glory of his life,4 safe from all stain, and crowned with the yet higher glory of
his death, to his countrymen's grateful memory forever. Of the same band, yet
rather to be ranked first than third,, was M. Valerius Corvus, to M. valeria Corvus.
whom, no less than to Decius, Solon might have allowed the name
of happy. His youth had caught the last rays of the romantic glory of earlier
times; and his single combat with the giant Gaul, and the wonderful aid which
the gods had then vouchsafed him, was sung in the same strains as the valiant
acts of the heroes of old, of Camillus, or Cincinnatus, or Cornelius Cossus. His
manhood was no less rich in glory of another sort, which, if less brilliant, was more
real. Elected consul for the first time at three-and-twenty, five years afterwards,
in his third consulship, he won this famous battle of Mount Gaurus against the
Samnites, and gave in the victorious issue of the first encounter a happy omen of
the final result of the long contest between the two nations. He was elected
consul three times afterwards, and twice dictator; and in his political course,
true to the character of his family, he finally relieved the long distress of the
poorer commons, and appeased the most dangerous commotion which had ever
yet threatened Rome; and he re-enacted the famous Valerian law in his fifth consulship, that great law of appeal from the sentence of the magistrate which the
Romans regarded as the main bulwark of their freedom. In his sixth consulship
he was nearly seventy years old, but he lived thirty years longer, and died at
the full age of a hundred years,5 after having witnessed the triumphant end of
the long contest with the Samnites, which three generations earlier had been
under his own auspices so successfully begun. Next to these three great men
we may rank Q. Publilius Philo, the author of the Publilian laws, Q Publilisa uo.
protor,6 dictator, censor, and four times consul, who was chosen
consul with L. Papirius Cursor after the disaster of Caudium, as being with
him the man most able to retrieve the honor of Rome. Nor should
we omit C. Maenius,7 twice dictator, a man odious to the highc.,.
patrician party for the firmness with which he opposed their projects, but repelling their attacks by the spotless innocence of his public life. To the same
party belonged also, in all probability, Q. Aulius Cerretanus,    Aulis s Cerretu
twice consul, chosen master of the horse by Q. Fabius in his first
dictatorship, who sacrificed his life in covering the retreat of the Romans in the
route of Lautulre, and M. Foslius, master of the horse to C.      ros.
Menius in his second dictatorship, like him obnoxious to the high
patrician party,' and like him protected by his integrity.

Aoci 3e pot iaho  lv3ps apuryiv rpuiTi irepviiousa scal rc7Asouraia f3slacoVa " vv rrvds Karaarpocp. Thucydid. II. 42. In Decius' case his
death was not the "first indication" of his
worth, but the "last confirmation" of it; it was
the worthy close of a noble life.
S Pliny, Histor. Natur. VII. 48. Pliny says
that forty six-years intervened between his first
consulship and his sixth. His sixth consulship
was in the year 458, according to Pliny's own
chronology [446 Niebuhr], if we place it four
years after the consulship of P. Sempronius and
P. Sulpicius, which with Pliny is the year 449.
(Hist. Natur. XXXIII. Â~ 20.) His first consulship accordingly would fail in 406, but according to the Fasti Capitolini, which place his second consulship two years afterwards, in 407, it
would fall in 405. His third according to the
same chronology was in 410; and his fourth in
418. The Fasti are wanting at the period of his

two last consulships, and they cannot be fixed
positively. In his first consulship he was only
three-and-twenty (Livy, VII. 26); which, following the chronology of the Fasti, would give
382 for the year of his birth. He lived, therefore, to the year 482 [475, Niebuhr]; that is, to
the year after the capture of Tarentum, and the
end of the fourth Samnite war.
SLivy, VIII. 15. VIII. 12. VIII. 17. For
his four consulships see Livy, VIII. 12-22, IX.
7, and Diodorus, XIX. 66, and the Fasti Capitolini.
SFor his second dictatorship, see Livy, IX.
26; for his first, see the fragments of the Fasti
Capitolini, and note 61 of Chap. XXXI. of this
volume.
O Livy, VIII. 87, IX. 15, and for his death
see the Fasti Capitolini, and Diodorus, XIX.
72 Livy, IX. 23.
Livy, IX. 26.




ï~~316

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXII

The third or new popular party could not be expected, from its very nature,. Of the new popular to produce, as yet, any men of high distinction. Yet one individual
party. On. Flavius.  belonging to it made himself remarkable, and will claim a place in
this history, On. Flavius, the scribe or clerk, who divulged the secrets of the pontifical calendar, and of the technicalities of actions at law, and was rewarded
with the curule redileship in spite of his humble origin and occupation.
That we are able to notice so many individual characters at this period, shows
that we are arrived at the dawn of what may be called real history. And this
previous sketch of the parties of the commonwealth, and of their most eminent
members, may, perhaps, make the account of the transactions in which they were
engaged, not only clearer, but more interesting.
During the first half of the Samnite war, but in what yearÂ~ is uncertain, there
Abolition of personal was passed that famous law which prohibited personal slavery for.avery for dobt.  debt; no creditor might for the future attach the person of his
debtor, but he might only seize his property; and all those whose personal freedom was pledged for their debts (nexi), were released from their liability, if they
could swear that they had property enough to meet their creditor's demands.
It does not appear that this great alteration in the law was the work of any tribune, or that it arose out of any general or deliberate desire to soften the severity
of the ancient practice. It was occasioned, we are told, by one scandalous instance of abuse of power on the part of a creditor towards his debtor, who, according to the old law, had been given over to him as a slave (addictus), because
he had pledged his person for his debts, and had been unable to redeem his
pledge.   The outrage excited so general a feeling, that the senate immediately
passed a bill for the effectual prevention of such atrocities for the future; and the
consuls, or rather, as it would seem, the dictator, C. Pcetelius, was desired to propose it to the people, that it might become a law.  But although personal slavery
for debt was thus done away, yet the consequences of insolvency were much more
serious at Rome than they are in modern Europe. He whose property had been
once made over to his creditors by the prretor's sentence, became, ipso facto,
infamous;" he lost his tribe, and with it all his political rights; and the forfeiture was irrevocable, even though he might afterwards pay his debts to the
full; nor was it even in the power of the censors to replace him on the roll of
citizens.  So sacred a thing did credit appear in the eyes of the Romans; and so
just did they consider it, that a failure in the discharge of one of the most important social obligations should be visited with a forfeiture of social and political rights.
As the internal history of Rome during this period can only be collected from
state of parties with a few detached notices, we are compelled to pass over in silence
respect ttheriingf those memorable years which were marked by the rising of the
tho Toocolana and fP thsr mwrebirsn
vernatians.    Tusculans and Privernatians, and by the defeat at the pass of
Caudium.    This last disaster, indeed, was such as to still for a time all domestic disputes, and to make every Roman feel alike for the national calamity;
and the election of L. Papirius Cursor and Q. Publilius as consuls for the following year, seems to show a common desire to appoint the two ablest generals of
'5 Livy places the story in the consulship of Miiller has corrected this into, "flloc C. Popilio
C. Poetelius, in the very first year of the war; auctore Visolo dictatore sublatum."  " Visolo"
VIII. 28. But as Dionysius (Fragm. Vol. IV. having been a conjecture of Anton. Augustino,
p. 2338, Reiske) and Valerius Maximus (VI. 1, and approved by Scaliger, because the cognoÂ~ 9) relate it as having happened after the affair men of C. Pcetelius was Visolus, as we learn
of the pass of Caudium, Niebuhr refers it to the from the Fasti Capitolini. But I would rather
dictatorship of C. Poetelius, in the 12th year of read " C. Popilio provocante," in the former part
the war. (Livy, IX. 28.) A passage in Varro, of the sentence, than " C. Popilio auctore."
de Ling. Lat. (VII. 105, ed. Miiller), relates to  1 "In pudoris notam capitis poena conversa,
this subject, but is so corrupt in the MSS. that bonorum adhibith proscriptione, suffunderemaits testimony cannot be appealed to with cer- luit hominis sanguinem quam effundere."-Tertainty. It runs "Hoc C. Popilio vocare Sillo tullian, Apologet. 4.
dictatore sublatum ne fieret, ut omnes, qui bo-  See also the strong language of Cicero pro
nam copiam jurarunt, ne essentnexi, sed soluti." Quintio, 15, 16.




ï~~CHAr. XXXII.]

C. 1MIENIUS DICTATOR.

317

the commonwealth, without any reference to party distinctions. But the war
with Tusculum, Privernum, and Velitre was of another character; and the claims
of these cities, and the treatment which should be shown to them, must have been
judged of very variously. Are we mistaken in supposing that the moderate oi
middle party supported the liberal policy which was actually pursued, while the
new popular party, the party of the populace, called aloud for severity and vengeance? We know that L. Fulvius Curvus, who had so lately led the Tusculans
to assail the city of Rome, was elected consul,1" together with Q. Fabius; and
that, six or seven years afterwards, he was appointed master of the horse'3 by L..Emilius Mamercinus; and both Fabius and JEmilius were eminent amongst the
leaders of the moderate party. We know also that M. Flavius, the tribune, who
brought forward the bill for the punishment of the Tusculans, was a man of
doubtful private character,"4 and that he was said to have owed his first tribuneship to a largess which he had given to the poorer citizens, in gratitude for having been acquitted by them when indicted by the rediles on a criminal charge.
It appears also that he must have been elected tribune twice, at least, within
four years;5 which, in a man of such character, seems to argue that he continued
to practise the arts of a demagogue. If this be so, his bill for the punishment of
the Tusculans exactly resembled, both in himself and in the personal and political character of its author, the famous bill of Cleon for the execution of the Mytileneans: and we have here another instance that a low popular party has as little claim as that of the high aristocracy to the title of high-principled and liberal.
The six years which followed the affair of Caudium are to us, as far as regards
domestic affairs, a blank; but in the year 439 (Niebuhr, 434), the Intri oe of tho eri.
defeat of Lautulme and its consequences led to the second dictator- toortic prty of the
time of the revolt o
ship of C. Maenius, an event of which the notices preserved to us cpua. c.Mw~eniuos di -
are unusually full.  Capua had revolted,"6 and as the consuls, M. tto.
Poetelius and C. Sulpicius, were fully engaged with the Samnites, a dictator with
a third army was appointed to reduce the Campanians. The battle of Cinna, as
we have seen, terrified the Campanians into submission; and the principal leaders
of the revolt perished by their own hands.  But the dictator, C. Mmnius,17 during his inquiry into the origin of the revolt at Capua, gained some startling information, which showed that it had received encouragement from a powerful party
in Rome itself; the spirit'" of his commission, he argued, called upon him to follow up this investigation; and when he returned to Rome he pursued it with
vigor.  No proof, it seems, could be obtained of any direct act of treason; but
there existed what were in Greece the well-known preparations for a revolution,
a number of organized societies" for the purpose of influencing the elections, and
procuring the appointment of particular candidates. These societies, it is implied,
consisted partly of the highest members of the aristocracy, and partly of the
lowest classes of citizens, both at present being combined in one common cause.
The dictator, therefore, encountered a formidable opposition; the high patrician
party recriminated upon him and upon his master of the horse, M. Foslius Flaccinator: "Men of the commons," such as they were, needed undue means to
secure their way to public offices, rather than the patricians, who derived from
12 Livy, VIII. 88.                       '7 Livy, IX. 26.
" Livy, IX. 21.                          s " Versa Romam interpretando res, non noa4 Livy, VIII. 22.                     minatim qui Capue, sed in universum qui us15 Compare Livy, VIII. 22, and 87. Huschk6, quam coissent conjurassentve adversus rempubin his work on the Constitution of Ser. Tullius, licam, queri senatum jussisse."-Livy, IX. 26.
p. 730, refers to this M. Flavius the anecdote re-  19 " Coitiones honorum adipiscendorum causa
lated by Valerius Maximus, VIII. 1, Â~ 7. He factas."-Livy, IX. 26. These words are alingeniously observes, that the anecdote must most a translation of the description given by
refer to a period when the number of the tribes Thucydides of the aristocratical clubs of Athens,
was twenty-nine, which exactly tallies with the rTas vvtoooiaf, ai7rep ri6yxavov rparepov v rj 7r0lu
date of the story as given by Livy. According oo'ate rid ircat Kai apxais. VIII. 54.
to Valerius Maximus, the curule aedile by whom  '0 " Negare nobilium id crimen esse, quibus
Flavius was impeached was C. Valerius.   si nulla obstetur fraude, pateat via ad honorem,
1 Diodorus, XIX. 76.                 sed hominum novorum."-Livy, IX. 26.




ï~~318

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXI,

their noble birth a sufficient and an honorable title to the votes of their country.
men." Immediately the dictator and his master of the horse courted and called
for the fullest inquiry into their conduct; they resigned their offices, were put
upon their trial before the consuls, and, in spite of the efforts of the aristocratical
party to prove them guilty, they were most honorably acquitted."  Q. Publilius
Philo, the most distinguished commoner of his time, was accused by the same
party on the same charge, and was acquitted no less completely.  But by thus
dexterously assailing their assailants, the high nobility gained a considerable advantage; it seemed as if both parties were open to accusation, and that an inquiry into an offence so universal must needs be fruitless. Besides, the most
serious danger had been removed by the favorable turn of the events of the war;
and when men's minds were no longer under the influence of alarm, the inquiry
would cease to be supported by that strong public feeling which alone could
enable it to proceed with effect. Accordingly, the societies triumphed; and the
coalition between the high aristocracy and the populace, thus ineffectually attacked,
began to manifest itself more freely and more decidedly.
Accordingly, two years afterwards, Appius Claudius was elected censor, toCensorship of Appius gether with C. Plautius.  The censorship, it should be rememClaudius.     bered, was, in point of rank, the highest office in the commonwealth: its power was almost unbounded; its command over the public money,
and the opportunities of distinction and of influence which it afforded as originating and conducting all public works, made it an especial object of ambition to
a man like Appius, who was less fitted to signalize himself as a general. Besides,
he probably had from the first formed the design of prolonging his term of office
for the full period of five years, in defiance of the AzEmilian law; and so vast a
power, enjoyed during so long a period, might be made to serve the wildest purposes of ambition.
One of his earliest acts as censor was to revise the list of the senators. It
Hie revision of the list was usual on these occasions to add to the list the names of such
of senators.  citizens as seemed best to deserve that honor; and the selection
would commonly be made from those who, within the last five years, had been
elected for the first time to any curule magistracy, and who, therefore, had not
been in the senate at the last census. But, in addition to the deaths caused by
the Samnite war (and the master of the horse could not have been the only senator who fell in the rout of Lautulm), the year immediately preceding Appius'
censorship had been marked by a visitation of pestilence, so that the names which
he would have to add to the roll of the senate would be more than usually numerous. To the utter scandal of the old plebeians, no less than of the patricians,
Appius passed over many names which other censors would have inserted, and
filled up the vacancies with numbers of the low popular party, many of whom
were the sons of freedmen," and therefore, according to Roman law, the grand.
sons of nobody. The persons thus chosen were, probably, wealthy men, and
many of them may have already filled the offices of tribune or plebeian redile;
but the time when the senate had been a purely patrician assembly was too recent to allow of its being thrwn open not merely to commoners, but to men
whose grandfathers had been slaves; and the attempt of Appius to fill the senate
with those who would have been no better than his creatures, like some of his
ancestor's colleagues in the decemvirate, was too violent a measure to be endured.
Accordingly, the consuls of the next year, C. Junius Bubulcus and Q. iEmilius
Barbula, set his list aside without hesitation, and summoned those only as senators whose names had been on the roll of the last previous censors, L. Papirius
Crassus and C. MEenius.
Not discouraged, however, by this ill success, Appius acted on the same sys' "Publilius etiam Philo, multiplicatis sum- tas, ceterum invisus nobilitati, causam dixit.".tnis honoribus post res tot domi belloque ges- Livy, IX. 26.
SDiodorus, XX. 85, 36. Livy, IX. 29, 8.




ï~~CHAP. XXX11.]

CALENDAR OF ON. FLAVIUS.

319

tern when he proceeded to revise the rolls of the several tribes. His He admits many freed.
colleague, C. Plautius, unable to bear the shame of seeing his list men into the tribes.
of the senate utterly disregarded, had resigned his office at the end of the year.21
If a censor died or resigned before the completion of the eighteen months fixed
by the Â~Emilian law as the term of his authority, it was accounted unlucky to
elect another in his place; and his colleague, on such occasions, usually resigned
immediately, rather than incur the odium of wielding such vast powers alone.
Appius, however, had no such scruples, and continued to act as sole censor. In
his revision of the tribes he admitted a great number4 of freedmen and citizens of
low condition to the enjoyment of a full franchise; and he entered them purposely in all the tribes, that the influence of his party might extend to all. It
will readily be understood that a large proportion of the members of the more
remote tribes especially, would attend but seldom at the comitia; whilst the city
populace and the tradesmen and artisans were always on the spot, and would be
frequently the majority of voters in their respective tribes. Thus, the old agricultural commons saw themselves overwhelmed by their new tribesmen, and that
share in the government which they had so hardly won was on the point of being
wrested from them by men whom, according to the general feeling of the ancient
world, they despised as little better than slaves.
Thus far the conduct of Appius was not inconsistent with a mere desire to restore the old ascendency of the patricians; for the lowest classes, HeencouragesCn. Fiabeing as yet quite incapable of exercising dominion, might safely idre stopub this
endar and his account
be used as auxiliaries for humbling the classes next above them  sof the fosm htiobe ot
just as the feudal kings occasionally courted the commons, and law.
were enabled through their aid to weaken the power of the nobles, without any
danger of seeing their own authority subjected to the control of a representative
assembly.   But if it be true that Appius encouraged On. Flaviust5 in the acts
which gave such offence to the aristocracy, we cannot conceive his objects to have
been other than personal; for it was against the old patrician influence, much
more than against the new plebeian nobility, that the proceedings of Flavius were
directed. This man was the son of a freedman, a clerk or writer by his occupation, and at this time employed in the business of the censor's office under Appius. It was by Appius' instigation that he published his famous calendar or
almanac; that is, he stuck up whited boards round the Forum, on which were
marked down the days and parts of days in every month on which law business
might lawfully be done; a knowledge which the people had hitherto been obliged
to gain from the pontifices, or a few of the patricians who understood the pontifical law; and as the days did not recur regularly, and the principle which determined them was carefully kept a secret, the people were wholly at their instructors' mercy.   At the same time Flavius also published an account7 of
the forms to be observed in the several ways of proceeding at law; a work
which, in after times, must have been exceedingly curious; but which must have
utterly failed in practice, if its object was to enable a common manto conduct
his own suit, without consulting some one learned in the law, Accordingly, it
was to the publication of his calendar that Flavius owed his grt at popularity; he
was elected soon after tribune;28 he was appointed to one or two other important public offices, and six years later, as we shall see presently, he obtained the
rank of curule mdile.
Thus making it his pleasure to lessen all dignity and to diminish all influence
but his own, offending in his pride the old aristocracy no less than
the new, and the middle classes, Appius now, as sole censor, feel-  i..
23 Livy, IX. 29.                         c "1Publicatis diebus fastis, quos populus a
2 Diodorus, XX. 35, 36. Livy, IX. 46.  anucis principum  quotidie petebat."-Pliny,
2 1Appii Cceci scriba, cujus hortatu exce- XXXIII. 6.
perat eos dies consultando assidue sagaci inge- 27 "Actiones composuit." See Cicero, do
nio promulgaveratque."-Pliny, Hist. Natur. Orat. I. 41. Epp. ad Attic. VI. 1.
XXXIII. 6. Ed. Sillig.                   2 Livy, IX. 46.




ï~~820

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXII

ing himself in possession of almost kingly power, resolved to distinguish his name
by public works on a most magnificent scale, such as the greatest king might
emulate. Without any authority from the senate,"9 he applied the large sums of
public money which were paid into his hands by that multitude of persons who
farmed the state property in all its manifold kinds, to the execution of two great
works: one, the construction of a military road from Rome to Capua; the other,
the bringing a constant supply of good water into the city from a distance of
about eight miles from the Esquiline gate, partly by pipes under ground, and
partly by an aqueduct:
The great road from Rome to Capua, which was afterwards continued to BrunThe Appian Road to disium, has, indeed, immortalized the name of its author; nor will
capuna.       the mightiest works of modern engineers ever rival the fame of
the Appian Way. This has been owing to accidental causes; yet the road was
a magnificent undertaking, and even without noticing the excellence of its pavement, which was added at a later period, we may justly admire the labor bestowed in order to keep its line generally on a level, the deep cuttings through
hills, and the vast substructions of massy stones on which it was carried across
valleys. The whole line from Rome to Capua was about 120 English miles; the
road left the city at the Porta Capena, the gate of Capua; it passed in a straight
line over the Campagna till it reached the foot of the Alban hills at Bovillm; there
it ascended to the higher grounds, and, passing through Aricia, and leaving Velitrm and the modern road to Naples on the left, it descended again into the plain
nearly in the same straight line, and ran on to the Pontine marshes.  At this
point, as Niebuhr thinks, the road stopped; and the communication through the
Pontine marshes was carried on by a canal almost as far as Tarracina. But the
very excavation of the canal would, of itself, supply materials, in part, for an embankment by the side of it; and it is more likely that both it and the road were
carried through the marshes together. Afterwards the road ascended the mountains behind Tarracina, thus avoiding the ill-omened pass of Lautule, and soon
after descended again into the plain of Fundi, crossed the Liris at Minturnme, and
the Vulturnus at Casilinum, and three miles further it arrived at the termination of its course, the city of Capua.3Â~
The other work of Appius was less remarkable in itself, than as being the
The Appian aqueduct. earliest of those famous aqueducts which still, amid their ruins,
are such striking and characteristic monuments of Roman greatness. In fact, it can scarcely be called an aqueduct, for the water31 was carried
under ground throughout the whole of its course, with the exception of sixty
Roman paces, or about a hundred yards, in the low ground by the Porta Capenn, where it was conveyed partly on arches, and partly on a solid substruction
of massy stones. Its termination was at the salt works by the river-side, close
by the Porta Trigemina, and immediately under the northwest corner of the
Aventine; and it seems to have been especially intended to supply water to the
inhabitants of the low district about the Circus, who had hitherto been obliged
to use the water of the river, or the rain-water collected in tanks or cisterns.
When we remember that this part of Rome was particularly inhabited by the
poorest citizens, we may suspect that Appius wished to repay the support which
he had already received from  them, or to purchase its continuance for the time
to come; but we shall feel unmixed pleasure in observing that the first Roman
aqueduct was constructed for the benefit of the poor, and of those who most
needed it.
"These two works exhausted," says Diodorus, "the whole revenue of Rome."
29 Diodorus, XX. 85, 86.               3 The whole account ofthisaqueduct is taken
3o It is well known that the ancient Capua did from the work of Frontinus. He was superinnot stand on the Vulturnus, but about three tendent of the aqueducts in the reign of Nerva,
miles to the south of it, on the site of the pres- and his account of them is exceedingly full and
ent 8. Maria di Capua. The modern Capua accurate.
orresponds with the ancient Casilinum.




ï~~CHAP XXXII.]

APPIUS RETAINS HIS CENSORSHIP.

321

But, considering the unavoidable expenses of the war, to which   ow money d bor
How money and labor.
the tributum was wholly appropriated, the disposable revenue from or..re found for these
the vectigalia, or rents received by the commonwealth, must have works.
been insufficient; and Niebuhr reasonably conjectures that Appius must have
sold large portions of the state's domain, in order to raise the money which he
required. The workmen employed consisted, doubtless in great measure, of the
prisoners taken from the Samnites, either in battle or in the repeated invasions
of their territory; the rest were the public or government slaves, or those furnished by the several contractors for the work: for such labors were held to be
degrading to free citizens, and Appius would have acquired no popularity amongst
the poorest classes, by offering to provide them with employment in making his
road, or digging his water-course.
The regular term of the censor's office, eighteen months, was far too short for
the completion of these works; and had they been finished by an- ppius retains his ren
other censor, the glory of them would have been lost to Appius. sorship beyond the le
gal term.
Setting, therefore, all law and all opposition at defiance, Appius per- ga term.
sisted in retaining his censorship when the eighteen months were expired; and
although the tribune P. Sempronius Sophus,2 one of the most eminent commoners of this period, threatened to send him to prison if he persisted in disobeying the law, and although six of the other tribunes supported their colleague,
yet the remaining three promised Appius their protection; and as their negative
was all-powerful, Appius was secured from any molestation so long as they continued in office. He found some tribunes equally devoted to him in the next
year, for he retained his censorship four years, and in the fifth he endeavored to
add to it the power and dignity of consul, and whilst he still continued to be
censor, he declared himself a candidate for the consulship. Here, however, that
negative power of the tribunes which had hitherto been his support was employed against him: L. Furius33 forbade the business of the comitia to proceed,
until Appius had resigned his censorship. Then, however, he was elected consul, and perhaps in this capacity finished and dedicated the two works of which
he so greatly coveted the glory.
The extreme moderation of the party opposed to Appius deserves in all these
transactions the highest praise. They composed probably the Wise moderation of t.he
majority in the senate, and if they had exerted their whole party opposedtohim.
strength they must have been also the majority in the comitia. Yet they suffered Appius to defy the laws for a period of two years and a half, and afterwards they allowed him to be elected consul without opposition, nor when he
became a private citizen did they ever impeach him for the violence of his conduct. We cannot, in our ignorance of the details of these times, appreciate fully
the wisdom of this conduct; but as violence begets violence, so unquestionably
does moderation in political contests lead to moderation in return. The personal
ambition of Appius had been gratified even beyond the law; and this his political opponents had endured at the time, nor did they seek to punish it afterwards.
Nothing was attempted against him which could either irritate his own passions,
or invest him in the eyes of the multitude with the character of a martyr in their
cause. If he had ever carried his views still higher than to a five years' censorship, if the hope of regal dominion had ever floated before his eyes, the forbearance shown towards him deprived him not only of every pretext for further violence, but, appealing to the nobler part of his nature, restrained him for very
shame from endeavoring to wrest more, where so much had been already yielded
to him; it would not suffer him to assail that constitution which had shown itself
towards him at once so confident and so placable. Ten years after his first consulship he was elected consul again in the midst of the third Samnite war,
and he obtained the preetorship in the year following. He bore his part not

Livy, IX. 33.

U Livy, IX. 42.

21




ï~~322

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXIL

without honor, amongst the greatest generals of his day, in that most arduous
contest when the Gauls again fought against Rome with the Etruscans and the
Samnites to aid them; and in his old age he had the glory of determining the
senate, by the last effort of his eloquence, not to treat with the ambassador of
Pyrrhus.
The example which Appius had set in his public works was followed by the
Other public works. succeeding censors, M. Valerius Maximus and C. Junius Bubulcus.
The Valeorian Way.  They also made some roads4 through the country in the neighborhood of Rome; that is, they either improved the line of the existing local
roads, or widened them, and constructed them of better materials. One of the
roads, thus in a manner made anew, led from Rome to Tibur; and this being
afterwards continued through the country of the Equians by Carseoli and Alba,
as far as Sulmo and Corfinium, and thus having become one of the greatest lines
of communication in Italy, was known throughout its whole length by the name
of the Valerian Way, because the first twenty miles of it from Rome to Tibur
were made by the censor M. Valerius.
In the same year, 447-8 (Nieb. 441), we may place the trial of A. Atilius
Trial of A. Atilius ca- Calatinus, on a charge of having betrayed the garrison of Sora to
atino..      the Samnites. He had married a daughter of Q. Fabius, and had
been left by his father-in-law in the command of the place, when he himself left
his province of Samnium to return to Rome.      Sora and Calatia were at this
period35 both surprised by the Samnites, and the troops who garrisoned them
were sold for slaves. Atilius either made his escape, or was taken prisoner and
allowed to be ransomed; but on his return to Rome he was accused of treason,
a charge often made against unsuccessful officers, and listened to the more readily,
because, while the soldiers had been led away into slavery, their commander had
met with a fate so different. Perhaps in this accusation we may trace the influence possessed at this time in the comitia by the city populace, who were not
commonly enlisted in the legions, and who were apt to judge the conduct of
military men unfairly and severely, in proportion to their own total ignorance of
war. It might have fared hardly with Atilius, had his father-in-law been any
less distinguished man than Q. Fabius. But Fabius6 came forward and declared
to the people that the charge was groundless: " Had it been otherwise," said
he, "I should not have allowed my daughter to remain the wife of a traitor.""
The people, suspicious because they were ignorant, but meaning honestly, listened at once to the testimony of so great a general and so upright a man, and
Atilius was acquitted. His son, the grandson of Q. Fabius, became one of the
most distinguished citizens in the first Punic war; he was twice consul, dictator,
and censor.38
Two years afterwards the influence of the new popular party in the comitia
Edileshi of Co. Fla reached its highest point, when Cn. Flavius, the clerk of Appius,
vius, the clerk of Ap-: and the man who had published the calendar and the forms of
pius Claudius.  actions at law, was elected curule medile. When the first votes
were given in his favor, the aedile who presided at the comitia refused to receive
them, saying that a clerk was not fit to hold a curule magistracy. It so happened"9 that Flavius himself was attending on the curule tedile at that very time in
the way of his occupation; he had his tablets and his style in his hands, to record
the votes. As soon as he heard the objection he stepped forwards; he laid
 Livy, IX. 43. Cassiodorus.          sented herself from him for three nights in the
'6 Diodorus, XX. 80. Livy, IX. 43.    year. See p. 100.
o Valerius Maximus, VIII. I. Â~ 9.      "  8His epitaph said of him, in. language re* By which it appears, as Niebuhr well oh- sembling the epitaphs of the Scipios,
serves, that the practice of marrying without  "Plurime consenrtiunt gentes
conventio in manum was common even amongst  Populi primarium fuisse virum."
distinguished families. Thus the daughter still  See Cicero, de Senect. 17.
remained in hey father's power, if, to bar her  39 L. Piso, Annal. III. quoted by Gelliu,
husband's right to her by prescription, she ab- VI. 9.




ï~~CAP. XXXII.]  REFORMS OF Q. FABIUS AND P. DECIUS.

323

down his tablets, and declared upon oath that from that day forwards he would
follow the business of a clerk no more.  The mdile then received the votes that
were given for him, and On. Flavius was duly elected. His colleague was Q.
Anicius40 of Prmeeneste, who had only within the last few years became a Roman
citizen; while two commoners of consular families, C. Poetelius and Cn. Domitius, were unsuccessful candidates. The indignation of the patricians and of the
old commons on this occasion was so great, that the senators laid aside their
gold rings, and the young patricians, and wealthy commoners who formed the
equestrian order, put off their chains of honor (phalerre), as if so great a dishonor
to the commonwealth required a general mourning. It should be remembered
that the curule edileship was at this time an office of high distinction, and that
every curule magistracy was supposed to convey something of kingly and therefore of sacred dignity; so that it was a profanation if it were bestowed on a
freedman's son, although he might have held the tribuneship of the commons
without offence.  Flavius, however, was a man of spirit, and was not abashed by
these signs of displeasure; nay, he even enjoyed the mortification of the nobility;
and a story41 was told how on a time, when his colleague Q. Anicius was sick,
Flavius went to visit him; and when he entered his room he found several noble
youths who were sitting there with him.    They, scorning the freedman's son, remained in their places, and would not rise as they were bound to do to the curule
redile.  Upon which Flavius sent for his curule chair, and placed it in the doorway so that no one could pass, and then taking his seat in it, obliged them to see
him in the enjoyment of his dignity. Yet, although he would not allow himself
to be overborne by insolence, he could not bear to be the occasion of divisions
between his countrymen; and he vowed to build a temple to Concord,4" if he
could succeed in effecting a reconciliation between the higher and lower classes
of the commonwealth.
We must suppose, therefore, that he witnessed without opposition the decree
of the senate that two censors should be immediately appointed, Q. rFabius and P. Dealthough not a year had elapsed since the last censors had resigned  i.esors.
their office. Still less could he find fault with the choice of the comitia, which
fell upon two of the most popular men in Rome, Q. Fabius and P. Decius.
This censorship, according to Niebuhr, effected little less than a remodelling
of the whole constitution; in particular, he supposes that the per- Measures supposed to
plexing combination of tribes and centuries, which is known to      ve beentsukesaitheir
have existed in the later periods of the commonwealth, was the ben     aership.
work of Fabius and Decius; and that they adjusted, in a manner satisfactory to
all parties, the ever-contending claims of nobility and wealth on the one hand
and of numbers on the other.    I cannot assert this, even on Niebuhr's authority,
not only from the total want of all direct evidence, but because I am inclined to
think that the mixture of tribes and centuries in the later form of the comitia
centuriata was the work of the fourth century of Rome rather than of the fifth.
Nor do I quite believe the story43 that it was to his eminent services in this censorship that Q. Fabius owed his surname of Maximus.
What is actually recorded of the censors of this year is sufficiently probable;
4' Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXXIII. 6.        populus," that is, the patricians and the old
4 Piso, apucl Gell. VI. 9. Livy IX. 46.  commons, as opposed to the "forensis faetio."
4 " Flavius vovit oedem Concordie, si popu-, 43 The story is told by Livy, IX. 46, and by
lo renonciliasset ordines."  Niebuhr under- several other writers. But Polybius asserts
stands by populus the old patricians, and by that the surname of Maximus was given to the
ordines the plebs and the freedmen. But surely dictator Q. Fabius in the second Punic war, on
the old sense of populus is inapplicable here; account of his great services at that period. III.
and we must either understand " ordines" of 87. This is undoubtedly a mistake, but I bethe senate and the equestrian order, which is lieve the other story is no less so; and that the
undoubtedly the meaning, if the words are surname Maximus in the Fabian family, no less
Pliny's own; or if he copied them from an than in the Valerian and Carvilian, had referolder writer, " ordines" may signify the clerks, ence originally to personal size rather than to
seribe, and the other trades or inferior callings, greatness of mind or exploits; that it answered
and populus means what Livy calls " integer to the surname of Philip le Long, or of Edward




ï~~324

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXII

Wa wascertaineand that it should have been accomplished not only without a conWhat was cez'taialy elfected waa wise and test, but as far as appears without exciting any thing but satisfacbeneficial    tion, is one of the most extraordinary proofs of the political wisdom and moderation of the Roman people. The lower classes of the city, and
those whose blood was not yet clear from the taint of slavery, had gained a political power much more than in proportion to their social importance; and there
is in this something so unnatural, that it shocks even those who may be supposed to benefit by it, unless they have been previously corrupted by intolerable
distress, no less fatal to wisdom and goodness than excessive enjoyment, or have
been exasperated by previous insolence and oppression. Had there now been
such a state of misery amongst the poorer classes as that which followed the
Gaulish invasion, or had the old law of debtor and creditor existed still and been
rigorously exercised, the lower people would have eagerly retained the power
which fortune had thrown into their hands; they would have valued it as ensuring them at once protection and vengeance. But when all was prospering,
when the state was victorious abroad and daily growing in wealth and magnificence at home; when the citizens of highest rank were also the worthiest; and
the commonwealth seemed to enjoy a real aristocracy, which is as natural and
excellent as its counterfeits are hateful; above all, when there was prevailing a
general spirit of moderation, which dispelled all fears of tyranny,-why should
men endure such an unfitness as that the lower should take the place of the
higher, and that those who were of least account in society should exercise politically the greatest power? So Flavius, resigning all prospect of rising to
higher honors, allowed that he had already risen too high for one of his class,
and that more than one generation should elapse between the slave and the curule
magistrate. Fabius and Decius removed all freedmen,44 all artisans, and all other
citizens of the lowest class, into four tribes only out of the one-and-thirty which
then existed; so that they could influence at most but a little more than an
eighth part of the whole comitia; and these four tribes were the old tribes of the
city, as distinguished from those of the country, the Palatine, the Colline, the
Esquiline, and the Suburran. Then Flavius, seeing the conditions of his vow fulfilled, built his temple to Concord,4" a small chapel, of which the walls were
plated with bronze, and which stood within the precinct of the temple of Vulcan,
on the north side of the comitium. It was built with the money arising from the
penalties paid by some wealthy men for having lent money at a rate of interest
higher than was allowed by law; and Flavius, by virtue of his office of sedile, had
prosecuted them before the comitia. When it was completed, the pontifex maximus, L. Cornelius Scipio,45 refused to dictate the solemn form of dedication,
which Flavius, according to custom, was to repeat after him; but the comitia,
indignant at the spirit which dictated this refusal, passed a resolution which
obliged the pontifex to retract it. Yet, afterwards, to complete the picture of
moderation displayed by the people on this occasion, the comitia passed a bill
proposed to them by the senate, enacting that for the time to come no man
should be allowed to dedicate a temple without the sanction of the senate or of
the majority of the tribunes of the commons. The aristocratical pride of the
pontifex required to be restrained; yet it was not fit that he should be called to
perform the solemnities of the national religion at the pleasure of an individual,
or that a temple should be consecrated without the sanction of some public authority. Happy is that people which delivers itself from the evils of an aristotne r irst, rather than to that of Alexander or nology of Tome; for it declares that the conCharlemagne.                           sulship of P. Sempronius and P. Sulpicius, the
" Livy, IX. 46.                      last year of the second Samnite war, was be5 Pliny, Hist. XXXIII. 6. In this notice lieved by those who were then living, and by
of the founding of the temple by Cn. Flavius, one who had an access to all existing monuPliny adds, "inciditque in tabell erea eam  ments, to have been the 204th year from the
sedem coxv. annis post Capitolinam dedicatam." beginning of the commonwealth.
This is a very important passage for the chro-  " Livy, IX. 46.




ï~~CAP. XXXII.]

THE OGULNIAN BILL.

325

cratical or priestly dominion, not by running wild into individual licentiousness,
but by submitting to the wholesome sovereignty of law!
"The Carthaginians," says Aristotle,4 "provide for the stability of their constitution, by continually sending out a portion of their commons Colonies founded at this
to their settlements in the surrounding country." This policy was time.
no less familiar to the Romans, and as some of the poorer citizens must have
been discontented with the recent proceedings of the censors, so we find that
three colonies were founded in the next two years, and that no fewer than fourteen thousand citizens were sent out as colonists.4" The three places thus
colonized were Sora, Alba, and Carseoli. Sora had been taken and retaken repeatedly in the late Samnite war, and its important position, just at the point where
the Liris issues out from the mountains which confine its earlier course upon the
high plain of Arpinum and Fibrenus, made it desirable to secure its permanent
possession; Carseoli and Alba had been conquered in the late war with the.AEquians.  Carseoli was in the upper valley of the Anio, about thirty-eight
miles from Rome. Alba stood on an isolated hill at a little distance from the
lake Fucinus; and the strength of its fortifications was even at this time remarkable, for the walls which still exist are built of enormous polygonal blocks of the
limestone of the Apennines, and belong to a period much more ancient than the
fifth century of Rome.
Places so recently conquered, and so exposed to fresh attacks w]. enever a war
should break out again, must have been colonized by men who Who were sent as set-.
understood war, and might be able to maintain their own ground, tiers.
as a sort of frontier garrison. The settlers sent thither could not, therefore, have
consisted wholly of the unwarlike populace of the city, but of the poorer citizens
of the old commons, who had been accustomed to serve in the legions, and who
had the skill and courage of veteran soldiers. It is very probable, however, that
a certain portion of the freedmen and of the city populace may have been mixed
up with them.
In appointing and supporting the censorship of Fabius and Decius, the patricians and the nobility of the commons must have acted in con- The Ogulnian bill for
throwieg open nil encert with each other. But three years afterwards, there was a rofice opn to th...feeble return of the old quarrel between the two orders, when two mono.
of the tribunes,49 Q. and Cn. Ogulnius, proposed a bill for increasing the number
of the pontifices and augurs by the addition of new members to be chosen from
the commons. In Rome, as elsewhere, the civil equality of the two great orders
of the state had been established, whilst the old religious distinctions between
them still subsisted; a commoner might be consul, dictator, or censor, but he
could not as yet be pontifex or augur. But this exclusion, although it related to
religious offices, was maintained for political purposes, and could not, indeed, be
justified on religious grounds.  For, according to the old principle, that the
priests of the gods must be of a certain race or caste, carefully preserved from
any profane mixture, the Roman patricians had long since forfeited the purity of
their blood by their frequent intermarriages with the commons. But politically,
their exclusive possession of the offices of pontifex and augur might secure them
some advantages. Twice within twenty-five years we have seen the appointment
of a plebeian dictator annulled by the augurs, on the ground of certain religious
objections of which they were the sole judges. All questions of augury depended on their decision; and this, in a state where nothing either political or
military was done without consulting the auspices, conferred, necessarily, an immense power. The pontifices, in like manner, had the absolute control over
every part of the ritual of religion, and as connected with it, over the calendar.
What festivals were to be observed, and at what times; what public sacrifices
4 Politic. II. 11.                    sand to Sora, and as many to Carseoi. Livy,
SSix thousand were sent to Alba, four thou- X. 1. 3.
4 Livy 6, et seqq.




ï~~326

HIISTORY OF ROME.

[OHAP. XXXII

should be performed, and with what ceremonies; and what was an interference
on the part of any individual with sacred places, persons, or things, were all points
of their jurisdiction, against which it is doubtful whether even the tribunes would
have ventured to interpose. It seems but reasonable, therefore, that as the pa.
tricians and commons were now become one people, and as both alike were admitted to those high and sacred dignities of consul and dictator, which involved
the practice of augury, and the offering sacrifice to the peculiar gods of Rome,
in the name of the Roman people, so the knowledge as well as the practice of
the national religious system should be committed to both equally; that where
no religious objection really existed, political ambition might no longer be able
to shelter itself beneath its semblance.
Still, however, a party amongst the patricians, headed, as we are told, by ApP. Decius supports it, plus Claudius," vehemently opposed the Ogulnian bill. It was
anditbecomes alaw. supported by P. Decius; and no man could have pleaded for it
with greater effect, when he appealed to his father's memorable death, and recalled him to the memory of some of his hearers, as they had seen him in the
great battle with the Latins, with his toga wrapped around his head, and his
feet on a javelin, devoting himself to the powers of death in behalf of the Roman people.   "If my father," said he, "was no less fit than his patrician colleague to offer himself to the gods, as an accepted expiation for the whole people, how could he be unfit to direct their worship?" The question, in fact, could
not be carried; some of the tribunes were at first engaged to interpose their negative, but the general feeling obliged them to forbear, and the Ogulnian bill became a law.   The pontifices, who were then four in number, elected accordingly
four commoners to complete their college to eight, or, including their head, the
pontifex maximus, to nine. And the augurs, who were also four, elected five
commoners to raise their college to the same number of nine, on the notion that
each of the original tribes of Rome, the Ramnenses, the Titienses, and Luceres,
was to be represented by an equal number of the public ministers of religion. It
seems that the new appointments were fairly and wisely made; P. Decius himself," and P. Sempronius Sophus, who had been both consuls and censors, were
two of the new pontifices; and amongst the augurs, besides T. Publilius, C.
Genucius, and C. Marcius, all of them members of the most eminent families of
the commons, we find the name of P..Elius Pmtus, a man of no great political or military distinction, but who probably showed a remarkable fondness
for the study of the pontifical and augural discipline, inasmuch as we find an
unusual number of his descendants" filling the offices of pontifex and augur,
as if those sacred duties were almost the hereditary calling of their race and
name.
In the same year,53 M. Valerius, one of the consuls, re-enacted, for the third
Theo va erian law re time, the famous law which bore the name of his family, and which
enacted.      was, in fact, the Roman law of trial by jury, as it permitted every
citizen to appeal from tle sentence of a magistrate in capital cases to the judgment of his country. It is not certain whether the consul who brought forward
this law was M. Valerius Maximus, or M. Valerius Corvus: it must have been
the latter, however, if the common statement be true that he was six times elected
consul; and we should be glad to ascribe the measure to a man so worthy of it.
The law denounced the violation of its provisions as a crime, but named no fixed
penalty; leaving it open to the accuser to demand, and to the judges to award,
a milder or a heavier sentence, according to the nature of the particular case, as
was so generally the practice at Athens. But why this law should have been
so Livy, X. 7.                        ceeded by Q. Blius Patus. Livy, XLI. 21.
a Livy, X. 9.                         Nor must we forget that lius whom Ennius
2 Q. AElius Petus, who fell at Canne, was honored with the title of "egregi cordatus
pontifex, Livy, XXIII. 21. P.  Elius Patus was homo."
appointed augur in the place of Marcellus,  5 Livy, X. 9.
Livv. XXVII. 36: and on his death he was suc



ï~~CHAP. XXXII.]

THE VALERIAN LAW RE-ENACTED.

321

re-enacted at this particular time we know not. No recent instances of arbitrary
power are mentioned, nor do we hear of any consul of this period who is charged
with a disposition to cruelty. Perhaps the object of Valerius was simply to
satisfy the humbler citizens that the government was not unmindful of their personal security, although it had diminished their political power; and that whilst
the more distinguished commoners were completing their own equality with the
patricians, they did not mean to allow the poorer members of their order to be
oppressed with impunity. Thus, the re-enactment of the Valerian law, taken in
conjunction with the passing of the Ogulnian, seems to form an sera in the constitutional history of Rome; when the commons obtained a confirmation of their
great charter of personal freedom for the mass of their order, and for those of
their members who might rise to eminence, a perfectly equal share in all the
honors of the commonwealth, religious no less than civil.
In some of the transactions recorded in this chapter, we seem almost to have
emerged into the light of day, and to be able to trace events and This period is followed
This period is followed
their actors with much of the clearness of real history. But even by one very obscurely
in those which are in themselves most vivid, we find a darkness known.
on either side, concealing from our view their causes and their consequences; as
in dreams, single scenes and feelings present themselves with wonderful distinctness: but what brought us to them, or what is to follow after them, is left altogether a mystery. Some of the many difficult questions which belong to this
period, I propose to lay before the reader in the appendix to this volume, as I feel
that I can offer no explanation of them so satisfactory as to claim the name of history. In this number I would place especially the famous question as to the
later constitution of the comitia of centuries, a problem which not even Niebuhr
could fully solve, and which has equally baffled other writers who have more recently
attempted it. But in the following period of about fourteen years, which elapsed
between the passing of the Ogulnian law and the dictatorship of Q. Hortensius,
there is scarcely a single fact in the domestic history of Rome which can be discerned clearly, and we are left to ask what circumstances could have produced
so great a change; and how, after a state of things so peaceable and so prosperous, and a settlement of the constitution apparently so final, we are brought
back again so suddenly to the circumstances of a long past period, to a heavy
burden of debt, to quarrels between the different orders in the state from this
cause, and to a new secession of the commons to the Janiculum.
In the mean time we must carry on for a while the foreign history of Rome,
and describe that short but decisive war, in which the Romans triumphed over
the triple coalition of the Etruscans, the Samnites, and the Gauls.




ï~~CHAPTER XXXIII.
FOREIGN HISTORY FROM 450 TO 464 (443 TO 456, NIEBUHR)-CONQUEST OF TH
EQUIANS-THIRD SAMNITE WAR-COALITION OF THE ETRUSCANS, SAMNITS,
AND GAUTLS-GREAT BATTLE OF SENTINUM, AND DEATH OF P. DECIUS-FINAL
VICTORY OF Q. FABIUS OVER THE SAMNITES-C. PONTIUS IS LED IN TRIUMPH
AND PUT TO DEATH IN COLD BLOOD.
"Ter totum fervidus irk
Lustrat Aventini montem; ter saxea tentat
Limina nequidquam; ter fessus valle resedit."
Visa. En. VIII. 230.
" Thrice did the indignant nations league their might,
Thrice the red darkness of the battle's night
Shrouded the recreant terror of their flight."
MinrA, Judicium Regale.
THE peace with Samnium was immediately followed by a war with the zEquiWar with the Â~qui. ans. Since the Gaulish invasion, the very name of this people has
a.         vanished out of our sight, except on one single occasion in the
year immediately following the recovery of the city, when Camillus is said to
have taken from them    the town of Bola.'  As they took no part in the subsequent attacks made by the Volscians upon Rome, and did not even join their
neighbors of Prmneste, when they, from the allies of the Romans, became their
enemies, so we may conclude with Niebuhr, that the Gaulish invasion had been
even more fatal to them tha to the Romans; that they must have been so
weakened by some great disaster sustained at that period, as to have fallen back
altogether from their advanced position on the edge of the Campagna to their
older country in the upper valleys of the Turano' and the Salto, and near the
western shore of the lake Fucinus. From their towns on the edge of the Campagna they were, probably, expelled by the Latins; and acquisitions of territory
from the IEquians may have been among the causes which raised Tibur and Preeneste after the Gaulish invasion to greatness far above the rest of their countrymen. Meanwhile, the LEquians were left unmolested in their remaining territory,
and for nearly eighty years from the burning of Rome by the Gauls they seem
to have remained perfectly neutral. But towards the end of the second Samnite
war, when the Hernicans, in their jealousy of the growing power of Rome, took
up arms against her, the Equians also, probably from  similar motives, were induced to join in the quarrel. iEquian soldiers" were found, it was said, together
with Hernicans, in that Samnite army which Q. Fabius, when proconsul in the
year 447, had defeated at Allife; and after the Hernican war in the year following, the whole.Aquian people joined the Samnites.    Thus, when the Samnites,
in the year 450, were obliged to sue for peace, the.Equians were left in a position of no small danger. Rome, it appears, was willing to forgive them on no
other terms than those just imposed on the Hernicans; namely, that they should
become citizens of Rome without the right of voting in the comitia; in other words,
SLivy, VI. 2., field of Scurgola, the scene of Conradin's defeat
SThe Turano is the stream which, rising at by Charles of Anjou, and when it reappears it
the back of the hills which form the northern receives the name of Salto. It flows through
boundary of the valley of the Anio, flows thence the pastoral country of the Cicolano, and falls
in a northerly direction, and joins the Velino into the Velino above Rieti. See Bunsen's arjust below Rieti. The Salto rises very near to ticle, "Esame del sito dei pii antichi stabilithe lake Fucino, and, in its earlier course, is menti Italici," &c. in the Annals of the Archacalled the Imele; but it sinks into a fissure in ological Society of Rome, Vol. VI. p. 110.
the lin estene, a little below the famous battle-  s Livy, IX. 45.




ï~~CHAP. XXXIII.]

CONQUEST OF THE.EQUIANS.

329

that they should submit to become Roman subjects. Hopeless as their condition was, their old spirit would not yet allow them to yield, and they resolved to
abide a contest with the whole undivided power of the Roman commonwealth.
Both consuls, P. Sempronius and P. Sulpicius,4 with two consular armies,
marched at once into the Equian territory. Such a force, amounting Their country i.oveto about 40,000 men, confounded all plans of resistance.      Few   run, and their tow..JEquians of that generation had ever seen war; their country had not taken.
been exposed to the ravages of an enemy within the memory of any man then living.
Abandoning all hope of maintaining the field against the invaders, they took refuge in their several towns, hoping there to baffle the first assault of the enemy,
and trusting tltt time might bring some of the neighboring people to their aid.
But their towns were small, and were thus each weak in the number of their
defenders: the Romans well knew the effect of a first impression, and in the
places which they first stormed, they probably, according to their usual practice,
made a bloody execution, in order to strike terror into the rest. We have seen,
under the influence of a general panic, some of the strongest fortresses and one
of the most warlike nations of modern Europe taken and conquered in the space
of two months; so that we cannot wonder that fifty days were sufficient to complete the Â~Equian war, and that forty-one towns were taken within that period,5
the greater part of which were destroyed and burnt. The polygonal walls of
many of them are still in existence, and are to be found scattered along the pastoral upland valley of the Himella or Salto, from Alba almost to the neighborhood of Reate.   The Romans, however, did their work of destruction well; for
although the style of the walls in these ruins denotes their high antiquity, yet no
traces are to be found of the name, or race, or condition of their inhabitants: the
actual remains will tell as little of the history of the.Equian people as we can
glean from the scanty reports of their conquerors.
The fate which the AElquians had vainly striven to avert now fell upon the remnant of their nation, after the greatest portion of the people had They sumit, an re
perished or been led away into slavery.   The survivors, after see- ceivo the Roman fran
ing the greatest portion of their territory converted into Roman hiln.
domain land, were obliged to become Roman citizens without suffrage. But five
years afterwards, when war with Etruria and with the Samnites was again threatening, the Romans admitted them to the full franchise,t and they formed a considerable part of the citizens enrolled in the year 455 in the two tribes then created, the Aniensian and Terentine.
When the Samnites had made peace with Rome, they were required to restore
Lucania to its independence; that is, they were obliged to give T           ptypo
back the hostages whom they had kept as a pledge of the nation's dominant in Luania.
Rome and Lucania at
fidelity, and to withdraw their garrisons from the Lucanian towns. war with.tm.
The Tarentines call
The Roman party in Lucania, upon this, regained its ascendency, cleonyo, the spaand the foreign relations of the country were so changed, that, tan, to theiraid.
from having been in alliance with the Samnites and Tarentines against Rome, the
SLivy, IX. 45.                          in the Cornelian tribe (Livy, XXXVIII. 36):
SLivy, IX. 45. Diodorus, XX. 101.      and we cannot alwvays conclude that a tribe conS" Majores nostri," says Cicero, "  Equos in tained only the people of one particular district.
civitatem acceperunt." De Officiis, I.11. That The origin of the name Terentina is quite unthey were admitted into the tribes Aniensis and known. We know of no town Terentum which
Terentina is not expressly stated by any ancient could have given it its name, nor of any river
writer; but the date of the creation of these Terens. What was the ancient name of the
tribes connects them with the  quians, and the Turano, which, as it runs near to the site of
tribe Aniensis must have included the upper Carseoli, must have flowed through the Equian
valley of the Anio, which was Equian. The territory? Bunsen has shown that it is a mere
tribe Terentina contained at a later period, as mistake to suppose that the Tolenus or Telowe know, the people of the Volscian city of nius was the Turano. (Annali dell' Instituto,
Atina (Cicero pro Plancio, 8, 16, 22); and Nie- &c. tom. VI. p. 104.) Could the Turano have
buhr thinks that they were included in it, be- been anciently called Terens, or Terentus, and
cause it was in their neighborhood. But the could the tribe Terentina have been named from
Arpinatians, who lived nearer to the Equian this river, as the Aniensis was from the Ano?
country than the people of Atina, were included




ï~~330

HISTORY OF ROME,

[CHAP., XXXI1].

Lucanians now took part with Rome against Tarentum. During the Samnite
war, the Tarentines, covered as they were by the territory of their allies, had
nothing to fear from the Roman armies; and by sea, as the Roman navy was
very inconsiderable, they carried on the contest with advantage. But now a consular army,' supported by their old enemies, the Lucanians, might, at any moment,
appear under their very walls; and they looked out, therefore, for some foreign
aid. They sent to Greece, and to their own mother-city, Sparta, imploring that
an army might be sent to help them, and that Cleonymus might be its general.
Cleonymus was the younger son of Cleomenes, king of Sparta, and the grandson of Cleombrotus, who fell at Leuctra. His nephew Areus, Cleomenes' grandson by his elder son Acrotatus, had been now for about six years on the throne;
and Cleonymus, like Dorieus of old, not liking to remain in Sparta as a private
citizen, was eager for any opportunity of distinguishing himself abroad. Areus
was no less ready to let him go; and accordingly he complied at once with the
invitation of the Tarentines, and having levied at their expense about 5000 Greek
mercenaries, he crossed over into Italy. There he raised 5000 mercenaries more,
and the native forces of Tarentum  are reckonedat 20,000 foot and 2000 horse.'
Most of the Italian Greeks, together with the Sallentines, who had already been
engaged in hostilities with Rome, joined his standard; and had Cleonymus possessed the ability of Pyrrhus, he might have rallied around him the Samnites and
Etruscans, and, after the exhaustion of a twenty years' war, the Romans would
have found it no easy matter to withstand him.
As it was, the display of his force terrified the Lucanians, and they made heir
Peace between Reme peace with Tarentum.1Â~  It is remarkable that Diodorus, who states
and Tarentum.  this in express terms, and who had just before named the Romans
as being also at war with the Tarentines, yet makes no mention of any peace
between Tarentum   and Rome.    A treaty, however, must have been concluded,
for the attack made by the Tarentines on a Roman fleet, eleven years afterwards,
is saidn to have been occasioned by a violation of the conditions of the peace
between the two nations; and had it not been made at this time, we cannot conceive that Cleonymus could so immediately have engaged in other enterprises.
It seems probable that no other terms were required on either side than the renewal of a preceding treaty; and this treaty was originally concluded at a period
when the only conceivable intercourse between Rome and Tarentum could have
been by sea. It stipulated"2 in the usual language that no Roman ships, meaning, probably, ships of wvar, were to advance along the south coast of Italy nearer
to Tarentum than the headland of Lacinium, which forms the southern extremity
of the Tarentine gulf. There was, no doubt, a similar stipulation, restraining the
Tarentines from advancing with their ships of war nearer to Rome than the headland of Circeii.
Cleonymus, being thus no longer needed by the Tarentines, employed his
arms with various success in plundering operations along the eastern coast of
Italy, till at last he was beaten off by the inhabitants and obliged to return to
Greece.   He is not heard of again till he invited Pyrrhus to assist him in his
attempt to seize the throne of Sparta.
Two years after the end of the Samnite war, the Marsians, who had then, as
Short war with the we have seen, made peace with Rome like the other allies of the
nlarsians.     Samnites, were again engaged in hostilities. The Roman account3
SDiodorus says expressly, Tapavrivor6  6Xepov  2 Amaywya.. wraawv ross Tapavrivove
xovres s pig Aavsavovs Kai 'Pwrpalov. XX. 104.  AnevrEjreKS avvOrKcv, peT 7 riv 'P palovr wrpoda
P8 ausanias, III. 6. Plutarch, Agis, 3, and Aarvia eKpag.-Appian, Samnitic. VII.
Pyrrhus, 26. Compare the article on the kings  a" Livy, X. 3. At this point we lose the con*
of Sparta in the Appendix to the second volume nected history of Diodorus. The last consulof Mr. Fynes Clinton's Fasti Hellenici.  ship.noticed in his twentieth book is that of M.
Diodorus, XX. 104.                    Livius and M..2Emilius, which was the second
is Diodorus, XX. 104.                  year after the end of the Samnite war, and, aon Appian, Samnitic. VII.               cording to Diodorus, the third year of the hun



ï~~CHAP. XXXIII.]

THE VESTINIANS AND PICENTIANS.

331

states that they resisted the settlement of a Roman coloi  at Carsecli, one of the.tEquian towns lately conquered, and themselves maintained the place by force.
This is scarcely credible, for they had made no opposition to the colonizing of
Alba, a more important position, and one much nearer to their own country.
However, the war, whatever was the cause, was short, and ended in the speedy
submission of the Marsians, who were obliged to cede a portion of their domain.
The same penalty had been paid in the preceding year by the Hernicans of Frusino, for an alleged attempt to excite their countrymen to revolt; and these acquisitions of land by the Romans are memorable, not so much as increasing their
power against foreign enemies, but for their effect on their own state of society
at home. We must remember that the land thus gained was mostly held in
occupation by the Roman nobility, and often to a much larger extent than the
Licinian law allowed; and that this great increase of their wealth, and accumulation of extensive domains, "Latifundia," led gradually to a system of slave
cultivation, and contributed, more than any other cause, to the great diminution
of the free population throughout Italy.
In the same year the Vestinians,'4 of whom we have heard nothing since their
unfortunate war with Rome in 429, are said to have sought the The vetiians and P1 -friendship of the Romans, and to have concluded with them       a cetianmin a liance wit
treaty of alliance.  Since the conquest of the Â~quians the Ro- Rcme.
man frontier had become contiguous to theirs; so that relations with Rome,
either friendly or hostile, were become inevitable.  Through this treaty, Rome
completely separated the Samnites from the Etruscans; as her own territory or
that of her allies reached now across the whole width of Italy from the mouth
of the Tiber to that of the Aternus, on the Adriatic. Two or three years5 afterwards the Picentians, whose country stretched along the coast of the Adriatic
northward of the Vestinians, lapping, as it were, round Umbria on the east, and
reaching as far as the settlements of the Senonian Gauls on the Metaurus and the
AEsis, became also the allies of Rome.   Their friendship was of importance; for
not only were the Etruscars and Umbria-s already a       war with Rome, but it
was known that the Gauls;.jd been solicited to take paut in the contest; and the
situation of Picenum was most favorable for cal;ing the war into the Gauls' own
country, if they should attempt to stir, or for threatening the flank and rear of
the Etruscans and Umbrians, if they should move either on Rome or towards
Samnium.
Meanwhile the Etruscan war, which was so soon to kindle a new war with the
Samnites, broke out partially in the year 453.  Its origin is ascribed
to the internal factions of the Etruscan city of Arretium;16 the iegeof oqui. i
powerful house of the Cilnians, of which Mecenas was a descend- Ubra.
ant, was at variance with the people or commons of Arretium, and was suspected
also, by some of the neighboring cities, as likely to endanger their independence.
dred and nineteenth Olympiad. Although we only by a dictatorship. Thus the chronology
have numerous fragments of his later books, becomes more and more confused, for these
yet these can ill supply the place of a regular dictatorships, if real, could not have lasted more
narrative, which, with all its faults, has cer- than six months, and the next consuls would
tainly preserved to us some very valuable and therefore come into office half a year after their
probable accounts of many events in the Roman predecessors' term was expired. In this manhistory. We miss also his notices of the several ner the beginning of the consular year was conwriters from whom his work was compiled, and tinually varying, and these portions of years
his occasional mention of obscure nations and being reckoned as whole years, the reckoning
cities, of which we have scarcely any other fell more and more in disorder. How conknowledge. Thus, for the third Samnite war stantly do the perplexities of the Roman Fasti
Livy is almost our sole authority.       remind one of the truth of Thucydides' remark,
14 Livy, X. 8.                         that the natural chronology of the seasons of
l1 Livy, X. 10. Another year is inserted by the year was the only sure guide; the civil
the chronologers between the consulship of M. chronology, he says, was a perpetual source of
Livius and M..Emilius, and that of M. Valerius mistakes: ov yap d&pL 3c MrTV oe Kal &pxopivers
and Q. Appuleius. Like two or three other icai pcao7i, cai idrrTs rvxUv rcp, re sy vcr6 re.years in the fifth century of Rome, it is said to V. 20.
have been a year without consuls, and marked  16 Livy, X. 3.




ï~~332

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXITS

The Cilnians applied ft zaid to Rome, already known as the natural supporter of
the high aristocratical party throughout Italy, and thus, we are told, a Roman
army was sent into Etruria. The details, as is so often the case, are utterly conflicting; but it is said that the Cilnians were reconciled to the popular party, and
hostilities ended for the present. In the next year, 454, we find one of the consuls besieging the Umbrian town of Nequinum,7 on the Nar, on what provocation we know not.   The siege, however, was protracted till the year following;
for the inhabitants well availed themselves of the strong site of their town, built
on a narrow ledge in the mountain side, with an almost abrupt ascent above, and
a descent no less steep down into the narrow gorge of the Nar below. At last
the town was betrayed to the Romans; and they immediately sent a colony to
occupy the spot," which from henceforth took the name of Narnia. It commands
the defile which leads from the valley of the Tiber into the plain of Interamna o
Terni, one of the richest tracts of central Italy.
Some accounts9 related that the Samnites had supported the people of NeTeo samnites exert quinum in their obstinate resistance, and had sent troops to their
themselves vigorously
to form a newo litosuccor.  It is manifest that the Samnite government was at this
against Rome.  period making the greatest exertions, in the hope, probably, that
the Etruscans would create a diversion in their favor, by drawing off a part of the
forces of Rome to her northern frontier. The Samnite plans were, moreover,
unexpectedly furthered by a new inroad of the Gauls; new hordes had lately
arrived from  beyond the Alps," and their countrymen in the plains of the Po,
having no room for them, were anxious to speed them on their way southwards;
they encouraged them to cross the Apennines, and even joined themselves in the
enterprise. The Etruscans had already, perhaps, engaged their services against
the Romans; so that the Gauls marched through Etruria still onwards, and with
an Etruscan force co-operating with them, they poured into the Roman dominions."
It is probable that they followed their old line by the valley of the Clanis into
Umbria, and that their ravages were carried on rather in the territory of the
allies of Rome than in that of Rome itself. But the invaders won a great spoil
without any opposition, and the Gauls recrossed the Apennines to carry it home
in safety. They would have been tempted, probably, by their success, to renew
their inroad in the next year; but, fortunately for the Romans, they quarrelled
with one another about the division of their plunder," and the greatest part of
their multitude were destroyed by each other's swords. Whilst the Gauls, however, were on the left bank of the Tiber, the whole force of Rome was watching
their movements; and the Samnites seized the opportunity to march into Lucania."  The appearance of a Samnite army revived the Samnite party in Lucania;
the Roman party was everywhere overpowered; town after town was recovered
to the Samnite alliance; and the partisans of Rome sent an embassy in all haste
to the senate, praying for instant succor. But the Samnite government did not
stop here; their ambassadors endeavored to rouse all the nations of Italy to arms,
17 Livy, X. 9.                           21 _ i e v igi 'Pcopaeov hrapxas &raXg hrav)z1 Livy, X. 10.                        Oov.s-Polyb. II. 19.
I " M. Fulvius Cn: F. On. N. Pntinus Cos.  22 Polybius, II. 19.
De Samnitibus Nequinatibusque. Ann: CD     23 Livy, X. 11. Dionysius, XVI. 11. For
S.. VII. K. Oct."-Fasti Capitol.      these sudden revolutions in the condition of
Polybius, II. 19. This account is again Lucania, we may compare the conquest of Beodifferent from that of Livy, who represents the tia by Myronides, and its loss a few years afterGauls as quarrelling with the Etruscans about wards through the event of the battle of Corothe terms of their service, and thus as not in- nea; and also the accession of Achaia to the
vading the Roman dominion at all. There can Athenian alliance, a little before the thirtyyears'
be no doubt that Polybius has preserved the peace, and its loss again, through the stipulatruer version of these events. He fixes also this tions of that treaty. It is manifest that the RoGaulish invasion at about eighty-seven years man and Samnite parties in Lucania, or, in
after the first invasion, when Rome was taken, other words, the aristocratical and popular parthat is, according to his reckoning, Olym. 120-1, ties, each as they gained the ascendency, took
or B. c. 300. The common reckoning places it to themselves the name of the Lucanian nation,
In 299, a difference not worth dwelling upon.  and spoke of the foreign supporters of the opposite party as the national enemies.




ï~~CHAP. XXXIII.]

THIRD SAMNITE WAR.

332

and. to form one great coalition against Rome. They solicited the Picentians to
join them;"4 but there the influence of the Roman party was predominant; and
the Picentian government made a merit of communicating instantly to the Romans the attempt of the Samnites to shake their faith. Old jealousies probably
influenced the Marsians, Marrucinians, and Pelignians; they had often found the
Samnites restless neighbors, and dreaded the restoration of their former power.
But the Sabines25 seem to have listened to the Samnite overtures; there the ties
of blood drew the two people towards one another; and the new Roman tribes,
lately created in the iEquian territory, brought the Romans into too close neighborhood to Reate and the valley of the Velinus. Etruria was already engaged
in a quarrel of her own with Rome; so far as the endless party revolutions in
the Etruscan cities might allow any dependence on the stability of her counsels.
The weakness of Umbria might yield to fear, if Etruria on one side and the Sabines on the other, and the Gauls hanging on her northern frontier, should together call upon her to join the confederacy.  Nor were the Samnites neglectful
of the nations of the south: they had already, as we have seen, recovered the
greatest part of Lucania, and their arms, giving timely aid to their party within the
country, must at this period have won also the majority of the Apulian nation
to desert the Roman alliance, and to acknowledge once again the supremacy of
Samnium.t    The indefatigable Samnite government, after all these efforts, might
have well remonstrated, like the Homeric goddess, with that hard destiny which
was to render them all fruitless7TIr s EEceg &'Xov Sivato 74l ~' &r XfTav,
apw9' &  ivlp a  i yqi I;ae Er;Ja'  01 /oLr Lrot
Xaov  yatpo'ag, fIIptd e  a Tca L ro1 'reraLOiv.
The Romans, as might have been expected, readily listened to the prayer of
their friends in Lucania. An alliance was concluded with the Beginning of theo third
Lucanian people, and hostages, taken probably from some of the Samite war.
families of the Samnite party, were given to the Romans as a pledge of their
allies' fidelity. Ambassadors were sent into Samnium to require the Samnites to
withdraw their troops from Lucania, and with a threat of instant war if the demand were not complied with. The Samnites ordered the ambassadors to leave
Samnium without an audience; and the general council of the Samnite nation
resolved that each separate state of their union should make its preparations for
the support of the common cause. On the other side, the Romans made a formal declaration of war; and thus the desperate struggle began again with increased animosity.
When we read of the Samnites, Etruscans, and Gauls, with the Lucanians and
Apulians, some of the Sabines, and most of the Umbrian states, S uperioretr gth of the
engaged in one great confederacy against Rome, we are first in- Roman confederacy.
clined to wonder how the Romans could have escaped destruction. But when
we consider that under the name of Rome were included all those nations which
were in her alliance, and of whose forces she had the supreme disposal, we find
that it was but a weaker and far worse organized confederacy opposed to one
stronger in itself, and much more firmly united. From the Ciminian Hills to the
bay of Naples, the territory of the Romans, Latins, and Campanians presented a
compact mass of states and people, far superior in population, in resources,
and in union, to the long and ill-organized line of its enemies; whilst, in the cen2 Livy, X. 11.                       his consulship, namely, in the year 458. See
s Amiternum, a Sabine town in the upper Orelli, Inscript. Latin. Collectio, No. 539.
valley of the Aternus. was taken from the Sam-  26 Because in the year 457 we find an Apulian
nites by the Romans in 461. Livy, X. 39. This army in the field in aid of the Samnites; and
implies a previous occupation of it by the Sam- P. Decius is said to have defeated it at Malevennites, and an alliance therefore between the two tum, when on its march to join the Samnite
countries. And an inscription relating to Ap- army. Livy, X. 15.
pius Claudius the blind states, that he "de-  2 Livy, X. 11, 12. Dionysius, XVI. 11, 12.
feated an army of Sabines and Etruscans" in




ï~~334

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XxxIr

tre of Italy, and reaching to the coast of the Adriatic, the Marsians, Pelignians,
Marrucinians, Frentanians, Vestinians, and Picentians, formed a separate mass of
Roman allies, who, by their position, might either obstruct the enemies' communication, or threaten their rear. In fact, it was only the desperate resolution of
the Samnite people, and the great energy and ability of their leaders, which could
afford any chance of success, where the resources of the contending parties were
so unequal. The Gauls were, like all barbarians, uncertain and unmanageable;
and the repeated vacillations of the Etruscan counsels made the alliance of Etruria as unsafe a support as that of Egypt to the kings of Juda: to lean on the
Etruscans was indeed to lean on a broken reed.
No combined plan of operations on the part of the enemies of Rome can be
First campaign of the traced in the first campaign of the war. The Gauls could not be
war.          prevailed on as yet to take the field; and the Roman party in Lucania was not entirely put down, so that the Samnites were still employed in that
quarter, and could not send an army into Etruria.
The Roman consuls of the year 456, the first year of the renewed Samnite
Uncertain and  ayg war, were L. Cornelius Scipio and Cn. Fulvius Centumalus."  L.
accounts of the a.  Scipio was the great-grandfather of the conqueror of Hannibal;
paign.        he is the first Roman of whom a contemporary record has reached
our times; the famous epitaph"9 on his tomb, which declares him to have been
"a brave man and a wise, whose form well matched his nobleness."  Yet such
are the perplexities of the uncertain history of these times, that no one action
recorded in Scipio's epitaph is noticed by Livy, while no action which Livy
ascribes to him is mentioned in his epitaph. The accounts of his colleague's exploits are no less varied; some making him win a great battle in northern Samnium,so and saying that he afterwards besieged and took Bovianum and Aufidena;
while others placed the seat of his campaign on the Lucanian frontier, and extolled"3 the ability with which he had conducted his operations against a superior
enemy. A third account is followed by the Fasti Capitolini, that Fulvius triumphed over the Samnites and Etruscans; which seems to contradict the story
followed by Livy, that Scipio invaded Etruria, advanced as far as Volaterrm, and
gained a hardly won victory under the walls of that city. It is only certain that
this year was really marked by no great successes on the part of the Romans;
on the contrary, they looked forward to the next campaign with great anxiety,
and therefore32 they pressed Q. Fabius to accept the consulship, notwithstanding
his advanced age, and although he was not legally eligible, as ten years had not
elapsed since he was consul before. It was in vain that he remonstrated; a dispensation,33 according to a practice afterwards so frequent, was passed in his favor;
and the people proceeded to elect him. He then entreated of them that he

21 Livy, X. 11.
S The sarcophagus which contained the bones
of L. Cornelius Scipio was discovered in 1780,
and is now in the Vatican Museum. The epitaph is as follows, written in the old Saturnian
verse:
"Cornelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus Gnaivod
Patre prognatus fortis vir sapiensque
Quoius forma virtutei parisuma fuit,
Consol censor aidilis quei fuit apud vos,
Taurasia Cisauna Samnio cepit
Subigit omne Loucana opsidesque abdoucit."
" Gnaivod" in the first line would, in modern
Latin, be 1.Cmeo," and " quoius" in the third
line is " cujus." I have copied the inscription
from Bunsen and Platner's " Beschreibung
Roms," Vol. III. p. 616. It may be found also
in Orelli's Collection of Inscriptions, No. 550,
and an engraving of the sarcophagus, exhibiting
also the epitaph, is given in the Gentleman's
Magazine for April, 1787.

3o Livy, X. 12.
31 See the stories in Frontinus, Strategem, I.
6, Â~ 1, 2, and I. 11, Â~ 2, already referred to by
Niebuhr. But the authority of the particular
anecdotes contained in such collections as that
of Frontinus is but small, and it is not in itself
to be set in comparison with that of any moderately careful historian. In the present instance the anecdotes are curious, as showing
how many different versions of the same events
were in circulation, as long as no real historian
existed to sift them all, and to choose the truest
or the most probable; but they do not appear
to me to be entitled to any peculiar credit.
2 Livy, X. 13.
3 " Tribuni plebis... aiebant, se ad populum laturos ut legibus solveretur."-Livy, X.
13.  Legibus solvi is the regular expression
used when any one has a dispensation granted
him, to release him from complying wit.h the
enactments of some particular law.




ï~~One. XXXIII.]

INVASION OF SAMNIUM.

335

might recommend to them P. Decius as his colleague: Decius a ld himself, he
said, had been censors together, and there was no man with whom he could act
so well as consul. Accordingly, Q. Fabius and P. Decius were elected together:
L. Scipio, the consul of the preceding year, served34 under Fabius as his lieutenant, and a Fulvius5 and a Valerius are named amongst his military tribunes.
At this moment, when the Romans expected to be assailed by the whole force
of the enemies' confederacy, they found it suddenly paralyzed. Second campaig. DeEtruria for some reason or other was not ready to act,36 and the structiVny Q.Fabionf
Roman frontier on that side might be safely left without an army. andP.Deci.
Accordingly, both consuls marched into Samnium,37 Fabius by Sora and the
upper Liris, Decius by the country of the Sidicinians and the line of the Vulturnus. Fabius was met by the main Samnite army, which he defeated after a
most obstinate battle; while Decius had encountered the Apulians near Beneventum on their march to join their allies, and defeated them also. The Samnites
then acted on the defensive, and were obliged to suffer their country to be laid
waste without opposition. Both of the Roman armies remained in Samnium, it
is said, for five months," moving about from one part of it to another, and carrying on their ravages so systematically, that Decius was recorded to have encamped his legions in forty-five several places, and Fabius in as many as eightysix. But the Samnites must have driven their cattle to their mountain pastures,
and many of these were so surrounded by forests, and so fenced round with
precipitous cliffs, that a small force could have defended them with success
against an army. The low country,"9 however, was no doubt grievously wasted,
and the Romans must have found plunder enough to encourage them to continue
their invasion. Towards the end of the year Fabius returned to Rome to hold
the comitia; after which he resumed his command, and both he and his colleague
were ordered to remain in Samnium4Â~ for six months longer, with the title and
power of proconsul.
It was probably in this winter that the Samnite influence in Lucania and Apulia was completely overthrown, and both those countries returned.. nA.
to the  oman aliancLcaneea and Apulia e-a
to the Roman alliance. In both the aristocratical party was of covered to the noman
itself eager to re-establish this connection; and the presence of alliance.
two Roman armies, and the inability of the Samnites to keep the field against
them, destroyed the ascendency of the popular party,41 and changed accordingly
the foreign relations of the whole people.  It was now too, it seems, that
L. Scipio, as lieutenant of the proconsul, Q. Fabius, had so great a share in
effecting the revolution in Lueania, as to be able to boast, in the words of his

34 Livy, X. 14. "Fabius... Scipionem
legatum hastatos prima legionis subtrahere...
jubet."
5 Livy, X. 14. The reading in the modern
editions of Livy is "M. Fulvium et M. Valerium," but most of the MSS. read "Maximum
Fulvium," and Niebuhr observes that Maximus
was a surname of the Fulvian family, as appears
from the Fasti Capitolini. It is probable that
the military tribunes here spoken of were the
sons respectively of On. Fulvius and of M. Valerius, who had been consuls in 454 and 456.
3 "Ab Sutrio et Nepete et Faleriis legati,
auctores concilia Etrurie populorum de petenda
pace haberi. "-Livy, X. 14. This perpetual
vacillation in the Etruscan counsels arose no
doubt from the balanced state of their domestic
parties. If any difficulty arose in obtaining the
expected aid from the Gau]s, the Cilnii of Arretium, and other friends of the Roman connection, would urge the danger of opposing Rome
single-handed, and would advise delay; and
fear and weakness, counterfeiting prudence,
would easily be tempted to listen to them.

S Livy, X. 14.
"s Livy, X. 15. The circumstantial statement
of the number of encampments in this campaign
deserves credit; and the account of Fabius'
victory is moderate and probable.
as In the former war the consuls of the year
448 had ravaged Samnium during five months,
burning all the scattered houses, and destroying the fruit-trees. I)iodorus, XX. 80. But no
enemy could have penetrated within the rocky
walls of the Matese, and many other spots must
have been equally secure.
4o Livy, X. 16.
40 " Lucanorum seditiones a plebeiis et agentibus ducibus ortas summa optimatium voluntate per Q. Fabium proconsulem, missum eo
cum vetere exercitu, compresserat."-Livy X.
18. Nothing is mentioned of the Apuhlans
after their defeat at Beneventum; but as they
do not appear again as the allies of the Samnites,
it is probable that they followed the example of
the Lucanians, and returned in this winter to
their old connection with Rome.




ï~~336

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXIII

epitaph, that he had "subdued all Lucania and carried off hostages."  The hostages would be demanded from the principal families of the popular or Samnite
party, as a security that they should not again excite their countrymen to revolt
from Rome.
Thus having recovered Lucania and Apulia, having overrun Samnium without
Revival of the war in resistance during several months, and having succeeded apparentEtruria.      ly, through the influence of their party in the Etruscan cities, in
separating Etruria from the coalition, the Romans thought that their work was
done; the two proconsular armies marched home and were disbanded, and the
consuls of the year, L. Volumnius and App. Claudius, after having hitherto remained quiet at Rome, were ordered to march with their newly raised legions42
into Samnium, as if to receive the final submission of their exhausted enemy. But
scarcely had the consuls left the city, when tidings came that the cities of Etruria were in arms,43 that several of the Umbrian states had joined them, that they
were engaging the services of a large force of Gaulish auxiliaries; and that a
Samnite general, with a Samnite army, was in the midst of this mass of enemies,
to cement their union, and to breathe into their counsels a new spirit of decision
and energy.
There is no finer scene in history than the embassy of Demosthenes to Thebes,
Marchof GelliusEgna- when Philip had occupied Elatea. Triumphing alike over all old
tier freon Sarna in  te
Irefoteergeatee  prejudices and all present fears, the great orator, almost in
war against Rome.  the very presence of the Macedonian army, and in spite of the influence of a strong Macedonian party in Thebes itself, prevailed upon the Thebans
to throw themselves into the arms of Athens, and to share her fortune for life or
for death in her contest against the common enemy of independent Greece.
Most unlike to this action of Demosthenes in glory, yet not inferior to it in vig
orous resolution, was the march of the Samnite general, Gellius Egnatius, into
Etruria, in order by his presence to determine the wavering counsels of the Etruscans to a zealous co-operation against Rome. Seizing the moment when the
proconsuls had left Samnium, and the new consuls had not yet taken the field, he
fearlessly abandoned his own country to the attacks of the enemy, and with a
select army, marched through the land of the Sabines into Umbria, and fronr
thence crossing the Tiber, arrived in the heart of Etruria. His sudden appearance raised the spirits of the friends of the Samnite alliance, and struck terror
into the Cilnii and the party attached to Rome. The Etruscans resolved to
renew the war, and, as we have seen, many of the Umbrian states and an army
of Gauls were expected to join them.
On the first tidings of this march of the Samnite general, the senate sent
Third campaign. Both orders to Appius Claudius to follow him without delay. Appius,
rcesoe iEtruria. The
samnite  invade crm-nh with the first and fourth Roman legions and 12,000 allies, was
pania.        probably on his march towards the northern parts of Samnium,
by the Latin road and the upper valley of the Liris, arid thus could be sent into
Etruria more readily than his colleague, who, we may suppose, had marched by
the Appian Road to attack the southern frontier of Samnium from Campania.
Appius hastened into Etruria,44 and the appearance of a Roman army at first
revived the hopes of the partisans of Rome: but one consul was unequal to the
combined forces of the enemy, and L. Volumnius was obliged to evacuate Samnium  also, and hasten to join his colleague. No sooner was the whole force of
4 The accounts which Livy followed repre- ported that Appius Claudius and Volumnius
sent the proconsuls as being still in Samnium both carried on war in Samnium (Livy, X. 17, ad
when the new consuls took the field, X. 18. finem); and it is not likely, as Niebuhr remarks
But Niebuhr observes that his narrative con- that four armies should have been employed
tradicts itself, for the legions raised by the con- before the war broke out in Etruria, and that
suls are expressly said to have been the 1st, two of them should then have been disbanded.
2d, 3d, and 4th as usual; whereas, had two just when their services were most needful.
consular armies been under arms at that time,  4' Livy, X. 18.
the new legions must have been the 5th 6th,  44 Livy, X. 18.
7th, and 8th. Besides, some of the annals re



ï~~CHAP. XXXIII.]

DISPOSITION OF THilE ROMAN ARMIES.

337

Rome thus employed in Etruria, than the Samnites took the field with the forces
which had been left to defend their own county, and burst into Campania.45
There they laid waste not only the lands of the allies of Rome, but of all those
Roman citizens who had obtained settlements in the Falernian district, and composed the Falerian tribe.
The march of Gellius Egnatius had thus completely attained its object; Samnium was wholly relieved, and the war was carried into the actual Alarm at Rome. The
territory of Rome. Even the mere suddenness of this change was hesbackfromntruria
enough to increase its terrors; the Roman government ordered to deliver Campania.
all legal business to be suspended,4t and troops to be raised for the defence of
the city; nor were the levies confined to the military age, or to free-born commons of the country tribes, but citizens above five-and-forty, and even freedmen
of the four city tribes, were enrolled in the legions raised to meet the emergency.
All these measures were directed in the absence of the consuls by P. Sempronius
Sophus, the prator.  Meanwhile L. Volumnius had received iatelligence of the
invasion of Campania, and was hastening back from Etruria to his own province.
It is apparent from the stories which have been preserved of the meeting of the
two consuls in Etruria, that there was no harmony between them; and thus the
public service was likely to suffer the less from the division of their forces. We
may believe also, that their junction for a time had revived the Roman interest
in the Etruscan cities; and we may admit, not indeed the account given by Livy
of a complete victory won over the Etruscan and Samnite armies, but that some
advantages were gained47 which saved Appius from his perilous situation, and
enabled his colleague to leave him when a still more pressing danger called him
into Campania. Volumnius marched with the utmost rapidity, and on his reaching the scene of action, he obliged the Samnites instantly to retreat into their own
country, and overtakihg a party of them on their way, he defeated them with
considerable loss,8 and recovered a great portion of the spoil which they were
carrying with them. This gleam of success was most welcome to the Romans;
the usual course of business was resumed, after having been suspended for
eighteen days, and a thanksgiving was ordered in the name of the consul for the
favor which the gods had shown to the commonwealth under his auspices.
Still, however, the aspect of affairs was most critical. In order to protect the
Falernian district from  the ravages of the Samnites, it was re- rea eparaons for
treat preparations for
solved that two Roman colonies should be planted there; one at the ensuing campaegn.
S   Q. Fabius and P. DeMinturne49 at the mouth of the Liris, and the other at Sinuessa,  againho.een conon the hills which divide the waters running to the Liris from outs.
those that feed the Savone. But settlements in this quarter were considered so
insecure, and so exposed to perpetual ravages from the Samnites, that few were
willing to accept a grant of land on such terms. As the consular elections drew
near, L. Volumnius was recalled from Campania to hold the comitia; and the
unanimous voice of the people again called upon Q. Fabius to accept the office
of consul. He again yielded to the general wish, but begged, as before, that
P. Decius might be his colleague; and Decius was accordingly elected consul
with him.5 Appius Claudius, who was still with his army in Etruria, was appointed prmtor, and L. Volumnius had his command prolonged for another year
as proconsul. L. Cornelius Scipio, who had served under Fabius in his last consulship, Cn. Fulvius, who had been consul in the year 456, and had conducted
the first campaign of this war in Samnium, together with L. Postumius Megel4 Livy, X. 20.                       that Appius repulsed the enemy and saved his
4 Livy, X. 21.                        own army, but it by no means proves that he
47 In the midst of the battle, Appius vowed won a decided victory. We have only to. reto build a temple to Bellona, if the goddess member Corufia and Albuhera.
would grant him victory; and this temple was  4 Livy, X. 20, 21.
afterwards built. See Orelli, Inscript. Latinar.  49 Livy, X. 21.
Collect. No. 539. This may be taken as evidence  0 Livy, X. 22-26.
22




ï~~338

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXIII,

lus, were appointed also to commands in this great campaign, with the title of
proprietors.
The anxiety occasioned by the impending contest may be measured by the
A. U. C. 459. B.  particular accounts of prodigies and their expiations which were
295. Reported ome nto be found, in the annals of this year. From  the altart' of the
of hefate of the war.
of the ate ote war. temple of the Capitoline Jupiter there flowed for three successive
days, so said the annals, first blood, then honey, and on the third day milk. The
blood was interpreted as a sign that the blood of thank-offerings for victory
should soon stream on the altar of Jupiter, but the favors of the gods would not
be unmixed; for honey was the medicine of the sick, and foreshowed a heavy
visitation of sickness: milk was the food of those whose corn had failed them, and
was the sign of a coming famine.   To avert the threatened anger of the gods,
and to confirm them in their promised favor, solemn prayers" were ordered to be
offered during two whole days; and frankincense and wine were furnished to
every one at the public expense, that the prayers might be universal and unceasing.
The consuls at this time came into office about the beginning of the year; and
as the snow was still thick on the Apennines, the Gauls could
App. Claudius in Etrurin. witer marr honot yet take the field to march into Etruria, and the campaign
buuto relieve im. would not be opened till the spring. But the position of Appius
Claudius in the enemy's country was exceedingly perilous; and he himself, in
the opinion of Fabius, was scarcely equal to the difficulties of his situation. Accordingly, Fabius himself, having raisedc3 a small force of 4000 foot and 600
horse, out of a great multitude who were eager to serve under so renowned a
general, set out at once for Etruria. He found Appius Claudius busily employed
in strengthening the fortifications of his camp, and the soldiers from thus acting
solely on the defensive were dispirited, and mistrusted both themselves and their
general.  Fabius ordered them to level their fortifications; and having sent Appius home, he took the command of the army in person, and kept it continually
in movement, marching rapidly from place to place, and restoring to the men
their accustomed feeling of confidence. He then stationed one division54 in the
country of the Camertian Umbrians, the allies of the Romans, to observe the
pass by which the Gauls were likely to cross the Apennines, apparently that
of La Scheggia on the Flaminian road, descending on Nocera and Foligno. This
was placed undei the command of L. Scipio; while Fabius himself returned to
Rome to concert measures with his colleague for the operations of the approaching spring.
Two consular armies5" were destined to take the field, consisting each of two
Forces of the Romans Roman legions, and an unusually large force of Roman cavalry;
and their allies employ- together with 500 Campanian cavalry, and a force of allies still
ad in active eperations.                     cvly           oc             tl
inactivoopera. larger than that of the Romans themselves. Amongst the allies
were undoubtedly the Lucanians6 and Campanians, and in all probability the
Marsians, Pelignians, Marrucinians, and Vestinians, as well as the contingents of
the colonies founded in the late war, and those of the still independent cities of
the Latins. All the forces of the Picentians which could be spared from the
defence of their own country, as well as those of the Camertians, were employed,
we may suppose, with the army of L. Scipio, watching the movements of the
enemy in Umbria.
Whilst this large force, consisting at least of between fifty and sixty thousand
Their armiesof reserve, men, was to take the field in the north, two more Roman legions,
with a proportionate number of allies, were to invade Samnium57
Z Zonaras, VIII. 1.                    5 The Lucanians are mentioned as among
G Livy, X. 28.                       the regular allies of the Romans, and quartered
s Livy, X. 25.                        within the consuls' camp, in the year imme
4 Livy, X. 25.                        diately following,-See Livy, X. 3388.
& Livy, X. 26.                         57 Livy, X. 27.




ï~~CHAP. XXXIII.]  THE TWO ARMIES MEET AT SENTINUM.

339

under L. Volumnius as proconsul. A third army, under On. Fulvius as proprwtor,58 was to be stationed as a reserve in the Faliscan territory, at once to defend the passage of the Tiber, and preserve the communications of the main army
with Rome; and also to create a diversion, if opportunity should offer, by acting
on the offensive against Etruria. And lastly, a fourth army, commanded by L.
Postumius Megellus,5 also proprmtor, was to be encamped in the Vatican district, on the right bank of the Tiber, to cover Rome itself.
This account of the dispositions of the Romans is clear and perfectly credible;
but, unfortunately, we are left in total ignorance as to the num-. s i, aivision is
bers, movements, and position of the enemy. Why the Etruscans defeated by the Gaul.
and Samnites did not crush Scipio's army, even before the arrival and Samite.
of the Gauls, we can scarcely understand, unless we suppose that party struggles
again paralyzed the force of the Etruscans, and kept it in inactivity under a show
of caution, till the whole army of the alliance should be assembled. At last the
Gauls commenced their movement before the consuls had left Rome; they hastened to force the passage of the Apennines, and no sooner had they arrived on
the scene of war than they began to act in earnest. L. Scipio's army60 was attacked by the Gauls and Samnites, and completely defeated; one legion, it is
said, was cut to pieces; the rest of his division took shelter, probably, within
some of the neighboring towns, and the Gaulish horsemen overrunning the country, fell in suddenly with the two consular armies, which had now taken the
field, and first acquainted them with the defeat of their countrymen, by exhibiting the heads of the slain Romans affixed to their long lances, or hanging round
the necks of their horses.
Exactly at this critical point of the campaign, Livy's narrative fails us, and all
that passed between the destruction of the legion and the final The Etrut.antand Urbattle at Sentinum is a total blank; it is as much loss to us as a brian leave their allies.
The Gauls and Samcountry travelled over during the night; we were in one sort of niter retreat behind the
Apennines.
scenery yesterday, and we find ourselves in another this morning;
each is distinct in itself, but we know not the connection between them.   Earnestly must Gellius Egnatius have labored to bring on a decisive battle in the
plains of Umbria; the allies had begun the campaign with happy omens, their
whole force was united, the ground was favorable; nothing could be gained,
and every thing would be hazarded by delay. But whether the fault rested
once agairn with the Etruscans, or whether the Picentians caused a timely diversion, by threatening to invade the country of the Gauls, or whether the consuls
fell back upon Spoletum, and were able to avoid an action for the moment, we
know not.   But they sent orders to the propritors, On. Fulvius and L. Postumius, to advance into the heart of Etruria, and no sooner did the tidings of this
movement reach the enemy's army, than the Etruscans and Umbrians insisted on
marching to the defence of the Etruscan territory, and the Gauls and Samnites, indignant at their desertion, and refusing to follow them, had no choice
themselves but to fall back behind the Apennines, and to resign their hopes of a
victorious march upon Rome.
The Romans pursued them instantly, with two consular armies certainly, and
with the wreck of L. Scipio's division, perhaps also with the The Romanon  fllow
them. The two armies
two legions of L. Volumnius, which may have been recalled from merete tinu.
Samnium. They found the enemy in the country of Sentinum, an Umbrian
town on the north side of the Apennines,' just under the central chain, in a
no Livy. X. 27.                        from Ancona to Rome crosses the Apennines
5s Livy, X. 27.                        to descend upon Foligno.
60 Livy, X. 26. Polybius, II. 19. We learn  61 The ancient Sentinum stood on or near the
from Polybius, that the Samnites were engaged site of the modern town of Sassoferrato, as is
in this action as well as the Gauls, and that it known by inscriptions which have been diswas not a surprise, but a regular battle, traperd - covered there. See Orelli, Nos. 8861 and 4949.
avre 'Patpalocs. It was fought in the country of But I have no good information as to the dethe Camnertians, or people of Camerinum, per- tails of the topography.
haps near the point where the modern road




ï~~340

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Otr. XXXII

small valley which runs down into the larger valley of the JEsis or Esino, and
not far on the right hand of the Flaminian road, at the point where it crosses
the watershed of the mountains. It was of the utmost importance to the Roman generals to bring the contest to an issue whilst they had only the Gauls and
Samnites to encounter, and in this they easily succeeded, for the Gauls had never
yet fought the Romans without conquering them, and Gellius Egnatius knew
enough of the inconstant humor of barbarians to be aware that they would soon
be tired of a protracted war, and that if the Gauls too deserted him, his heroic march
from Samnium would have been made in vain. So the two armies met by common consent in fair field; Q. Fabius was on the Roman right, opposed to Gellius
Egnatius and his Samnites;62 P. Decius was on the left over against the Gauls.
If L. Volumnius was present with the legions from Samnium, he probably, like
Cn. Servilius at Cannm, who had also.been consul in the year before the battle,
had his place in the centre. The Samnites could not alone have contended with
Q. Fabius, whose right wing was equal to a regular consular army; and the
Gauls must have been more than enough to overpower P. Decius. It is probable, therefore, that the Gauls composed the greater part of the enemy's line of
battle, and that only the extreme left was held by Gellius Egnatius and his Samnites.
While the two armies fronted each other, and were on the very eve of battle,
A favorable omen en. a hind,6' said the Roman story, came running down from the
courages the Romans. mountains between the two opposing lines, with a wolf in chase
of her. She ran in amongst the Gaulish ranks, and the Gauls transfixed her with
their long javelins. The wolf ran towards the Romans, and they instantly gave
free passage to the beast which had given suck to the founder of their city; and
whose image they had only in the preceding years4 set up beneath that very
sacred fig-tree in the comitium, which tradition pointed out as the scene of the
miracle. "See," cried out one of the soldiers, "Diana's sacred hind has been
slain by the barbarians, and will bring down her wrath upon them; while the
Roman wolf, unhurt by sword or spear, gives us a fair omen of victory, and bids
us think on Mars and on Quirinus, our divine founder." So the Roman soldiers,
as encouraged by a sign from the gods, rushed cheerfully to the onset.
This story, with some other circumstances related of the battle itself, are
Sattle of Sentianum  blended strangely with the perfectly historical substance of the
S general narrative.  When the armies closed,6" the Roman left
wing struggled vigorously against the numbers, and strength, and courage of the
Gauls. Twice, it is said, did the Roman and Campanian cavalry charge with
effect the Gaulish horsemen; but in their second charge they were encountered
by a force wholly strange to them, the war chariots of the enemy, which broke
in upon them at full speed, and with the rattling of their wheels, and their
unwonted appearance, so startled the horses of the Romans, that they could not
be brought to face them, and horses and men fled in confusion. Uncouth and
almost ridiculous as these chariots may seem to our notions, yet a force which
terrified Camsar's veterans, and which that great master of war speaks of as formidable, could not have been ridiculous in reality; and the undoubted effect of
the British chariots against the legions of Caesar, may well convince us that the
Gaulish chariots at Sentinum must have struck terror into the soldiers of Decius.
The Roman cavalry were driven back upon their infantry; the first line of the.. Deeius devotes im. legions was broken, and the Gauls, following their advantage,
pelf to death,  pressed on with the masses of their infantry. Decius strove in
vain to stop the flight of his soldiers; one way alone was left by which he might
yet serve his country; he bethought him of his father at the battle by Vesuvius,
and calling to M. Livius, one of the pontifices who attended him in the field, he
Jesired him to dictate to him the fit words for self-devotion. Then, in the same

6 Livy, X, 27.
Livy, X. 27.

SLivy, X. 23.
SLivy, X. 27, 28.




ï~~CHAP. XXXIII.]

DEFEAT OF THE SAMNITES.

341

dress, and with all the same ceremonies, he pronounced also the same form of
words which had been uttered by his father, and devoting himself and the host
of the enemy with him to the grave and to the powers of the dead, he rode into
the midst of the Gaulish ranks and was slain.
His last act as consul had been to invest the pontifex M. Livius66 with the
command of his legions as proprietor, and to order his lictors to The auls resist ohfollow the new general.   Fabius also, learning the danger of his stinately.
colleague, had sent two of his own lieutenants, L. Scipio and C. Marcius, to his
aid, with reinforcements drawn from his own reserve; and thus the flight of the
Romans was stayed, while the manner of Decius' death encouraged rather than
dismayed his soldiers, as they believed that it was the price paid for their victory.
But the Gauls, though checked, were yet neither beaten nor disheartened; they
gathered into thick masses, with their huge shields covering almost their whole
bodies, and wielding their heavy broadswords, they stood unbroken and unassailed; till the Romans picked up from the field of battle the javelins which had
been discharged earlier in the action, and with these missiles endeavored to wear
down the mass of their enemies. The pila pierced through the wooden shields
of the Gauls, encumbering them, even when they inflicted no wound; but the
Gauls stood as firm as the "Scottish circle deep" under the hail of the English
arrows at Flodden; and no efforts of the left wing of the Romans could secure
the victory.
Meanwhile, Fabius,67 on the right, after a long and arduous contest with the
Samnites, and finding that his infantry could not break them, at Fabius defeats the
last succeeded in charging their flank with his cavalry, and at the Smnites, d a last
forces the Gauls to give
same moment bringing all his reserves of infantry into action, he way. complete victory
assailed their line in front, and decided the victory.  The Samnites of the Romans.
fled to their camp, and thus left exposed the flank of the Gauls, who were still maintaining their ground.  Fabius saw his opportunity, and detached the Campanian.
cavalry, with the principes of the third legion, to attack the Gauls in the rear;
while he himself closely pursued the Samnites, and vowed aloud that if he won
the day, he would build a temple and offer all the spoils of the enemy to Jupiter
the victorious. The Samnites rallied under the ramparts of their camp, and still
disputed the victory; but the Gauls, assailed on all sides, were now hopelessly
broken, and the last hope of the Samnites vanished, when their commander, Gellius Egnatius, fell. Still, when the day was utterly lost, these brave men would
neither surrender nor disperse; they left the field in a body, and immediately
began their retreat to their own country.
The Roman accounts of this bloody battle8 state the loss of their enemies at
25,000 killed, and 8000 prisoners: their own they make to have
amounted to 8200 killed; but they give no report of the num-oobotds.
ber of wounded.   Of the total loss, only 1200 are said to have fallen in the right
wing, while in the army of Decius there were killed 7000. The great slaughter in ancient warfare always took place when the line of battle was broken; and
the disparity of loss on the two wings of the Roman army is therefore such as
Wight have been expected.
Meanwhile, Cn. Fulvius69 had, according to his instructions, penetrated into
Etruria; and had not only laid waste a large tract of country, Operatins in Erria.
but had defeated in the field an army sent out by the two cities
of Perusia and Clusium to check his ravages.
1 Livy, X. 29.                         Diodorus, XXI. Frag. hoeschel. p. 490. Duris
67 Livy, X. 29.                        supposed that the Etruscans were engaged in
s Livy, X. 29. Duris of Samos, a contem- the battle; and some of the Roman writers gave
porary writer, but whose information of these the same account, and made the allied army to
events could come only from common report, consist of a million of men.-See Niebuhr, VoL
and who delighted to exaggerate the disasters III., note 647.
of the Gauls, related that in the Gaulish and  6 Livy, X. 80.
Samnite army 100,000 men had fallen.-See




ï~~342

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXIII

It is quite plain that the Etruscans were at this time suffering the full evil of
distracted counsels, and that they were neither unanimous for peace nor for war.
What was become of the forces of Arretium, of Volaterra, of Russelli, of Cortona, and of Yulsinii, when Clusium and Perusia were left to resist the Roman
invasion alone?
The body of DeciusÂ~ was found under a heap of slaughtered Gauls, and honorFel of ecius ably buried.  Fabius celebrated his funeral, and pronounced his.l ofDeius,  funeral oration; a fit tribute from one who had been twice his colleague in the consulship and once in the censorship; nor had any man enjoyed
better opportunities of knowinghis excellence.  He had proved his skill and courage in war, and his wisdom and moderation in peace; and he had experienced also
the noble frankness of his nature, which never allowed any selfish jealousy to
stand in the way of his private friendship, and much less of his devotion to his
country's service.
Such was the great battle of Sentinum, the Austerlitz of the third Samnite
The Gauls cannot be war.  But as more than eighteen months elapsed between the batinduced t o serve a gain tie of Austerlitz and the peace of Tilsit, so neither was the coaliagainst Rome.  tion against Rome dissolved at once by the victory of Sentinum.
The Gauls, indeed, remained quiet after their defeat, for their interest in the war
was only that of mercenary soldiers, and they were not tempted to a service
which seemed likely to bring with it more loss than profit. But even Etruria
would not yet submit to Rome, and the Samnites, hoping still to keep the war at
a distance from their own country, were eager to renew the contest.
Yet the Romans could not but feel great relief from their victory. The armies
iumph of bius.  of the proprctors, Cn. Fulvius and L. Postumius, were recalled
mphofbius. to Rome7' and disbanded; and Fabius marched into Etruria with
his consular army, and was strong enough to obtain fresh advantages over the
Perusians, who alone of all the Etruscan people ventured, it seems, to meet the
Romans in the field. He then returned to Rome, and triumphed on the 4th of
September over the three principal powers of the late coalition, the Etruscans,
the Gauls, and the Samnites; and the soldiers who followed his chariot, in the
rude verses which they were accustomed to utter on such occasions, commemorated the death of Decius as fully equal in glory to their own general's safe and
victorious return. It is mentioned" that each soldier received out of the spoil
taken in the late battle, eighty-two ases, and a coat, and military cloak; "rewards,"
says Livy, Sadly feeling how whole districts of Italy had in his days been portioned out amongst the legions of Augustus, "which the soldiers of those times
did not think despicable."
The wreck of the Samnite army,73 still, it is said, amounting to 5000 men, made
its way unhurt or unopposed through the countries of the PicenThe Samnite army
foces it oway back to tians and Vestinians, and from thence proceeded towards SamSamnium.       nium through the country of the Pelignians, by Sulmo and the
Five-mile plain to the valley of the Sagrus or Sangro. The Pelignians, more
zealous in the quarrel, because they were nearer neighbors to the Samnites, and
their lands, no doubt, had often suffered from Samnite incursions, endeavored to
cut off the retreating army. But the Samnites, with some loss, beat off this new
enemy, and entered their own country in safety.
re Livy, X. 29.                        triumph, whereas Livy makes him march bach
' This appears from the circumstance that to Etruria after his triumph. But, as Niebuhr
Fabius marched into Etruria and engaged the says, his army would be disbanded as a matter
Perusians; which shows that Cn. Fulvius must of course after his triumph, and the Fasti Cahave already been recalled, and also because pitolini say that he triumphed over the EtrusApp. Claudius, the prator, was ordered to sup- cans, as well as the Samnites and Gauls; which
port L. Volumnius in Samnium with the re- he could not have done had he only triumphed
mains of the army bf Decius: had the propr- for his victory at Sentinum, as no Etruscans
tor's armies been still embodied, one of them were engaged there.
would probably have been employed on that  72 Livy, X. 80.
service. I have followed Niebuhr in placing  or Livy, X. 30.
Fabius' victories over the Perusians before his




ï~~CHAP. XXXIII.]

INDECISIVE CAMPAIGN.

343

It is manifest that during this year Samnium enjoyed a complete respite from
invasion; and that L. Volumnius, even if we suppose that he was Operations in Samni.
not called away to the great seat of war in Umbria, was not a g and Capnia dur-.
match for the Samnite forces opposed to him.
His defeat of a Samnite army which had taken refuge in the Matese is entitled to no credit whatever; on the contrary, we find that the Samnites again
invaded the Roman territory in two different directions;14 that one army descended into the districts of Formim and Vescia, and another laid waste the banks
of the Vulturnus apparently where it first issues out on the plain of Campania.
After the battle of Sentinum, the legions of Decius were recalled from Etruria,
and put under the command of Appius Claudius, the prator, and he and L. Volumnius, acting together with their two armies, obliged the Samnites to retreat
within their frontier. But as the Etruscans had not yet made peace with Rome,
the Samnites were not discouraged, and trusted that another year might enable
them to retrieve their defeat at Sentinum.
The events of the next year, however, are involved in such confusion that it
is impossible to disentangle them. L. Postumius Megellus, one A. U. C. 4~60. A. C
of the propretors of the year before, was now consul, and M. The      a. Fifth ampaign
>Th> Romans obtain no
Atilius Regulus was his colleague. The seat of war was again trans- advantages in it.
ferred to Apulia,15 where the Samnites, well understanding the importance of acting on the offensive, laid siege to Luceria. Here there was fought a bloody and
indecisive battle, in which the Romans were in such danger that the consul
vowed to build a temple to Jove, the stayer of flight, if his army were saved from
total rout. At the end of the campaign the Roman army wintered at Interamna,16 in the valley of the Liris, to save that country from the ravages of the enemy;
and the consul returned to Rome to hold the comitia. His colleague had been
recalled from Samnium earlier in the season to carry on the war in Etruria; and
this he did, according to the Roman accounts, with such success," that Vulsinii,
Perusia, and Arretium sued for peace, and obtained a truce for forty years. But
which consul it was who fought at Luceria, and which had marched into Etruria,
the annalists did not know, and therefore guessed variously." Some accounts
went so far as to say that both consuls triumphed;" but most said that only one
obtained that honor, and again they did not agree in determining which consul
it was. It is probable that neither of the consuls triumphed; nor does it seem
likely that the Romans obtained any advantages in this year, except, perhaps,
over the ever-restless but ever-vacillating and divided Etruscans. The Samnites,
therefore, resolved to try their fortune once again.
The next year was undoubtedly marked by great successes on the side of the
Romans; but its history is still uncertain in the details, and much A. U. c. 461. A.C.
of the geography of the campaign is wholly inexplicable. The Cosisxta...naign.
consuls were L. Papirius Cursor, son of that Papirius who had iCons an ulship of L. carvirs.
consuls were L. Papirius Cursor, son of that Papirius who had in....nd sp. cariliu..

4 Livy, X. 81. He describes the scene of the
Samnite inroadin these words, "in Eserninum
queque Vulturno adjacent flumini."  The word
which, in the modern editions of Livy, is printed
as " JEserninum" varies, however, in the MSS.
greatly..Esernia, in Samnium, seems out of
the question, for i was only in the beginning
of the first Punic war that the Romans planted
a colony there; unless we suppose that portions
of its domain had already been ceded to the Romans in the second Samnite war, which, however, considering how deep the city lies in the
heart of Samnium, seems improbable.
5 Livy, X. 35.
7 Livy, X. 36.
77 Livy, X. 37.
71 Livy says that Atilius fought at Luceria,
and Postumius marched into Etruria. Claudius Quadrigarius, as quoted by Livy, maintained exactly the contrary; and Fabius, whose

narrative of this war seems to have depended
chiefly on the memoirs of the Fabian family,
and to have become uncertain where they failed
him, did not venture to say which it was.-See
Livy, X. 37.
7 Fasti Capitolini.-Livy says that Atiius
did not triumph, but that Postumius did, by his
own authority, without the sanction of the senate. But this story is referred by Dionysius to
Postumius' third consulship three years afterwards; and Claudius said that Postumius never
triumphed at all. It does not appear that the
narrative of Fabius gave a triumph to either of
them.-Livy, X. 87.
Orosius' description of the events of this
year is far nearer the truth, I think, than the
account of Livy. "Sequitur annus quo Riomani instaurato a Samnitibus bello victi sunt
atque in castra fugerunt." III. 22.




ï~~344

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CaP. XXXIII

been so famous in the second Samnite war, and Sp. Carvilius Maximus. Carvilius took the command8" of the army which had wintered near Interamna, on
the Liris; Papirius commanded two new legions, and both consuls were ordered
to invade Samnium.
The Samnites, on their part, are said to have raised an army with unusual
Desperate resolution of care, and to have bound their soldiers by the most solemn oaths,
the Semnitese.  taken amidst the most mysterious and horrid ceremonies, that
they would either conquer or die. The men thus pledged were arrayed in a
peculiar manner, with waving plumes on their helmets, and with coats of white
linen, exactly as had been done fifteen years before, when the old Papirius, the
father of the present consul, was appointed dictator to encounter them; and the
repetition of these same ceremonies by the Samnites now made the Romans, for
the omen's sake, appoint another Papirius Cursor to be consul; as if the Papirian family8' was chosen by the gods to meet and to overcome the most desperate efforts of their Samnite enemies.
It was no doubt the failure of all co-operation in Etruria, and the knowledge,
Thy retain their hold therefore, that they would have to withstand the whole force of
a the country or the Ronie, which led the Samnites to apply these extraordinary exciteSabines.      ments to the courage of their soldiers. Yet it seems as if they
had not abandoned all hopes of Etruscan aid, and that they had learned fro.
their enemies the wisdom of acting on the offensive; for the first operations of
the Roman armies were the capture of Amiternum,8' and the ravaging of the
country of Atina. This seat of war implies that the Samnites still obstinately
retained their line of communication with Etruria amidst all the invasions of their
own country, and with this view still held fast to their alliance those Sabine and
Volscian cities which, at the beginning of the coalition, had been forced or persuaded to espouse their cause.
A Samnite army was also sent into Campania to ravage the territory3 of the
Romans and their allies on the Liris and Vulturnus, whilst another
an,avg cr, was kept in Samnium for home defence; and it was, perhaps, to
the soldiers of this last army, consisting of the oldest and youngest men capable
of bearing arms, that the excitements of enthusiasm were applied, to make up
for their inferiority in strength and in experience.
The Roman consuls84 having jointly laid waste the territory of Atina, proceeded
Both the Roman con- to enter Samnium. The seat of war lay apparently in the country
coh invade Samnim. of the Pentrian Samnites on the north of the Matese: Carvilius
Operations on the north
of the Matese.  laid siege to Cominium: Papirius, after having taken Duronia,
marched against Aquilonia, where the Samnite army was stationed; all these
three places are quite unknown to us, and we can only conclude that they lay on
the north side of the Matese, because two of them are described as being near to
Bovianum, the site of which is known. The Samnites, attacked at once by two
consular armies, were compelled to divide their forces; and eight thousand men
were detached from the army before Aquilonia to relieve Cominium. A deserter
acquainted Papirius with this movement, and he instantly sent off a messenger
to warn his colleague, while he himself attacked the enemy at the moment when
he knew their force to be thus untimely weakened. The auspices had been
reported to be most favorable; "the fowls ate so eagerly," so said their keeper
to the consul, "that some of the corn dropped from their mouths on the ground."85
This was the best possible omen; but just as the consul was on the point of
giving the signal for action, his nephew, Sp. Papirius, came to tell him that the
SLivy, X. 89.                        pascuntur (aves) necesse est a!hiquid ex ore oa1 Livy, X. 88, 89.                    dere et terrain pavire, terripavium primo, post
2 Livy, X. 39.                        terripudium dictum est: hoc quidem jam tri3 Zonaras, VIII. 1.                   pudium dicitur. Quum igitur offa cecidit ex
SLivy, X. 39.                        ore pulli, tum auspicanti tripudium solistimum
' "Pullarius auspicium mentiri ausus tripu- nuntiant."-Cicero, de Divinat. II. 834.
ium solistimum."-Livy, X. 40. " Quia quum




ï~~CHAP. XXXIII.]

VICTORIES OF THE ROMANS.

X45

keeper had made a false report. "Some of his comrades have declared the truth,"
said the young man: "and far from eating eagerly, the fowls would not touch
their food at all." "Thou hast done thy duty, nephew, in telling me this," replied his uncle, "but let the keeper see to it if he has belied the gods. His report to me is, that the omens are most favorable, and therefore I forthwith give
the signal for battle. But do you see," he added to some centurions who stood
by, "that this keeper and his comrades be set in the front ranks of the legions."
Ere the battle-cry was raised on either side, a chance javelin struck the guilty
keeper, and he fell dead. His fate was instantly reported to the consul.  "The
gods," he exclaimed, "are amongst us; their vengeance has fallen on the guilty."
While he spoke, a crow was heard just in front of him to utter a full and loud
cry. "Never did the gods more manifestly declare their presence and favor,"
exclaimed the consul, and forthwith the signal was given, and the Roman battlecry arose loud and joyful.
The Samnites met their enemies bravely;86 but the awful rites under which
they had been pledged gave them a gloomy rather than a cheer- Victory gained by L
ful courage; they were more in the mood to die than to conquer. Papiries.
On the Roman side, the consul's blunt humor, which he had inherited from his
father, spread confidence all around him. In the heat of the battle, when other
generals would have earnestly vowed to build a temple to the god whose aid they
sought, if he would grant them victory, Papirius called aloud to Jupiter the victorious, "Ah, Jupiter," if the enemy are beaten, I vow to offer to thee a cup of
honeyed wine before I taste myself a drop of wine plain." Such irreverent jests
do not necessarily imply a scoffing spirit; they mark superstition or fanaticism
quite as much as unbelief; nor would the consul's language shock those who
heard it, but rather assure them that he spoke in the full confidence of being heard
with favor by the gods, as a man in hours of festivity would smile at the familiarity of an indulged servant. Besides, Papirius performed well the part of a
general; he is said to have practised the trick which was so successful at Bannockburn;88 the camp servants were mounted on the baggage mules, and appeared in the midst of the action on the flank and rear of the Samnites; the news
ran through both armies, that Sp. Carvilius was come up to aid his colleague,
and a general charge of the Roman cavalry and infantry at this moment broke
the Samnite lines, and turned them to flight. The mass of the routed army fled
either to their camp, or within the walls of Aquilonia; but the cavalry, containing all the chiefs and the nobility of the nation, got clear from the press of the
fugitives, and escaped to Bovianum.
The Romans89 followed up their victory, and stormed the Samnite camp, and
scaled the walls of Aquilonia, which was abandoned by the enemy Successes of  sp. car.
during the night.  Carvilius meanwhile had taken Cominium, viliu.
while the detachment sent to relieve it had been recalled to the main army when
Papirius began his attack, and thus had wasted the day in marching backwards
and forwards, without being present at either scene of action. These soldiers,
however, having halted during the night in the neighborhood of Aquilonia, pursued their march the next day, and with a very trifling loss effected their retreat
to Bovianum, which was now the common rallying point.
Both Aquilonia9" and Cominium were given up to be plundered by the conquerors, and were then set on fire. It was late in the season, (a The cnsuls attack the
circumstance which shows how imperfect are our accounts of these samnite towns on the
wars,) but the consuls having now no enemy in the field, wished eastofth eateae.
SLivy, X. 41.                       the older Latin, was merely " wine." See Pliny,
V "Voverat Jovi Victori, silegiones hostium  Hist. Natur. XIV. 18, Â~ 90, Ed. Sillig.
fudisset, pocillum mulsi priusquam temetum  8 Livy, X. 40, 41.
biberet sese facturum." Livy, X. 42. Mul-  89 Livy, X. 41-48.
sum was " honeyed wine," a favorite beverage  0 Livy, X. 44, 45.
of the Romans in the early times; temetum, in




ï~~346

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CIAP. XXXIII

to follow up their blow, and to attack the several Samnite cities; a service most
welcome to the soldiers, as it offered to them the prospect of plunder. Bovianum,
however, was too strong to be attacked as yet; so the consuls moved on further
into the heart of the country, and fixed the seat of war on the eastern side of the
Matese. Here Papirius laid siege to Sepinum, a place not far from the sources
of the Tamarus, near the modern road from Benevento to Campobasso, the capital of Molise. Carvilius attacked a town, called variously in the MSS. of Livy,
Vella, Velia, or Volana, but the position of which is altogether unknown.
The tidings of these successes1 were received at Rome with the greatest joy
sp. Carviluis  recalled and thanksgivings were offered for four days; the longest period
and sent into Etruria. of public rejoicings for victory which has been hitherto mentioned
in the Roman annals. Just at this time, as we are told, there came complaints
from the Roman allies on the Etruscan frontier, that is, we must suppose from
the people of Sutrium, that the Etruscans were again in arms, and that the Faliscans, hitherto the'allies of Rome, had now taken part with the enemy. It is
vain to attempt to explain all these movements in Etruria; or to decide whether
the Etruscans were tempted to renew the contest by the employment of both
consuls in Samnium, or whether the Romans were encouraged by their victories
there to take vengeance for past offences on the Etruscans. At any rate, the
consuls were ordered to determine by lot which of them should march into Etruria; and the lot fell upon Carvilius. His soldiers were glad to go, it is said, because the cold of Samnium was becoming intolerable; but they had other reasons
besides the cold, for wishing to change their seat of war; for. whatever might be
the plunder of the Samnite towns, it was not always to be easily won; and
though Carvilius had taken three of them, yet it had been at the cost of two
actions in the field, in which his own loss had exceeded that of the enemy. Papirius, on his side, was detained for a long time before Satpinum; the Samnites
made repeated sallies, and would not allow him even to form the siege of the
place; and their resistance was so protracted, that when at last they were
overpowered, and the town was taken, the winter was so far advanced, that any
further operations were impracticable, and Papirius having, as we may suppose,
burnt Sepinum, evacuated Samnium.
The operations of Sp. Carvilius in Etruria9" were short and successful; TroilTriumphs of both con. ium and some small mountain fortresses were taken, and the Fasul9.         liscans purchased a truce for a year by the payment of 100,000
ases, and a year's pay to the soldiers of the Roman army. Both consuls enjoyed
a splendid triumph;9 and a very large treasure of copper and of silver was
brought home by Papirius, and paid by himinto the treasury, his victorious
soldiers receiving nothing. Carvilius brought home also a large treasure; but he
divided a part of it amongst his troops, and their pay had already been provided
to them  out of the contribution paid by the Faliscans; so that the ungracious
conduct of Papirius was doubly odious,-for his soldiers received nothing from
the plunder, and the war tax, or tributum, was made to furnish them with their
pay; and thus his victories brought to the poorer citizens no relief from the
burdens of war. The captured arms94 were so numerous, that the allies and
colonies of Rome received a large share to ornament their own cities; and Sp.
Carvilius95 made out of those which fell to his portion a colossal statue of Jupiter,
of such magnitude, that when it was set up on the Capitoline Hill at Rome, it
could be seen from the temple of the Latin Jupiter on the summit of the mountain of Alba; a distance in a straight line of not less than twelve English miles.
81 Livy, X. 45.                       amounted to 1330 lbs.; the copper money which
2 Livy, X. 46.                       had been obtained by the ransom or sale of the
1 Carvilius triumphed on the 13th of Janu- prisoners, amounted to 2,033,000 ases of full
ary, and Papirius on the 13th of February. weight, that is, to so many pounds' weight ef
Fasti Capitolini. The weight of silver taken copper.
from the temples and houses of the several  4Livy, X. 46.
cities of Samnium which had been captured  9 Pliny, Rist. Nat. XXXIV. 6 43, Ed. Sillig.




ï~~teAP. XXXIII.]

Q. FABIUS GURGES.

347

After such an issue of this campaign, we read with astonishment that Papirius
led back his army to winter in the neighborhood of Vescia,6 be- c   ti again c
cause that country was still infested by the incursions of the Sam- mands the Sanite ar.
nites. And in the next year we find, after a long interval, C.  es
Pontius of Telesia once more at the head of the Samnite armies; we find him carrying on war in Campania, and again victorious. Austria lost five armies in the
campaign of 1796, before she would consent to treat for peace; and when the
French were besieging Cadiz, and had won almost all the fortresses of the kingdom, Spain still continued to resist, and the Guerillas often inflicted defeat upon
their triumphant enemy. But the Samnite victory obtained over Fabius Gurges
in Campania in the year immediately following the triumphs of Papirius and Carvilius, is more extraordinary than the fortitude either of Austria or Spain; and
so far as the circumstances are known to us, it can only be paralleled by the triumphant career of the Vendeans in Bretagne, when, after repeated defeats in
their own country, they effected their desperate expedition beyond the Loire.
We may ask why the Roman government, little apt to hold its hands till the
work was fully done, and having nothing to fear on the side of
A. U. c. 462. A. c.
Etruria, contented itself with sending a single consular army into 292. Q. Fabius Gurges tfhe now consul,
the field in the year following the great victories of Papirius and i.en talone to invade
0 0Samnium.
Carvilius, instead of employing its whole force, and thus againSmn..
overrunning the enemy's country. The reason, probably, is to be found in the
severe visitation of pestilence which at this time fell upon Rome; and this may
further explain why the legions of Papirius wintered in Campania; for as such
disorders are generally more or less local, an army might be in perfect health on
the hills by Vescia, while, had it remained in or near Rome, it would have been
losing men daily.   However, the new consul, Q. Fabius Gurges, son of the
great Fabius, took the command of the army in Campania, and proceeded towards the frontiers of Samnium. C. Pontius Herennius, of whom nothing is
known since the affair of the pass of Caudium, again commanded the Samnite
army; whether it was that he was now called upon in the extreme danger of
his country, as the only man capable of saving it, or whether the southern Samnites, or Caudinians, had in fact taken no part in the war for many years, and
only now, when the Pentrians were nearly exhausted, came forward to uphold
their cause.
The ravages which the pestilence was at this time making in Rome encouraged
the enemy;"9 and C. Pontius boldly invaded Campania. Q. Fa- Seventh campaign. The
bius, forgetting how formidable is the last struggle of the hunted  sean haremdefeated by
coan  edfealte db
lion, thought that to meet the Samnites was to conquer them; C. Pontiu.
and when he fell in with some of their look-out parties, and they retired before
him, he believed the whole Samnite army to be retreating, and leaving his bag
9s Livy, X. 46.
a7 Livy, X. 47. Zonaras, VIII. 1.
as Livy, X. 47.  In the last chapter of his
tenth book, Livy names the consuls who were
elected for the year 462, Q. Fabius Gurges, and
I). Junius Brutus. And here the first decade
of Livy's history ends, and as the second decade is lost, we shall now be without his assistance for the remainder of this volume. We
should be glad to possess the eleventh book,
which contained the account of the secession to
the Janiculum and of the Hortensian laws: yet,
on the whole, a careful study of the ninth and
tenth books will dispose us to be more patient
of the loss of those which followed them. How
little does the tenth book tell us of the internal
state of Rome, how uncertain are its accounts
of the several wars! Its most valuable information consists in the miscellaneous notices
with which Livy generally concludes his account of every year; such as his notice of the

paving of part of the Appian road, and of the
building of several temples.  But we might
cheerfully resign, not the second decade only,
but the first, third, and fourth, in short, every
line of Livy's history which we at present possess, if we could so purchase the recovery of
the eighth and ninth decades, which contained
the history of the Italian war, and of the civil
war of Marius and Sylla which followed it. For
this period, of which we know, as it is, so little,
Livy's history would have been invaluable. He
would have been writing of times and events
sufficiently near to his own to have been perfectly understood by him; his sources of information would have been more numerous and
less doubtful, and then his fair and upright
mind, and the beauty of his narrative, would
have given us a picture at once faithful, lively,
and noble.
9 Zonaras, VIII. 2.




ï~~348

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXIII

gage behind him, he pushed on as to a certain victory. His men were already
tired and disordered by the haste of their march, when they found the Samnite
army in perfect order ready to receive them. They were presently defeated;
3000 men were killed on the place,'0 many were wounded, and night alone saved
the army from destruction. But they could not retreat to their baggage,10' and
passed a miserable night in the open country, without any means of relieving
their wounded, whose sufferings filled the whole army with horror and dismay.
Day dawned, and the Romans expected to be attacked by the conquerors: but
Pontius, it is said, heard that the old Fabius was close at hand, coming up with
a second army to support his son, and therefore he allowed the beaten Romans
to retreat unmolested. This is improbable, 2 but the truth is lost beyond recovery, and it is vain to attempt to restore the details of this most important
campaign.
The defeat of Fabius excited great indignation at Rome; and the political adThe old Q. Fabius versaries of his father, such as Appius Claudius and L. Papirius,
erve under his son as the latter of whom was now prmator, would not fail to exaggerate
his lieutenant.  his misconduct. It was moved in the senate that he should be recalled from the army, in other words, that his imperium or consular power should
be taken from him; a measure without example in Roman history, except in the
case of L. Cinna. The simple course would have been to order the consul to
name a dictator; and' he would in that case have named his father, who, by universal consent, was the man best fitted to meet the need. But the more violent
course was preferred by the party opposed to Fabius, and would have been
carried, had not the old Fabius'0' moved the senate by offering to go himself to
the army, not in the majesty of the dictator's office, as most befitted his age and
glory, but merely as lieutenant to his son. This could not be refused, and the
old man followed his son to the field, leading with him, we may be sure, sufficient
reinforcements; for every Roman loved the old Q. Fabius, and felt confident that
in marching under his command he was marching to victory.
A second battle followed; where fought, or how brought about, we know not.
C. Pontius is defeated The old Fabius was the Talbot of the fifth century of Rome; and
and taken prisoner.  his personal prowess, even in age, was no less celebrated than his
skill as a general. When the consul was surrounded by the enemy in the heat
of the battle," his aged father led the charge to his rescue; and the Romans,
animated by such an example, could not be resisted, and won a complete victory.
C. Pontius was taken prisoner, and 4000 Samnites shared his fate, while 20,000
were slain on the field.

100a Eutropius, II. Suidas, in ud'tos Mdfepos.
We should like to know from whom Suidas
borrowed this article; but who, except Niebuhr, has a sufficient power of divination to
discover it?
I owe my knowledge of the passage in Suidas
to Freinsheim's supplement of the eleventh
book of Livy; and as he has consulted almost
every passage in the ancient writers which relates to these times, I have in other instances
been indebted to him in like manner. But it
is right 'to state, that I have always consulted
the passages to which he refers, and have myself verified them: and of this the reader may
be assured, that no quotation has been made in
these notes which I have not myself verified;
if it has ever happened that I have not had the
book within my reach, the circumstance has
been and will be especially noticed.
101 Zonaras, VIII. 2.
12 Zonaras, who copies Dion Cassius, represents the old Fabius as having been appointed
lieutenant to his son at the beginning of the
campaign; and he says that the consul left

Rome before his father, and was anxious to
fight the Samnites, before he joined him that
the glory of the action might be his own. Livy,
(Epitom. XI.) Eutropius, and the writer from
whom Suidas copied his article, "Fabius Maximus," say that the old man was only made his
son's lieutenant after his defeat, and upon his
own request, in order to save him from being
deprived of his command. But if this be true,
and it seems the more probable account, how
could Pontius expect the arrival of the old Fabius on the instant after his son's defeat?
Perhaps the consul fought with only a part of
his army, and his lieutenant brought up the
other part to his rescue from the camp which
he had left so rashly; and something of this
sort is probable, for if Q. Fabius had been qlefeated by the enemy in a fair battle without any
fault of his own, the senate, according to its
usual practice, would not have treated his defeat so severely.
103 Livv, Epit. XI. Dion Cass. Fragm. Peireso,
XXXVI.
1ns Orosius, III. 22.




ï~~CHAP. XXXIII.]

DEFEAT OF C. PONTIUS.

349

What resources of hope or of despair could still be left to the Samnites after
a disaster so irreparable? Yet they resisted for another year, A. U. C. 463. A. C.
during which the war was carried on by two consular armies'Â~5 inS Eighthcampaign.d
the heart of their country: many of their towns were taken; and by two consular armies.
amongst the rest, Venusia, a place on the frontiers of Lucania and Apulia, and
important both from its strength and its position. So completely, indeed, was
the power of Samnium broken, that now, for the first time, the Romans resolved
to establish a colony in its territory.  Venusia was the spot chosen for this purpose; but it marks the sense still entertained of the Samnite spirit of resistance,
that no fewer than 20,000 colonists were sent out to occupy and maintain the
new settlement.
After his victory, Q. Fabius, the consul, was continued in his command for
some time as proconsul.   It was not, therefore, till the summer of Triumph of Q. bis
Triumph of Q. Fabius
the year 463 that he returned to Rome, and triumphed. While he Gurges. C. Pontius is
led p~risoner in the prowas borne along in his chariot, according to custom, his old father asonae.di put to
rode on horseback behind him as one of his lieutenants,t  delight- at,
ing himself with the honors of his son. But at the moment when the consul
and his father having arrived at the end of the Sacred Way turned to the left to
ascend the hill of the Capitol, C. Pontius, the Samnite general, who, with the
other prisoners of rank, had thus far followed the procession, was led aside to the
right hand to the prison0' beneath the Capitoline Hill, and there was thrust down
into the underground dungeon of the prison, and beheaded. One year had
passed since his last battle; nearly thirty since he had spared the lives and liberty of two Roman armies, and, unprovoked by the treachery of his enemies, had
afterwards set at liberty the generals who were given up into his power as a pretended expiation of their country's perfidy.  Such a murder, committed or sanctioned by such a man as Q. Fabius, is peculiarly a national crime, and proves
but too clearly that in their dealings with foreigners the Romans had neither
magnanimity, nor humanity, nor justice.
In the year 464, P. Cornelius Rufinus and M'. Curius Dentatus were chosen
consuls.  Both entered Samnium with their armies,"Â~ but it was A         A
A. U. C. 464. A. C.
rather to entitle themselves to the honor of a triumph, than to 20. Ninth campaign.
overbear any real opposition.   Every resource of the Samnites their ares and submi
was exhausted, and they again submitted.     They were again re- toRome.
ceived as dependent allies of Rome; what territory was taken from them besides
that of Venusia, we are not told,*or what other sacrifices were required of them.
Such was the end of the third Samnite war.
o5 By L. Postumius, the consul, with his  10' So the well-known passage in Cicero, VerSown army, and by Q. Fabius, the consul of the res, Act. II. v. 30, where he describes and even
former year, as proconsul.-Dionysius, XVI. approves of this atrocious practice. " Supplicia
16.                                      quae debentour hostibus victis."
1 Plutarch in Fab. Maxim. c. 24.        10 Eutropius, II.




ï~~CHAPTER XXXIV.

INTERNAL HISTORY, FROM THE PASSING OF THE OGULNIAN LAW               TO THE
LANDING OF PYRRHUS IN ITALY-SECESSION TO THE JANICULUM-DICTATORSHIP OF Q. HORTENSIUS-HORTENSIAN           AND M ENIAN LAWS.-FROM
A. U. C. 454 TO 474.
"Clearly a difficult point for government, that of dealing with these masses;-if indeed it
be not rather the sole point and problem of government, and all other points mere accidental
crotchets, superficialities, and beatings of the wind."-CARLYLE, Hist. of French Revolution,
Vol. I. p. 48.
THERE is often in well-contrived works of fiction a point in the middle of the
changes for.e worse. story, at which all its circumstances seem tending towards a happy
in the internal state of catastrophe; and it is only because the reader knows that there is
Rome.
Rom.       much of the story yet to come, and that something therefore must
occur to spoil the fair prospect, that he doubts the stability of the hero's or
heroine's good fortune. So promising was the domestic state of Rome in the
year 454, when the censorship of Fabius and Decius on the one hand, followed
by the Ogulnian and Valerian laws on the other, seemed to announce that society
had arrived at its perfect settlement; in which every member of it had fouid his
proper place, and the artificial institutions of man seemed to correspond faithfully to the model, existing in truth, though not in fact, which our reason declares
to be the will of God.
But it should ever be borne in mind, that history looks generally at the political state of a nation; its social state, which is infinitely more imThese changes were see al.rathr thno-it portant, and in which lie the seeds of all the greatest revolutions,
ia.          is too commonly neglected or unknown. What is called the constitution of Rome, as far as regards the relations of patricians and plebeians to
each other, was, in fact, perfected by the Ogulnian law, and remained for centuries without undergoing any material change. By that law the commons were
placed in all respects on a level with the patricians; and' the contests between
these two orders were brought to an end forever. The comitia, too, had assumed
that form, whatever it was, which they retained to the end of the commonwealth;
the powers of the magistrate as affecting the liberty of the citizen underwent
but little subsequent alteration. But however stationary political institutions may
remain, the social state of a nation is forever changing; peace affects this no less
than war, and many times even more: nay, seasons of profound political quiet
may be working far more extensive alteration than periods of faction, or even of
civil war. And so it was with the years which followed the passing of the Ogulnian law. Politically they are almost a blank; they present no new       law,
nothing that deserves the name of a contest between orders in commonwealth, scarcely between indivdiuals; the public attention seems to have been
fixed exclusively on the events of the war with Etruria and Samnium. Yet we
know that they must have wrought great social changes; for so violent a measure as a secession could never have been so much as contemplated, had it not
been preceded by long and general distress, producing social irritation first, and
then political.
In the seven years which followed immediately after the passing of the Oguloccasioned partly by nian law, we find mention made of a season of great scarcity' (A.
sesses of scarcity and uV. C. 454), and of two years' of pestilence (459 and 461). We
stil cs.e.   also read of prosecutions by the tediles in three several years for

ILivy,. IL 11.

2 Livy, X. 81, 47.




ï~~CHP. XXXIV.]

ENCROACHMENTS OF THE RICH.

351

violations of the Licinian law3 (456, 458, 461); and also of prosecutions by the
same magistrates for a breach of the law which forbade the taking of interest
upon a debt4 (358). Now, although there may be some caprice in Livy's notice
or omission of such particulars, yet it is at least remarkable that he has recorded so many of them at this period; while in the twenty-three years previous
to the Ogulnian law, a term which includes the whole of the second Samnite war, we
have no mention of any one of them, with the exception of an uncertain report of a
pestilence in the year 441.5 And the argument is the stronger, because we do
find notices before the second Samnite war of prosecutions both for the breach
of the Licinian law, and for taking illegal interest6 (398 and 411); so that we
may fairly conclude that the second Samnite war itself was a period comparatively exempt, at any rate, from offences of this nature, as also from the visitations
of pestilence and famine. The causes of these last evils belong, indeed, to a law
of God's providence which is to us unknown; but the occurrence of particular
crimes at particular periods may in general be explained, if we are fully acquainted
with the history of the time; and even in the fifth century of Rome, meagre as
our knowledge of it is, we may in some measure account for the facts presented
to us.
The close of the second Samnite war in 450, the conquest of the JEquians in
the same year, that of the Hernican state of Frusino in the year rteenroh
Partly by the encroachfollowing, and of the Marsians in 452, must have added greatly mentsof the richonthe
to the domain land of the Romans. It was but a small proportion cann. pasturelands.
of this which was assigned to the 14,000 coloniists of Alba, Carseoli, and Sora;
the remainder would be either let to the old inhabitants on payment of a rent or
vectigal to Rome, or would be occupied or beneficially enjoyed by individual
citizens of Rome or of her allies. Now, as slaves were not yet numerous, there
would be a difficulty in procuring laborers to cultivate tracts of lands lying
mostly at a distance from Rome, and, in many instances, liable to the incursions
of an enemy in time of war. It would be more convenient, therefore, to the
occupiers to throw their land into pasture wherever it was practicable; and large
tracts of domain would be fit for nothing but pasture, such as the higher valleys,
and the sides and summits of the mountains; and these would not be occupied
by any one particular person, but would be common land, on which any one
would have a right to turn out a certain number of sheep and oxen, limited by
the Licinian law. Now, the acts of violence which were practised, even under
the emperors, by powerful men against the property of their weaker neighbors,
and the allusion to forcible ejectment, as to a thing of no unusual occurrence, min
the language of the prmtor's interdict, may warrant our believing that the cattle
of a small proprietor, when turned ou' on the mountain pastures at a distance
from Rome, would be liable to continual injuries, and that the common land
would be exclusively enjoyed by wealthy men, who would little scruple to exceed the legal number of sheep and oxen which they were permitted to feed.
These were the pecuarii whom Livy twice notices as impeached by the ediles
and heavily fined; but the temptation to violate the law was perpetually recurring; and the chances of a prosecution must have been very uncertain; nor was
it always impossible for a powerful man' of fair military reputation to escape
from his prosecutors, by getting the consul to name him as one of his lieutenants.
Thus, on the one hand, the years which immediately followed the second Samnite war, furnished the rich with many opportunities of becoming Partlybythe continued
richer.  On the other hand, there were many causes at work which war.
made the poor yet poorer. A season of extreme scarcity, such as that of the
year 455, must have obliged many of the small tradesmen and artificers of the
9 Livy, X. 13, 23, 47.                 Livy, VII. 16, 28.
4 Livy, X. 23.                         As min the case of L. Postumius, which will
* Livy, IX. 28.                     be noticed hereafter.-See Livy, X. 46.




ï~~352

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXIV

city to incur debts. Two or three years of pestilence following closely upon one
another, as in 459, 461, and 462, must have created great distress not only
amongst the town population, but also amongst the agricultural commons: where
the father was carried off by the disorder, his wife and family, who were solely
dependent on his labor, would be at once reduced to poverty, or again would be
forced to relieve their immediate necessity by borrowing. If the pestilence was
local, and raged most in Rome and its immediate neighborhood, yet the more
distant tribes suffered from evils of another sort. The tribes on the Etruscan
frontier suffered perhaps something in 455 from an inroad of the Gauls, which
no doubt aggravated the scarcity of that year; the Falerian tribe in Campania
was repeatedly, as we have seen, exposed to the invasions of the Samnites. The
extraordinary military exertions of the Romans in the third Samnite war must
have rendered necessary a heavy amount of taxation. In the great campaign of
459, six legions were raised, besides two armies of reserve; and in the preceding
year there had been a levy" of the whole population of the city, which had been
kept under arms for nearly three weeks, whilst the two consular armies were at
the same time employed in the field. Nor were the services of the soldier required only for a few weeks in the summer or autumn; the legions were more
than once9 kept abroad during the whole winter; which in itself must have been
a great hardship to the small landed proprietor, whose land could ill spare his
presence and his labor. Besides, even in the unfair accounts which remain to us
of the events of the war, it is confessed that the Roman loss in battle was often
very severe; and although their writers do not acknowledge it, the Romans must
have lost also many prisoners, whose ransom, if they were not left in hopeless
captivity, was an additional burden upon their families. And when, after all
this, the most valuable part of the spoil won in a successful campaign was wholly
put into the treasury, as was done by L. Papirius in 461,0o and the soldier received nothing but what he might have gained for himself in sacking one or more
of the Samnite cities, the mass of the population would feel, that while the burdens of war were mostly borne by them, they had scarcely ahy share of its occasional advantage.
Thus it is conceivable that, within three or four years after the end of the
Obscurity of the history third Samnite war, a large portion of the Roman people should
of this period. frieds have been again involved in debt, and thus should have been irriand opponents of the ben        ivldad                    shud          en
popler cause.  tated against their richer countrymen, and ready to catch fire on
the smallest provocation. But the deepest obscurity involves this part of the
Roman history: for Livy's tenth book ends with the consulship of L. Papirius
and Sp. Carvilius, and from that time to the war with Pyrrhus, we have no other
record of events than the meagre epitomes of Zonaras, Orosius, and Eutropius,
and a few fragments and incidental notices from other writers. Even the Fasti
Capitolini are wanting for this period; so that the very lists of consuls can only
be made out from recent authorities." Thus, we neither know the immediate
causes, nor the leaders, nor the principal opponents, nor even the exact date of
the great popular movement which was finally appeased by Q. Hortensius as
dictator. We may conjecture that Appius Claudius, so far as his infirmities might
SLivy, X. 21. "Senatus-delectum omnis edition ofEusebius; from the anonymous Fasti,
generis hominum haberi jussit, nec ingenui mo- first published by Cardinal Noris from a manudo aut juniores sacramento adacti, sed seniorum script in the imperial library at Vienna, and reetiam cohortes facte, libertinique centuriati."  printed by Graevius in his great collection of
9 App. Claudius' army was kept in Etruria Roman antiquities, Vol. XI. p. 355, and, lastly,
during the winter of 458.-Livy, X. 25. The from the Fasti, which go by the name of the
army of M. Atilius wintered near Interamna, on Fasti of Idatius, published also by Gravius in
the Liris, in 460, and that of L. Papirius was the same volume, p. 247. The two last Fasti
kept out in the country of Vescia through the give only the cognomina of the consuls, and this
winter of 461.-Livy, X. 89, 46.         is too often the case with the Sicilian Fasti also;
20 Livy, X. 46.                        they are also often corrupt, but such as they
" From Cassiodorus, from what are called are, they are almost our sole authority for the
the Fasti Siculi, published by Scaliger in his consuls of this dark period.




ï~~CHAP. XXXIV.]

M'. CURIUS DENTATUS.

353

permit him, was most zealous in his opposition to the demands of the people;
and that L. Papirius Cursor took the same side. On the other hand, the claims
of the popular party were supported, as is most probable, by one of the most
eminent Romans of this period, M'. Curius Dentatus.
This is a name familiar to every ear, and associated with our highest ideas of
ancient Roman virtue. Yet there is not a single great man within
M'.  Curius  Dentatus
the historical period of Rome of whose life less is known to us. opposes Appius cauLike the Fulvii, and like Ti. Coruncanius, and C. Fabricius, he dius.
was not of Roman extraction; he came from one of the Latin towns which had
received the full Roman franchise,"' and he was a man of no inherited fortune.
His merit as a soldier must have first brought him into notise; and the plain
resoluteness of his character, not unlike that of Marius, and perhaps combined,
as in his case, with a marked abhorrence of the wealthy aristocracy, caused him
to be elected tribune of the commons. In his tribuneship"3 he resisted the most
eloquent and overbearing of the patricians, Appius Claudius, who, when holding
the comitia as interrex, refused to allow the election of a plebeian consul. Curius compelled the curiae to ratify the choice of the centuries beforehand, on
whomsoever it might fall; and thus the candidate, when elected by the comitia,
needed no further confirmation of his title.; he was at once consul. Such is the
anecdote as related by Cicero; but we cannot with certainty fix the date of it.4
It must, however, have occurred before the year 464, when Curius was consul,
and, as we have seen, put an end to the Samnite war.
His consulship was rendered further memorable by the beginning and end of
another war,15 that with the Sabines. Some aid given by them to His conquest of toe satheir kinsmen, the Samnites, afforded the Romans a pretext for bin es.
attacking them, after the peace between the two nations had lasted since the year
after the expulsion of the decemvirs; that is, during a period of a century and a
half. The Sabines dwelt in the heart of Italy, in the valley of the Velinus, on
the south of the central Apennines, and along the upper part of the course of
the Aternus, which runs into the Adriatic. It was an extensive and populous
country, for it came down to the left bank of the Tiber at Cures, only nineteen
miles from Rome, and it stretched beyond the Apennines as far as the confines
of the Vestinians and Picentians. It was rich in oil'" and wine, and the acorns
of its forests fattened innumerable herds of swine. But the long peace which
had increased its wealth, had also made its people unwarlike; they fell almost
without a struggle; and their conquest, according to the old historian, Fabius
Pictor,7 first made the Romans acquainted with riches. For his double victory
over the Samnites and Sabines, Curius triumphed twice in the same year; and
he declared of himself in the assembly of the people, on his return to Rome: "I

S This appears from the speech of Cicero, pro
Sull, 7, Â~ 23; but we have no information, I believe, as to the particular town from which he
came.
13 Cicero, Brutus, 14, Â~ 55.
34 We find from Livy, X. 11, that Appius
<.iaudius was interrex in the year 455, at the
breaking out of the third Samnite war. But,
as Niebuhr observes, Appius Claudius was interrex three several times, as appears from the
inscription recording the principal dignities and
actions of his life, Orelli, No. 529,; s othat we
cannot tell in which of his three interregna the
circumstance noticed by.Cicero took place.
When he was a candidate for his second consulship in 457, he earnestly endeavored to get
Q. Fabius elected with himself, in order to exclude a plebeian, Livy, X. 15; but this must not
be confounded with Cicero's story; it only
shows the habitual temper of the man, and that
he never lost sight of his object, of restoring
the old ascendency of the patricians.
23

5 Livy, Epitom. XI. Auctor, de Viris Illustr.
in 1'. Cur. Dentat.
a Strabo, V. 8, Â~ 1, p. 228.
1 Strabo, V. 3, Â~ 1, p. 228. This contrasts
strangely with our notions of Sabine simplicity
and frugality: "b hanc vitamn veteres olim tenubre Sabini," &c. But, possibly, Strabo (lid
not give Fabius' meaning correctly; and the
old historian may have spoken not of the Sabines only, but of. them and the Samnites together, calling them both, perhaps, by the common name of " Sabellians," a term by which
the Samnites are called in Livy, X. 19. Fabius
meant, probably, to speak of the period of Curius' consulship, when he conquered both the
Samnites and Sabines, and made the speech
reported in the text. But that speech is especially referred by the author of the work "do
Viris Illustribus" to the Samnite conquests of
Curius, and not to his successes against the. Snbines.




ï~~354

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XXXIV

have conquered such an extent of country that it must have been left a wilderness, had the men whom I have made our subjects been fewer: I have subjected
such a multitude of men, that they must have starved if the territory conquered
with them had been smaller." The Sabines were obliged"8 to become subjects
of Rome; that is, to receive the citizenship without the right of voting.
For his double victory over the Samnites and Sabines, Curius, it is recorded,"S
He brings forward an triumphed twice in the course of the year of his consulship. But
agrarian law.  a far harder contest, and one in which no triumphs could be
gained, awaited him at Rome. He saw on the one hand the extreme distress of
the poorer citizens, whom war and pestilence together had overwhelmed with
misery; on the other hand, he had conquered large tracts of lands, which, if
granted out under an agrarian law, might go far towards the relief of their sufferings; and, further, the grasping and insolent spirit of some of the nobility disgusted him with the system of the occupation of the domain lands by individuals.
It was only in the preceding year that L. Postumius had employed a Roman
army as his slaves," and had made his soldiers clear a wide extent of public land
won from the enemy, which he had been allowed to occupy for himself. The
actual colleague of Curius in the consulship was P. Cornelius Rufinus,2' a man
already notorious for his rapacity and corruption, and who, doubtless, was turning his Samnite conquests to his own account, and appropriating to himself, at
this very moment, the spoil won by the valor of his soldiers. So Curius thought
that justice and the public good required that the conquests of the nation should
be made available for the relief of the national distress; and he proposed an
agrarian law which should allot to every citizen a portion of seven jugera.2
He arrayed at once against him, not the patricians only, but many families, no
who were h isprincipal doubt, of the new nobility, who, having attained to wealth and
opponents.    honors, felt entirely as the older members of the aristocracy. The
ancestors of Lucullus, and of the Metelli, and of the orator Hortensius, already,
we may believe, had joined that party which their descendants so constantly upheld. They made common cause with Appius Claudius, the uncompromising
enemy of their whole order, who despised the richest of the Licinii as heartily
as the poorest citizen of one of the city tribes. L. Scipio was likely to entertain
the same spirit of resistance to the agrarian law of Curius, which Scipio Masica,
nearly two hundred years afterwards, displayed so fiercely against the measures
of Ti. Gracchus; and L. Papirius Cursor, with all his father's inflexible temper
and unyielding courage, would be slow to comply with the demands of a plebeian multitude. The old Q. Fabius was respected and loved by all orders of
his countrymen, and he had been opposed to the party of the high aristocracy;
but perhaps his civil courage was not equal to his courage in the field; he had

15 Paterculus, I. 14. " Sabinis sine suffragio
data civitas."
1' Livy, Epitom. XI.
2o A more detailed account of the mad conduct of Postumius in his consulship is given in
a subsequent part of this chapter. His trial
and fine took place, probably, in the very year
when Curius and P. Cornelius Rufinus were
consuls.
21 Dion Cassius seems to have placed the
well-known story of Fabricius voting for Rufinus at the consular comitia, because "he would
rather be robbed than sold as a slave," in the
first consulship of Rufinus, that is, in the year
V 4. See the mutilated fragment in Mai's Scriptor. Veter. Collect. Dion. XLI., which, when
compared with the entire story as given by
Cicero, de Oratore,, II. 66, clearly relates to the
same circumstance. Yet it is difficult to understand how, in either of Rufinus' consulships,
the republic was in such perilous circumstances
that great military skill was needed to save her

from destruction, which is the meaning of Fabricius' words; and therefore Niebuhr thinks
that the story may refer to the time of Rufinus'
dictatorship just after the defeat of Lievinus by
Pyrrhus.
2 " Quaterna dena igri jugera viritim populo
divisit." Anuctor de Viris Illustribus.-M'.
Curius. But these fourteen jugera must be understood of two separate agrarian laws, the one
passed or proposed in the first consulship of
Curius, the other in his second consulship, after the final defeat of Pyrrhus. It is not expressly stated that this first allotment was vehemently opposed; but the fragment from Appian, preserved by Suidas, and quoted below,
proves that Curius was in a state of violent opposition to the senate, and this is likely to have
been on account of his agrarianlaw. It maybe,
however, that he also brought forward some ot
those measures which were afterwards conceded
by the aristocracy, and which were contained
in the Hortensian laws.




ï~~CHAP. XXXIV.]

THE AGRARIAN LAW IS PASSED.

355

shown on a former occasion23 that he might be moved by the reproaches of his
order, and if he took no part against Curius, yet we cannot believe that he supported him.
I have tried to recall the individual actors in these troubles, in order to give to
them something more of reality than can belong to a mere account
Tumults and violent
of actions apart from the men who performed them. And the state of parties. The
contest, no doubt, was violent; as it is said that Curius was fol- agrarian law is passed.
lowed by a band of eight hundred picked young men,"4 the soldiers, we may
suppose, who had so lately conquered under his auspices, and who were ready
to decide the quarrel, if needful, by the sword. They saved Curius from the
fate of Ti. Gracchus, but it does not appear that they committed any acts of outrage themselves. But an impenetrable veil conceals from our view the particulars of all these disturbances; the law of Curius was finally passed, but we know
not at what time, nor whether it was obtained by any other than peaceful and legal
means.
Between the consulship of Curius and Cornelius Rufinus, and that of P. Dolabella and On. Domitius, when the Gaulish war broke out, there Lawsproposedforother
intervened a period of seven years, all the records of which have ionlofteeot Se.es
so utterly perished that not a single event can be fixed with cer- Janiculum.
tainty is any one particular year. But with all the chronology of these years
we have lost also the history; we cannot ascertain the real character of the
events which followed, nor the relations of parties to each other, nor the conduct
of particular persons.25 Some of the tribunes6 proposed a law for the abolition
of all debts; whether before or after the passing of Curius' agrarian law we know
not. Nor can we tell whether Curius held on with the popular party till the end
of the contest; or whether, as often happens with the leaders of the beginnings
of civil dissensions, he thought that the popular cause was advancing too far, and
either left it, or even joined the party of its opponents. We only know that the
demands of the people" rose with the continuance of the struggle; that political
questions were added to those of debtor and creditor; that points which, if
yielded in time, would have satisfied all the wishes of the popular party, were
contested inch by inch, till, when gained, they were only regarded as a step to
something further; and that at last the mass of the people left Rome, and established themselves on the Janiculum.2  Even then, if Zonaras may be trusted, the

23 When 'he only refused to violate the Licinian law, and to return two patrician consuls,
oecause he himself would have been one of them.
Otherwise he is represented as saying that he
would have complied with the wishes of the
patricians, and have broken the law.-Livy, X.
15.
2 Atvrdri Kiara lXov dperi i'rcmro v-wv Xoydabov
rX lOof lIraIooWV, ra tdnvra r a ifya rotLpot. Kal
paphf (5J Tv fovA rapd rat cKKnfluficp.
This is a quotation made from Appian by Suidas, and is to be found in Suidas' lexicon, in iX op,
or in Schweighauser's Appian, Samnitic. Extract. V.
2 For example, a speech of Curius has been
recorded, in which he said, "that the manmust
be a'mischievous citizen who was not contented
with seven jugera of land."-Pliny, Hist. Natur. XVIII. Â~ 18. Ed. Sillig. But the application of this speech is most uncertain. According to Plutarch, it was spoken to reprove some
violent supporters of the popular party, who
thought that Curius' agrarian law did not go
far enough, and that the whole of the state's
domains ought to be allotted to separate proprietors, without allowing any portion to be
occupied in great masses as at present.-Apothegm. p. 194. E. But Valerius Maximus trans
fers the speech to Curius' second consulship,
and makes it accompany his refusal of an unusually large portion of land which the senate proposed to allot to himself-IV. 3, Â~ 5.
Frontinus also makes it accompany his refusal
of an offer made to himself; but he places it in
his first consulship, after the Sabine war. Strategemat. IV. 3, Â~ 12. It might also have been
spoken against the occupiers of large tracts of
domain land, who would not be contented with
an allotment of seven jugera as property, but
wished to occupy whole districts. So impossible is it 'to see our way in the history of a period where the accounts are not only so meagre, but also at variance with one another.
26 h        d V rv Ewv xpyv draorotxtoi frrEyorajvav.
-Zonaras, VIII. 2. The words enY]oopdvsu
rv jospdPXwv are legible in a mutilated fragment
of Dion Cassius relating to these times, which
Mai has printed in such a state as to be in many
parts absolutely unintelligible.-Fragm. XLII.
27 This appears from the legible part of the
fragment of Dion Cassius just noticed: rOevrv.
rec ov v o6' TO 6vrTv r V Tvvarv roXA,wXte
r)v rcar' apxas EX rreEvrwvoq teov Aevat, rvvnrX.
Ad yoirav.
8 Livy, Epitom. XI.




ï~~356

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXIP

aristocracy would not yield, and it was only the alarm of a foreign enemy,29 per.
haps some gathering of the forces of Etruria, which at this time was meditating
on a real and decisive trial of strength with Rome, which induced the senate to
put an end at any price to the existing dissensions.
Accordingly, Q. HortensiusÂ~ was appointed dictator. He was a man of an old
They are brought back plebeian family, for we find an Hortensius amongst the tribunes of
by Q. Hrtensiu, wh the year 332;31 but, individually, he is unknown to us, and we
paes the  Hortenaian.... cannot tell what recommended him to the choice of the consuls on
this occasion. He assembled the people, including under that name the whole
nation, those who had stayed in Rome no less than those who had withdrawn to
the Janiculum, in a place called "the Oak Grove,"32 probably without the walls
of the city; and in that sacred grove were passed, and ratified probably by
solemn oaths, the famous Hortensian laws.
These contained, in the first place, an abolition,33 or, at least, a great reduction
of debts; 2d, an agrarian law on an extensive scale, allotting seven
povi.... ~ jugera of the domain land to every citizen; and 3d, one or more
laws affecting the constitution; of which the most important was that which deprived the senate of its veto, and declared the people assembled4 in their tribes
to be a supreme legislative power. Accidental mention has been preserved to
us of another law, or possibly of a particular clause in the former law, by which
the nundinae35 or weekly market days which had hitherto been days of business
for the commons only, and sacred or holy days for the patricians, were now made
days of business for the whole nation alike. Was the object of this merely to
abolish a marked distinction between the two orders; or was it to enable the
patricians to take part in the meeting of the tribes in the Forum, which were
held on the nundinee, and had they hitherto belonged only to the tribes in that
other, but to us undiscoverable form, in which they voted at the comitia of centuries on the field of Mars?
Thus the sovereign legislative power of the assembly of the tribes in the Forum
The legislative power of was fully established; and consequently, when C. Flaminius
the tribes established. brought forward another agrarian bill, about fifty years afterwards,
for a division of the recently conquered country of the Senones, the senate, how
29 Zonaras, VIII. 2.
3 Livy, Epitom. XI. Pliny, Hiistor. Natur.
XVI. Â~ 37. Ed. Sillig.
30 Livy, IV. 42.
32  Q. Hortensius, dictator, cum plebs secessisset in Janiculum, legem in esculeto tulit, ut
quod ea jussisset omnes Quirites teneret."Pliny, Hist. Nat. XVI. Â~ 87. Ed. Sillig.
3s This is not stated in direct terms in the
scanty notices of these events, which alone have
been preserved to us. But as the abolition of
debts was the main thing required by the people, and as the fragment of Dion Cassius, above
referred to, speaks of the people having their
first demands granted, and then going on to insist upon others, and as we have seen an abolition of debts carried once before in the disturbances of 413, it does not seem too much to
conclude that a similar measure was carried on
on the present occasion also. With regard to
the agrarian law, it may have been passed two
or three years earlier; but from the statement
already quoted (Auctor de Viris Illustribus, in
M'. Curio), "that Curius granted fourteen jugera to each citizen," itis clear that an agrarian law
proposed by him must have been carried at some
time or other in the period between his consulship and the dictatorship of Hortensius. It may
thusbe numbered amongst the Hortensian laws,
as belonging to the measures which the people
at this period forced the aristocracy to concede
to them.

S The statement in the text follows Niebuhr,
who, as is well known, supposed that the Hortensian laws differed from the Publilian, inasmuch as the Publilian abolished the veto of the
curie, and the Hortensian did away the veto o1
the senate. The tribes in the Forum and the
senate were thus placed on a footing of equality;
neither had a veto on the enactments of the
other; and the tribunes had a veto upon both
alike. Both also were considered as equal to
laws; for " senatus consultum legis vicem obtinet" (Gaius, Institut. I. Â~ 4); and by the Hortensian law, "plebiscitalegibus exequata sunt."
(Gaius, Instit. I. Â~ 8.)  It may be doubted
whether the limits of these two powers were
ever very definitely settled; although one point
is mentioned as lying exclusively in the power
of the tribes, namely, the right of admitting any
strangers to the franchise of Roman citizens.--
Livy, XXXVIII. 36.
30 Macrobius, Saturnal. I.16. The reason assigned by Macrobius for this enactment of the
Hortensian law may also be admitted; that it
was made to suit the convenience of the citizens
from the country, who, coming up to Rome on
the market days, wished to be able to settle
their legal business at the same time; but this
could not be done, at least in the prator's court,
as there, according to the patrician usage, the
market days were holydays, and consequently
the court did not sit.




ï~~CHAP. XXXIV.]

THE IMI ENIAN LAW.

357

ever strongly averse to it, could not prevent it from becoming a law. The only
check, therefore, which now remained on the absolute legislative power of the
tribes, consisted in the veto of their own tribunes; and to secure the negative of
a tribune became accordingly the ordinary resource of the aristocracy in the contests of the seventh century.
Another important law is supposed to have been passed at the same period
with the law of Hortensius, though our knowledge of all particu- The Mfnianlaw.
lars respecting it is still more scanty. A law bearing the name of
Menian,86 and proposed, therefore, either by the good dictator C. Maenius himself, or, as is more probable, by one of his family, took away the veto which the
curim had hitherto enjoyed in the election of curule magistrates. They were
now to sanction beforehand the choice of the centuries, on whomsoever it might
happen to fall. And thus their share in the elections being reduced to an empty
form, they soon ceased to be assembled at all; and in later times of the commonwealth they were represented merely by thirty lictors, who were accustomed
for form's sake to confirm the suffrages of the centuries, and to confer the imperium on the magistrates whom the centuries had elected.
But although supreme legislative power was now bestowed on the assembly
of the tribes, and although the elections were freed from all direct These laws did not
legal control on the part of the aristocracy, yet we know full well make the constitution
that the Roman constitution was very far from becoming hence- of Rome a democracy.
forward a democracy. To us, indeed, who are accustomed to enact more than
five hundred new laws every year, and who see the minutest concerns of common
life regulated by act of parliament, the possession of an independent legislative
power by a popular assembly must seem equivalent to absolute sovereignty. But
our own early history may teach us not to apply our present notions to other
times and other countries. The legislative power, even in the days of the Tudors and Stuarts, was of small importance when compared with the executive and
judicial. Now, the Hortensian law enabled the Roman people to carry any point
on which they considered their welfare to depend; it removed all impediments,
which after all do but irritate rather than hinder, out of the way of the strongly
declared expression of the public will. But the public will was in the ordinary
state of things quiescent, and allowed itself to be represented by the senate and
the.magistrates. It resigned to these even the power of taxation, and except in
some rare or comparatively trifling cases, the whole judical power also: those
judges who were appointed by the praetor to try questions of fact, in all the most
important civil and criminal cases, were taken exclusively from the order of senators. All the ordinary administration was conducted by the senate; and its
decrees on all particular points, like the  pWa+ia-  of the Athenian popular assembly, had undoubtedly the force of laws.
According to Theophilus,31 this was a concession made by the people to the

'" What we know of the Menian law comes
chiefly from a passage of Cicero (Brutus, c.
14, Â~ 55), in which he says of M'. Curius,
that he "patres ante auctores fieri coegerit,
quod fuit permagnum, nondum lege Mania
lata."  Livy must allude also to this law, when
he says, "hodie-priusquam     populus suffraglum ineat, in incertum comitiorum eventum
patres auctores fiunt." I. 17. It must be observed that the power taken away by the Mmnian law from  the "patres" was taken away
from the senate no less than from the curia;
for the senate in its original form was only a select assembly of the patres, whose great assembly was the comitia curiata. And gradually the
senate drew to itself both the name and the
power of the greater patrician assembly, so that
what is said of the patres or patricians is commonly to be understood of the senate, and not of
the curie, even although the senate had long

ceased to be exclusively a patrician assembly.
This view would coincide with Niebuhr's distinction between the Publilian and Hortensian
laws. When the former were passed, the curie
were still an efficient body, and the term "patres" therefore applied to them much more than
to the senate. But in the fifty years that followed, the curie had dwindled away so much
that the senate was become the principal assembly of the patres; and therefore the Hortensian
law extended to the senate what had before
been enacted by the Publilian law with respect
to the curie.
2 See Hugo, Geschichte des Rom. Rechts, p.
339. (9th Edit.) The passage in Theophilus is
one which I have not verified, as I have not had
an opportunity of consulting the book. But
Hugo professes to quote it fully, and I have no
doubt of his correctness.




ï~~358

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXIV

Their effeot.were s. aristocracy, and embodied in the laws of Hortensius, that the de.
Ing and beneficial.  crees of the senate should be binding on the people, as the decrees
or resolutions of the tribes were to be binding on the senate. At any rate, it is
certain that the senate retained high and independent powers of its own, which
were no less sovereign than those possessed by the assembly of the tribes; and
in practice each of these two bodies kept up for a hundred and fifty years a
healthy and vigorous life in itself, without interfering with the functions of the
other.  Mutual good sense and good feeling, and the continual moderating influence of the college of tribunes, whose peculiar position as having a veto on the
proceedings both of the senate and people disposed them to regulate the action
of each, prevented any serious collision, and gave to the Roman constitution that
mixed character, partly aristocratic and partly popular, which Polybius recognized and so greatly admired. And thus the event seems to have given the
highest sanction to the wisdom of the Hortensian laws: nor can we regard them
as mischievous or revolutionary, when we find that from the time of their enactment the internal dissensions of the Romans were at an end for a hundred and
fifty years, and that during this period the several parts of the constitution were
all active; it was a calm not produced by the extinction of either of the contending forces, but by their perfect union.
It may be conjectured that the sickness which had visited Rome during three
Prospect ofanewoali- or four successive years at the close of the Samnite war returned,
tion againt Rome.  partially at least, in the concluding year of these domestic troubles,
for Q. Hortensius died before the expiration of his dictatorship: an event hitherto
unexampled in the Roman annals, and regarded as of evil omen; so that Augustine31 makes it a reproach to the impotence of the god,Esculapius, that although
he had been so lately brought from Greece with the utmost solemnity, and had
been received at Rome with due honors, that his presence might stay the pestilence, he yet suffered the very dictator of the Roman people to fall its victim.
Nearly about the same time also, if we can judge from the place and apparent
drift of one of the fragments of Dionysius,9 Rome suffered from an earthquake.
And scarcely were the Hortensian laws passed, when the prospect of foreign war
on a most extensive scale presented itself. Tarentum, it is said, was busily organizing a new coalition, in which the Lucanians, Samnites, and Bruttians in the
south were to unite with the Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls in the north, and
were again to try their combined strength against Rome.
In the mean time, before we trace the events of this great contest, we
Miscellnneonnoticesof may bring together some few  scattered notices of domestic afomestic events.  fairs relating to the state of Rome in the middle of the fifth century.
A new magistracy had its origin45 somewhere between the years 461 and 466;
Instiation of lo tri. that of the triumviri capitales, or commissioners of police.  These
umviri cpitales. officers were elected by the people, the comitia being held by the
praetor. Their business was to enforce the payment of fines due to the state;4"
9 De Civitate Dei, III. 17. Augustine's no-  41 Festus, in "Sacramentum." The appointtice of the secession to the Janiculum is proba- ment of the "triumviri capitales" was proposed,
bly taken from Livy, and may be given here, as according to Festus, by L. Papirius, whom he
it contains one or two particulars not mentioned calls " tribune of the commons." One cannot
in any other existing record. "Post graves et but suspect with Niebuhr, that the person meant
longas Romee seditiones ad ultimum plebs in was L. Papirius Cursor, who was prcetor in the
Janiculum hostile diremptione secesserat: cujus year 462 (Livy, X. 47); and then the appointmali tam dira calamitas erat, ut ejus rei caus4 ment would coincide with the year when the
quod in extremis periculis fieri solebat, dictator plague was at its height, and when the deputaerearetur Hortensius: qui plebe revocat& in tion was sent to Epidaurus to invite Esculapius
codem magistratu expiravit, quod nulli dicta- to Rome. Varro, de L. L. V. 81. Ed. Muiller.
tori ante contigerat."                    Pomponius, de Origine Juris, Digest I. Tit.
" Ch. 39. iragm.  Dionys. apud Maium. II. Â~ 39. Livy, XXV. 1. XXXII. 26. Valerius
Scriptor. Veter. Vatcian. Collect. Vol. II. p. Maximus, V. 4. Â~ 7.
501.                                        Etymologicon Magn. in loka. See Herman
4 Livy Epitome, XI.                     Pol. Antiq. of Greece, Â~ 187.




ï~~CHAr. XXXIV.]

STORY OF L. POSTUMIUS MEGELLUS.

359

to try by summary process all offenders against the public peace who might be
taken in the fact; to have the care of the state prison, and to carry into effect
the sentence of the law upon criminals. They resembled exactly in all these points
the well-known magistracy of the eleven at Athens.
The creation of this office seems to mark an increase of ordinary crimes against
person and property; and such an increase was the natural conse- The probable occasion
quence of the distress which prevailed about this time, and partic- of itsinstitution.
ularly of the severe visitations of pestilence which occurred at this period. It is
well known that such seasons are marked by the greatest outbreaks of all sorts
of crime; and that never is a strong police more needed than when the prospect
of impending death makes men reckless, and eager only to indulge their passions
while they may.
The census of the year 461 gave a return of 262,322 Roman citizens;42 that of
the year 466, notwithstanding the havoc caused in the interval by Returns of the censua
the double scourge of pestilence and war, exhibited an increase of at this period.
10,00043 upon the preceding return. This was owing to the conquest of the Sahines, and their consequent admission to the Roman franchise in the year 464:
for the census included, as is well known, not only Those citi ens whi  were enrolled in the tribes, but those also who enjoyed the private rights of citizenship
without as yet partaking in the right of suffrage.
Amongst other traits of resemblance between the Spartan and the Roman
aristocracies, we may notice the extreme moderation shown by Sto of L. Postumiu
each of them towards the faults of their distinguished citizens. It Megellnus.
was not till after repeated proofs of his treasonable designs that the Spartan government would take any serious steps against Pausanias; and the forbearance of
the Romans towards Appius Claudius was no less remarkable.    Another memorable example of the same spirit occurred in the case of L. Postumius Megellus.
He belonged to a family whose pride and hatred of the commons had been notorious in the political contests of the beginning of the fourth century;44 and as
Niebuhr has truly observed, the peculiar character of a Roman family was preserved from generation to generation, and it was rarely found that any of its
members departed from it. He had been consul in 449, and again in 460, and
had acquired in each of his commands the reputation of a brave and skilful soldier. But his conduct as a citizen was far less meritorious; and it was probably
for some overbearing or oppressive behavior in his second consulship that he
was threatened with impeachment by one of the tribunes as soon as he went out
of office. In the crisis of the Samnite war, however, military merit atoned for all
other defects; the consul Sp. Carvilius named him one of his lieutenants,4" and the
trial was delayed till the campaign should be over; but when it had ended triumphantly, the popularity and brilliant victories of Sp. Carvilius pleaded strongly
in favor of his lieutenant, and the trial never was brought forward. Two years
afterwards, in 463, Postumius was again chosen consul, when the great victory
obtained in the preceding year by Q. Fabius made it probable that the war might
soon be brought to a triumphant issue.
His proud and bad nature was more irritated by having been threatened at
first with impeachment, than softened by the favor shown to him
His quarrels with his
afterwards; so that his conduct in his third consulship was that colleaogue in his third
of a mischievous madman. His first act46 was to insist on having co.sulahi.
Samnium assigned to him as his province, without referring the decision as usual
to lot; and though his colleague, C. Junius Bubulcus, remonstrated against this
arrogance, yet the nobility and powerful interest of Postumius prevailed, and C.
Junius forbore to dispute what he perceived he could not resist with success.
Then followed, as usual, the levying of the legions for the service of the year;
42 Livy, X. 47.                        4 Livy, X. 46.
* Livy, Epitom. XI.                    48 Dionysius, XVI. 15.
SSee Chap. XIII. of his history, note 48.




ï~~360

HISTORY OF ROME,

[CHAP. XXXIP

He empl    but the Samnites were so humbled that nothing more was to be
dem in clearing   feared from them, and Q. Fabius Gurges still commanded an army
own land.     in Samnium as proconsul. It was not necessary, therefore, for the
consul to begin active operations immediately; but he, notwithstanding, took the
field with his army, and advanced towards the enemy's frontier. In the course
of the late campaigns, he had become the occupier of a large tract of the territory conquered from the Samnites; but much of it was uncleared land, and as
slaves at Rome were yet but few, laborers were not easily to be procured in these
remote possessions in sufficient numbers. Postumius did not scruple to employ
his soldiers as though they had been his slaves: he set two thousand47 men to
work in felling his woods, and in this manner he engaged for a considerable time
a large portion of a Roman army.
When, at last, he was ready to commence active operations against the eneHis behavior ltowards my, his pride displayed itself in a new form.  Q. Fabius Gurges
Q. Fabius Gurges.  was still, as we have seen, commanding an army in Samnium as
proconsul; and he was now laying siege to Cominium, which, though taken and
burnt by the Romans two years before, appears to have been again occupied by
the Samnites as a fortress; for the massy walls of their towns could not easily
be destroyed, and these exist in many instances to this day, encircling nothing
but desolation within them. The consul wrote to Fabius,8 ordering him to withdraw from Samnium: Fabius pleaded the authority of the senate, by which he
had been continued in his command; and the senate itself sent a deputation to
Postumius, requiring him not to oppose their decree. But he replied to the
deputies, that so long as he was consul it was for him to command the senate,
not for the senate to dictate to him; and he marched directly towards Cominium,
to compel Fabius to obedience by actual force. Fabius did not attempt to resist
him; and the consul, having taken the command of both armies, immediately
sent Fabius home.
In actual war Postumius again proved himself an able soldier: he took CoHo triumphsinspile of minium,49 and several other places, and he conquered the impoirtant
thse robitno t  pOSt of Venusia, and, well appreciating the advantages of its situasenate.       tion, he recommended that it should be made a Roman colony.
The senate followed his advice, but would not appoint him one of the commissioners50 for assigning the lands to the colonists, and superintending the foundation of the new settlement. He in his turn distributed all the plunder of the
campaign amongst his soldiers, that he might not enrich the treasury; and he
marched home and gave his soldiers leave of absence from their standards, without waiting for the arrival of his successor. Finally, when the senate refused
to allow him to triumph," he, having secured the protection of three of the tribunes, celebrated his triumph in defiance of the prohibition of the other seven,
and in contempt of the senate's refusal.
For such a course of outrageous conduct, he was prosecuted as soon as he
e iso tried and heavily went out of office, by two of the tribunes, and was condemned by
fined.        all the three-and-thirty tribes unanimously.  But his accusers did
not prosecute him capitally, they only sued him for a fine; and although the
fine was the heaviest to which any Roman had been hitherto sentenced, for it
amounted to 500,000 ases," yet it was but small in comparison of the penalties imposed with far less provocation by the governments of Greece. It amounted, in
Greek money, to no more than fifty thousand drachma, whereas Agis, the king
of Sparta, had been condemned, even by the Spartans, to pay a fine of one hundred thousand3 for a mere want of judgment in his military operations. Postu47 Dionysius, XVI. 15. Livy, Epitome.  of Postumius' second consulship, X. 87. But
4 Dionysius, XVI. 16.                it agrees on every account better with his third
4,o Dionysius, XVI. 17.               consulship, of which it is related by Dionysius
1 Dionysius, XVI. 17.                 52 Dionysius, XVI. 18.
* Dionys. XVI. 18. Livy relates this story  1' Thucydides, V. 63.




ï~~C Ar. XXXIV.]

XESCULAPIUS INVITED TO ROME.

mius, in addition to his own large possessions, would probably have many wealthy
clients, who were bound to pay their patron's fine. His family, at any rate, was
not ruined or disgraced by his sentence, for his son was elected consul a few years
afterwards, in the third year of the first Punic war.
Of the miscellaneous particulars recorded of this period one of the most remarkable is the embassy sent to Greece in the year 462, to invite
Embassy  ent to Epi
the god.Esculapius to Rome, in order that he might put a stop to dauruto invite the god
the plague which had then l5een raging for three years. The head Esoulapius to Rome.
of the embassy was Q. Ogulnius,54 the proposer of the law by which the commons had been admitted to the sacred offices of pontifex and augur, and who
more recently, as curule sedile, had caused the famous group of the she-wolf
suckling Romulus and Remus to be placed by the sacred fig-tree in the comitium.
The deputation arrived at Epidaurus, the peculiar seat of Al2Esculapius, and entreated permission to invite the god to Rome, and that they might  e instructed
how to offer him acceptable worship. This was no unusual request; for many
cities had, in like manner, received his worship from Epidaurus; Sicyon,55 Athens,
Pergamus, and Cyrene. Accordingly, one of the snakes which were sacred to
the god crawled from his temple to the city of Epidaurus, and from thence made
its way to the sea-shore, and climbed up into the trireme of the Roman ambassadors, which was as usual drawn up on the beach. It was under the form of a
snake that zEsculapius was said to have gone to Sicyon,56 when his worship was
introduced there; and the Romans, instructed by the Epidaurians, considered that
he was now going to visit Rome in the same form, and they immediately sailed
away with the sacred snake to Italy. But when they stopped at Antium, on
their way home, the snake, so said the story,5" left the ship, and crawled out into
the precinct of the temple of.Esculapius, for the god it seems was worshipped
at Antium also, and coiled himself round a tall palm-tree, where he remained for
three days. The Romans anxiously waited for his return to the ship; and at
last he went back, and did not move again till the ship entered the Tiber. Then
when she came to Rome, he again crawled forth, but instead of landing with the
ambassadors, he swam to the island in the middle of the Tiber, and there went
on sh6re and remained quiet. A temple was built, therefore, to the god in the
spot which he had himself chosen; and the island to this day preserves the
memory of the story, for the travertino, which was brought there to form the
foundation of the temple of the god, has been cut into a rude resemblance of a
trireme, because it was on ship-board that.tsculapius had first visited the Romans, and received their worship.
There is no reason to doubt that the Romans did bring back with them a
snake from Epidaurus, for there was a breed of snakes there, said Tho etory not impos.
to be peculiar to that country,58 and perfectly harmless, which were sible.
accounted sacred to IEsculapius. And so complete is the ascendency which
man's art has obtained over the brute creation, that it is very possible that they
may have been trained to perform various feats at the bidding of their keepers;
and if one of these, as is likely, went with the sacred snake to Rome, wonders
may have really been exhibited to the Roman people, which they would have
certainly supposed to be supernatural.
This, if we except the doubtful story of the embassy to Athens immediately
before the decemvirate, and one or two deputations to consult the Mutual knowlodges of
oracle of Delphi, is the earliest instance recorded by the Roman eho thep rosa
by         this tine by the Greeks
annalists of any direct communication between their country and and R omans.
Greece since the beginning of the commonwealth. Greek writers, as we have
seen, mentioned an embassy sent to Alexander at Babylon, and a remonstrance
" Valerius Maximus, I. 8. Auctor "de Viris  5" As given by Valerius Maximus, I. 8, by the
Illustribus," in " Esculap. Rom. advect."  author "de Viris Illustribus," and above all by
6 Pausanias, II. 10, 26.              Ovid, Metamorphos. XV. 622, &e.
0 Pausanias, II. 10.                     Pausanias, II. 28.




ï~~362

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXV

made by Demetrius Poliorcetes against the piracies of the Antiatians, at a time
when they were subject to the Romans. We may be sure, at any rate, that in
the middle of the fifth century the two people were no strangers to each other;
and whether it be true or not that Demetrius acknowledged the Romans to be
the kinsmen of the Greeks, yet when the Epidaurians gave them their god.AEsculapius, they would feel that they were not giving him to a people utterly barbarian, but to one which had for centuries paid divine honors to Greek heroes,
which worshipped Hercules, and the twin gods Castor and Pollux; and which,
within the memory of the existing generation, had erected statues in the comitium to the wisest and bravest of the men of Greece,"9 Pythagoras and Alcibiades.
Nor can we doubt that Q. Ogulnius was sufficiently acquainted with the Greek
language to address the Epidaurians, as L. Postumius a few years later addressed
the Tarentines, without the help of an interpreter.
We are now arrived, however, at the period when the histories of Greece and
Rome unavoidably intermix with one another; when the greatest
It becomes here necesofry to der eieth prince and general of the Greek nation crossed over into Italy,
State of the east and the
internal rondition of and became the head of the last coalition of the Italian states
Rome.         against Rome. We must here then pause, and before we enter
upon the new Samnite and Tarentine war, in which Pyrrhus so soon interfered,
and before we notice those renewed hostilities with the Gauls, which owed their
origin, in part at least, to the intrigues of the Tarentines, we must once more
cross the sea, after an interval of more than a hundred years, and observe what
was now the state of Greece and of the eastern world; what new powers had succeeded to Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and the great king who had inherited the
fragments of the empire of Alexander, and what was the condition of the various
states of the Grecian name in Greece itself and in Sicily. We must endeavor,
too, to obtain some more lively notion of Rome and the Roman people at this
same period, than could be gained from the imperfect record of political and
military events; to conceive what that city was which Cineas likened to a temple; what was the real character of that people whose senate he described as ar
assembly of kings.
CHAPTER XXXV.
STATE OF THE EAST-KINGDOMS OF ALEXANDER'S SUCCESSORS-SICILY---
GREECE-KINGDOM OF EPIRUS, AND EARLY FORTUNES OF PYRRHUS.
"When he was strong the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones
towards the four winds of heaven."-DANIEL VIII. 8.
THE hundred and twenty-fourth Olympiad witnessed, says Polybius, the first
The 124th Olympiad  revival of the Achmean league, and the deaths of Ptolemy, the son. remarkable periodi of Lagus, of Lysimachus, of Seleucus Nicator, and of Ptolemy
Grecian bistory.  Ceraunus. The same period was also marked by the Italian expedition of Pyrrhus, and immediately afterwards followed the great inroad of
5 Pliny, Histor. Natural. XXXIV. 9 26. Ed. bly consulted after their disaster at the pass of
Sillig. These statues were set up "bello Sam- Caudium, as they did afterwards after the deniti," probably in the second war; and were feat at Cannam. Livy, XXII. 57.
erected in consequence of the command of the  1 Polybius, II. 41. Some explanation may
Delplucu cracle, which the Romans had proba- perhaps be required of the length of this chapn




ï~~CHAP. XXXV.]  ALEXANDER'S SUCCESSORS.-SELEUCUS.

363

the Gauls into Greece and Asia, their celebrated attack upon Delphi, and their
establishment in the heart of Asia Minor, in the country which afterwards was
called from them Galatia. This coincidence of remarkable events is enough of
itself to attract, attention; and the names which I have just mentioned contain,
in a manner, the germ of the whole history of the eastern world; all its interests
and all its most striking points may be fully comprehended, when these names
have been rendered significant, and we have formed a distinct notion of the persons and people which they designate.
Forty years" had elapsed since the death of Alexander, when Seleucus Nicator, the last survivor of his generals, was assassinated at Lysima- Seleneos is assassinated
chin3 by Ptolemy Ceraunus. The old man, for Seleucus was more hobize ithethronet
than seventy-five years old, had just before destroyed the king- of Macedonia.
dom of Lysimachus, the last survivor except himself of the immediate successors
and former generals of Alexander; and after fifty years' absence, was returning
as the sovereign of Asia to that country which he had left as an unknown officer
in Alexander's army. But an oracle, it is said, had bidden him beware of
Europe;4 for that the appointed seat of his fortunes was Asia. And scarcely
had he landed on the Thracian Chersonesus, when he was assassinated by one of
his own followers, by Ptolemy Ceraunus,5 the half brother of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the reigning king of Egypt, who had first been a refugee at the court of
Lysimachus, and, after his death, had been taken into the service of Seleucus,
and had been treated by him with the greatest kindness and confidence. Seleucus' vast kingdom, which reached from the Hellespont to the Indus, was inherited by his son Antiochus;' but his murderer seized upon the throne of
Macedonia, which having been in rapid succession filled by various competitors,
and having lastly been occupied by Lysimachus, now, in consequence of his overthrow and death, and of the murder of his conqueror, seemed to lie open to the
first pretender.
Seleucus outlived by about two years' his old ally and his protector in his utmost need, Ptolemy the son of Lagus, king of Egypt. With more
Ptolemy the non of Launbroken good fortune than any other of his contemporaries, Ptol- gus reign s in Egypt,
emy had remained master of Egypt, first as satrap and afterwards cyrene, and cyprus.
as king, from the first division of Alexander's empire down to the period of his
own death. The distinct and almost unassailable position of Egypt saved it from
the sudden conquests which often changed the fortune of other countries; the
deserts of the Nile formed a barrier not easily to be overcome. To Egypt, Ptolemy had added thei old commonwealth of Cyrene,8 where the domestic factions,
according to the frequent fate of the Greek cities, had at last sacrificed their
common independence to a foreign enemy. He was also master of the rich island
of Cyprus,' and, after the defeat of Antigonus at Ipsus, he had extended his

ter, devoted as it is to matters not directly connected with the Roman history of the fifth century of Rome. But it is impossible to forget
that all the countries here spoken of will successively become parts of the Roman empire;
the wars in which they were engaged with
Rome will hereafter claim our attention, and
therefore their condition immediately before
those wars cannot be considered foreign to my
subject. Besides, the distinctness of the eastern empire from the western was productive of
the most important consequences; and this distinctness arose from the spread of the Greek
language and manners over Asia Minor, Syria,
and Egypt, by Alexander's conquests, and the
establishment of his successive kingdoms. As
for the notices of Greece itself, of Sparta, of
Thebes, and of Athens, they cannot plead quite
the same justification; but I trust that they
may be forgiven, as an almost involuntary tribate of respect and affection to old associations

and immortal names, on which we can scarcely
dwell too long or too often.
2 Alexander died Olymp. 114-1-2, B. c. 323.
Seleucus was murdered Olymp. 124-4, B. c. 280.
See Fynes Clinton, Fasti Hellenici.
Appian, Syriac. 62. Porphyry, apud Eusebium, Chronic. p. 63. Ed. Scaliger.
SAppian, Syriac. 63.
Ptolemy Ceraunus was the son of Ptolemy
Soter, by Eurydice, the daughter of Antipater;
Ptolemy Philadelphus was his son by Berenice.
Porphyry, apud Euseb. p. 63. Pausanias, I. 6.
6 Memnon apud Photium, p. 226, Ed. Bekker.
7'Ptolemy Soter, the son of Lagus, died just
forty years after the death of Alexander, of
whose actions he and Aristobulus were the
earliest and most authentic historians. His
death took place Olymp. 124-2, B. c. 283.
a Diodorus, XVIII. 21.
SPtolemy reduced the several petty kings of




ï~~364

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHA. XXXV

dominion in Syria, as far as the valley of the Orontes, the country known by the
name of Ccele-Syria, or the vale of Syria.  His dominion, next to that of Seleucus, was by far the most extensive, as it was, without any exception, the most
compact and secure of all the kingdoms formed out of Alexander's empire.
When Alexander died at Babylon, only seven years had elapsed since his conThe Greek dominion quest of Persia, and not more than four since his victory over..not shaken by Porus and his campaign in India. That his conquests could not
Alexander's death.  have been completely consolidated within so short a period is evident; but it affords a wonderful proof of the ascendency of the Greek race over
the Asiatics, that the sudden death of the great conqueror did not destroy his
unfinished work; that not a single native chief ventured to assert the independence of his country, but every province continued in the unity of the Macedonian
empire, and obeyed without dispute a Macedonian satrap."   Nor did the subsequent wars between the Macedonian generals destroy the spell of their superiority. Eumenes and Antigonus carried on their contest in Susiana and Media, and
disposed at their will of all the resources of those countries; and, after the murder of the last of Alexander's children, fourteen years after his own death, when
obedience was no longer claimed even nominally for the blood and name of the
great conqueror, still the Greek dominion was unshaken; and Seleucus, by birth
a simple Macedonian subject, sat undisturbed in Babylon, on the throne of Nebuchadnezzar, and held the country of Cyrus as one amongst his numerous provinces.
This continuance of the Macedonian power was owing, no doubt, in no small
measure, to Alexander's comprehensive wisdom.      He made a
toa th e iiatoypolicy Macedonian soldier of his guard, Peucestes,li satrap of Persia;
towards the Asitics. but the simple soldier, unfettered by any literary or philosophical
pride, did not scruple to adopt the Persian dress, and to learn the Persian language; confirming his own and his nation's dominion by those very compliances
which many of his more cultivated but less wise countrymen regarded as an
unworthy condescension to the barbarians.'3 The youth of the Asiatic provinces'4
were enlisted in the Macedonian army, were taught the discipline of the phalanx,
and the use of the Greek shield and pike; the bravest of them were admitted
into the more distinguished bodies of cavalry and infantry known by the name
of the king's companions; and the highest of the Persian nobility were made,
together with the noblest of the Macedonians, officers of the king's body-guard.
Thus, where the insulting display of superiority was avoided, its reality was felt
and acknowledged without murmuring; and when the king's officers became independent satraps, the Asiatics saw their Macedonian comrades preferred, almost
without a single exception, to these dignities, and they themselves remained the
subjects of men whom they had so lately seen nominally their equals.
Thus there was spread over Asia, from the shores of the.Egean to the Indus,
Spread of the Greek and over the whole of Egypt also, an outer covering at the least
ngu  e nd mtaone o.of Greek civilization, however thinly it might have been laid on
luaonofGreeivlztokhny                         mio         be
cities in Asia.  here and there, on the solid and heterogeneous mass below. The
native languages were not extirpated, they were not even driven, as afterwards
in the western provinces of the Roman empire, to a few mountainous or remote
districts; they remained probably in general use for all the common purposes
of life: but Greek was everywhere the medium of communication between the
the island, and made himself master of it, pointed to be satraps over each, in Justin, XIII.
Olymp. 117-1, B3. c. 312. [Diodorus, XIX. 4, and Diodorus, XVIII. 3, 89. There is scarce79.] He afterwards lost it, in consequence of ly a single Asiatic name on the list; only Oxhis great naval defeat by Demetrius near Sala- yartes, the father of Roxana, Alexander's queen,
mis, Olymnp. 118-2 [Diodorus, XX. 53], and had the country of Paropamisade; and Porus
finally recovered it after the victory of Ipsus. and Taxilas retained for a time their govern[Plutarch, Demetr. 85.]                ments on the Hydaspes and the Indus.
1o Diodorus, Fragm. Vatican. XXI. 1.   1 Arrian, de Expedit. Alexand. VI. 30.
a See the account of the division of the  1 Arrian, VII. 6.
provinces, and of the Macedonian generals ap-  '' Arrian, VII. 6, 11.




ï~~CHAP. XXXV.] RESTORATION OF NATIVE PRINCES IN ASIA.

365

natives of different countries; it was the language of the court, of the government, and of literature. Many new cities were also founded, where the predominant element of the population was Greek from the beginning: such as Antioch, Laodicea, Apamea, Seleucia in Syria,15 Seleucia on the Tigris, and many
other places built also by the same founder, Seleucus, in the several provinces of
his empire. From these an influence was communicated to other cities in their
neighborhood, which were older than the Greek conquest; and the Greek character was revived in places which, like Tarsus, claimed to be originally Grecian
settlements,'6 but in the lapse of years had become barbarized.
In this manner Asia Minor and Syria were pervaded in every part by the
language and institutions of Grece, and retained the impression  ppor Asia was soon
through many centuries down to the period of the Saracen and lostto the Greek dominion, and was again
Turkish conquerors. Upper Asia, from the Euphrates to the In- govoe d by native
dus, was effected much more slightly; and the connection of these princes, the Arsaocide.
countries with Greece was finally broken about thirty years after the period at
which we are now arrived, by the restoration of anative monarchy, in the line
of the Arsacide."  Seleucia on the Tigris then became the capital of a barbarian
sovereign; and although it, with some of the other Greek cities founded by Seleucus'8 in Media and Parthia, had not lost their national character even in the time
of Strabo, yet it was enough if they could retain it themselves; there was no
possibility of communicating it in any degree to the nations around them.
We may be excused, however, from extending our view beyond the Euphrates,
and may return to a more minute examination of those countries
Kingdoms half Greek
of western Asia and Africa which were all destined to become half barbarian exiting
successively provinces of Rome. And here, although we at first in Asiainor.
sight see nothing but the two great monarchies of Syria and Egypt, yet a nearer
view shows us some smaller kingdoms which had been overlooked by the strength
of the first Macedonian kings, and established themselves boldly against the
weakness of their successors: kingdoms ruled by a race of princes, partly or
chiefly of barbarian descent, but where the Greek character notwithstanding gave
the predominant color to their people, and even to themselves. Such were the
kingdoms of Bithynia and Pontus on the northern side of Asia Minor. Another
distinct state, if so it may be called, was formed in the 125th Olympiad by the
settlement of the Gauls to the south of Bithynia, and to the northwest of
Cappadocia: and the kingdom of Pergamus grew up not long afterwards on the
coasts of the zEgean and the Propontis; but as yet it had not come into existence.
In the 124th Olympiad Zipetes'9 or Zibmtes was still, at the age of more than

15 Appian, Syriac. 57.
te KrTa r vperil TpLtrroAlpov 7raavr,vrwv 'Apydswv Kara ~sriQty 'lo. Strabo, XIV. p. 673. One
should not pay much regard to such a story,
were there not other grounds for believing that
the Greeks at a very early period had settled on
the coasts of Cilicia. See the remarkable statement preserved in the Armenian translation of
Eusebius, and copied by Eusebius from Alexander Polyhistor or Abydenus, that Sennacherib was called down from Nineveh by the
news of a Greek descent on Cilicia, which he
repelled after a very hard-fought battle. Compare Niiebuhr's Kleine Schriften, p. 203. Might
not the sons of Javan, to whom the Phoenicians
sold Israelitisl captives at a much earlier period
(Joel iii. 6), be the Greek settlers on the Cilician
coast as well as the more remote inhabitants of
Greece itself?
17 In Olymp. 132-3, B. c. 250. This was in the
reign of Antiochus Theos. See Justin. XLI. 4,
who makes a mistake, however, as to the reign,
and Arrian, Parthic. apud 'Photium. p. 17. Ed.
Bekker. See also Fynes Clinton, Fasti Hellen
ici, Vol. III. under the year a. c. 250, A. U. c.
404.
18 Ispsoccira (4 Midia),r6rerav 'EXis7vUeL carr i
Tily 6pyriysisw rile 'A edvelpov, u5eaKc esecsy dirs
syvpoevrev ar4 flap,.3dpwv. Piolybius, X. 27.
S He reigned from 336 B. c. to 278, and was
born in 854. His father Bas was born in 397
a. c. Memnon apud Photium, p. 227, 228. Ed.
Bekker.
This reference may perhaps require explanation for some readers. Photius, who was patriarch of Constantinople in the latter half of the
ninth  century, has.left. a sort of catalogue
raisonne, or rather an abstract of the various
books which he was in the habit of reading.
In this work, which he called his library, there
are preserved abridgments of many books which
would otherwise have been altogether lost to
us; and amongst the rest there is an abstract
of a history of Heraclea on the Exuine sea, written by one Memnon, who flourished at a period
not certainly known, but which      cannot bu
placed earlier than the times of the early Roman emperors. In speaking of Heraclea, Mem



ï~~366

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXV.

Kingdom of Bithynia. seventy, reigning over the Bithynians. His father had seen the
torrent of Alexander's invasion pass by him without touching his
dominions; and whilst the conqueror was engaged in Upper Asia, the Bithynian
prince had repelled with success the attack of one of his generals, who was left
behind to complete the conquest of the countries which Alexander had merely
overrun. After Alexander's death, European Thrace and the southern coast of
the Euxine were assigned in the general partition of the empire to Lysimachus;
but the Bithynian princes held their ground against him, and still continued to
reign over a territory more or less extensive, till Lysimachus and his dominions
were conquered by Seleucus in the battle on the plain of Corus in Phrygia.
Zipates then was as jealous of Seleucus as he had been before of Lysimachus;
and after Seleucus' death, he cherished the same feelings towards his son Antiochus, and continued to resist him with success till the end of his life.
In the geography of Herodotus2 the name of Cappadocia is applied to the
Cppadoin and its di- whole breadth of Asia Mlinor eastward of the Halys, from the
visions. Northoern cap- chain of Taurus to the shores of the Euxine.  The governisadocia oPontius.
docia or Pontius.  ment of all this country had been bestowed by Darius,2' the son
of Hystaspes, on one of the Persian chiefs who had taken part with him in the
conspiracy against Smerdis, and it had remained from that time forward with his
posterity.  But in the time of Xenophon,"' the tribes along the Euxine were
practically independent of any Persian satrap, and the name of Cappadocia was
then, as afterwards, restricted to the southern and more inland part of the country. The same state of things prevailed in the early part of the reign of Philip
of Macedon; Scylax, in his Periplus, notices a number of barbarian tribes between
Colchis and Paphlagonia: yet immediately to the eastward of Paphlagonia he
placed what he calls Assyria; and Syria, as we know, was the name anciently
given by the Greeks to that country which they afterwards learnt to call
by its Persian name Cappadocia.23 But while the southern part of their old
satrapy passed into other hands, the descendants of Darius' fellow-conspirator
strengthened their hold on the northern part of their original dominion; and in
the reign of Alexander, Mithridates, son of Ariobairzanes, is called" by Diodorus,
" king," and his kingdom extended along the coast of the Euxine from the confines of Bithynia to those of Colchis.  Though a king, however, he was regarded
as a vassal by Alexander's general, Antigonus, when he, after the death of
Eumenes, became master of all Asia from the Euphrates to the _Egean; and
Antigonus suspecting his fidelity when he was on the eve of his decisive struggle
against Cassander, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus, caused him to be put to
death.5 His son, Mithridates, notwithstanding, succeeded to his father's dominions, retained them during the lifetime of Seleucus, and for a period of nearly
eighteen years afterwards, and having lived to witness the irruption26 of the Gauls
and their settlements on the very borders of his kingdom, died, after a reign of
thirty-six years, immediately before the beginning of the first Punic war, and was
succeeded in his turn by his son Ariobarzanes.
non was often led to notice the neighboring pian, Mithridat. 9, 112, makes Mithridates to
kings of Bithynia, and thus we are enabled to have been descended from Darius himself. We
give the succession and the dates of the reigns find no Mithridates or Ariobarzanes in either of
of those obscure princes. So capricious is the the lists of the conspirators against Smerdis
chance which has preserved some portions of given by Herodotus and Ctesias.
ancient history from oblivion, while it has ut-  22 Anabas. VII. 8. In his time Mithridates
terly destroyed all record of others. But Pho- was satrap of Cappadocia and Lycaonia.
tius' library, compiled in the ninth century,  2 Herodot. I. 72.  And in the Periplus of
shows what treasures of Greek literature were the Euxine ascribed to Marcianus of Heraclea
then existing at Constantinople, which in the (Hudson, Geogr. Min. p. 73), it is said that tho
course of the six following centuries perished Cappadocians were called by some White Syrirrecaverably. In this respect the French and ians, and that the old geographers made CapVenetian conquest in the thirteenth century padocia extend as far as the coast of the Euxine
was far more destructive than the Turkish con-  24 Diodorus, XVI. 90.
quest in the fifteenth.                     25 Diodorus, XX. 111.
20o Ilerodot. I. 72, 76, compared with V. 49.  6 Memnon, apud Photium, p. 220. Ed. Bek
il Polybius, V. 48. Diodorus, XIX. 40. Ap- ker. Diodorus, XX. 111.




ï~~CHAP. XXXV.]

THE GREEK CITIES OF ASIA.

367

Southern Cappadocia meanwhile had pssed before the conquest of Alexander
into the hands of a satrap named Ariarathes,7 to whom Diodorus
gives the title of king. Like every other prince and state in Asia, Southern Cappad.
he had been unable to resist the power of the Macedonian invasion, but Alexander's death broke, as he supposed, the spell of the Greek dominion, and Ariarathes ventured to dispute the decision of the council of generals which had assigned Cappadocia to Eumenes, and to retain the possession of it himself. Such
an example of resistance, if successful, might have at once dissolved the Macedonian empire, and Perdiccas hastened to put it down. He encountered Ariarathes,8 defeated him, made him prisoner, and crucified him; and then, according to the arrangement of the council, bestowed the government of Cappadocia
on Eumenes. The nephew and heir of Ariarathes, who also bore his name, took
refuge" in Armenia, and there waited for better times. He saw the Macedonian
power divided against itself; Perdiccas, his uncle's conqueror, had been killed by
his own soldiers; Eumenes, who had been made satrap of Cappadocia, had been
put to death by Antigonus; and Antigonus, who had become sovereign of all
Asia Minor, was engaged in war with Seleucus the ruler of Mesopotamia and
the eastern provinces. Amidst their quarrels Ariarathes, with the help of the
prince of Armenia, made his way back to his country, drove out the Macedonian
garrisons by which it was occupied, and made himself king of Cappadocia.
The sovereignty of a native prince gratified the national feelings of the people,
while from a Greek ruler they may have derived some improve- All the Asiatic govern.
ments in art and civilization.  But from neither were they like to oYntsarhehee ereek
or barbarian, were alike
receive the blessings of just and good government; and in this re- oppressive and corrupt.
spect, probably, the Greek and barbarian rulers were perfectly on a level with
each other. From time immemorial, indeed, in Asia, government had seemed to
have no other object than to exact from the people the largest possible amount
of revenue, and the system of finance consisted merely in the unscrupulous practice of oppression and fraud.  Never was there a more disgraceful monument of
an unprincipled spirit in such matters, than that strange collection of cases of
open robbery or fraudulent dealing, which was so long ascribed to Aristotle, and
which still is to be found amongst his works, under the title of the second book
of the Economics. Its real date and author are unknown;3U but it must have
been written for the instruction of some prince or state in Asia, and it gives a
curious picture of the ordinary ways and means of a satrap or dynast, as well as
of the expedients by which they might supply their ordinary occasions.    "A
satrap's revenue," says the writer,' "arises from six sources: from his tithes of
the produce of all the land in his satrapy; from his domains; from   his customs; from his duties levied on goods within the country, and his market duties;
from his pastures; and, sixthly, from his sundries," amongst which last are reckoned a poll-tax," and a tax on manufacturing labor. And amongst a king's ways
and means is expressly mentioned, a tampering with the currency, and a raising
or lowering the value of the coin33 as it might suit his purposes.
But far above the kingdoms of Asia, whether Greek or semi-barbarian, were
those free Greek cities which lined the whole coast of Asia Minor, ree reek cities e
from Trapezus, at the south-eastern corner of the Euxine, to Soli the coasts of Asia Miand Tarsus, with their Greek or half Greek population, at the nor.
mouth of the Gulf of Issus, and almost on the frontier of Syria. Of these Greek
cities, Sinope and Heraclea were the most famous on the north coast; the shore
27 Diodorus, XXXI. Excerpt. Photii.    3i fort Rl d c  If rv 7rpuod v ar yS, dI rWV
s Diodorus, XXXI. apud Photium, and iv r idx  i   yrdarwv esvoivwv,  rra 4sropfsv, acra reXVIII. 16.                             Av, drforono adarov, ad rw  aiawv. (Economic.
" Diodorus, XXXI. apud Phot.        II. 1
1o See the article on this subject in Niebuhr's  32 Er 3/, la r v siXXwv, xuKsÂ~ dXat6v rt xai
Kleine Schriften, p. 412, and another by Mr. xcpvd(itov srrposayopcsuvo v.
Lewis, in the first volume of the Philological  5preq r vpwrpa Myw, To7OP Kai r6rS TLOV
Museum.                                srvvov rorr.




ï~~368

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. =1V

of the.Egean was covered with towns whose names had been famous from remote ages; but the noblest state, not of Asia Minor only, but almost of the
whole world, was the great and free and high-minded commonwealth of Rhodes.
The island of Rhodes, till nearly the end of the Peloponnesian war, was divided
Rhodes. Its wise and between the three Dorian cities, Lindus,34 Ialysus, and Camirus.
good government, and But in the 93d Olympiad, about three years before the battle of
the just and heroic spirit
of its oitizens.  Jgospotami, the three states agreed to found a common capital,35
to which they gave the name of the island, and from that time forwards the city
of Rhodes became eminent amongst the cities of the Greek name. It was built
on the northern side of the island, after a plan given by Hippodamus of Miletus,36 the most famous architect of his age; and it stood partly on the low ground
nearly at the level of the sea, and partly, like Genoa, on the side of the hill,
which formed a semicircle round the lower part of the town.     Rhodes was famous alike in war and peace; the great painter, Protogenes, enriched it with
pictures of the highest excellence, and which were universally admired; the
famous colossal figure of the sun, more than a hundred feet in height, which
bestrode the harbor's mouth, was reputed one of the wonders of the world; and
the heroic resistance of the Rhodians against Demetrius Poliorcetes was no less
glorious than the defence of the same city against the Turks in later times by the
knights of St. John. But Rhodes could yet boast of a better and far rarer glory,
in the justice and mutual kindness which distinguished her political institutions,
and the social relations of her citizens;37 and, above all, in that virtue so rare in
every age, and almost unknown to the nations of antiquity, a spirit of general
benevolence, and of forbearance even towards enemies. The naval power of
Rhodes was great, but it was employed, not for purposes of ambition, but to put
down piracy." And in the heat of the great siege of their city, when Demetrius
did not scruple to employ against them the pirates9 whose crimes they had repressed, and when a thousand ships, belonging to merchants of various nations,
had come to the siege, like eagles to the carcass, to make their profit out of the
expected plunder of the town, and out of the sale of its citizens as slaves, this
noble people rejected with indignation the proposal of some ill-judging orators,
to pull down the statues of Antigonus and Demetrius,4Â~ and resolved that their
present hostility to those princes should not tempt them to destroy the memorials of their former friendship. The Rhodians, in the midst of a struggle for
life and death, allowed the statues of their enemies to stand uninjured in the
heart of their city. The Romans, after all danger to themselves was over, could
murder in cold blood the Samnite general, C. Pontius, to whom they owed not
only the respect due to a brave enemy, but gratitude for the generosity with
which he had treated them in his day of victory.
I have thus attempted to give a sketch of the state of Asia in the 125th OlymThe litertrefthipiad; but it should be remembered, that although the Greek litYperiod. a al.ostwhoi- erature of this period was very voluminous, yet it has so entirely
perished.     perished, that hardly a single writer has. escaped the wreck.
Thus we know scarcely more of Greece and Asia in the middle of the fifth century of Rome, than we know of Rome itself; that is, we have in both cases the
skeleton of political and military events, but we have no contemporary pictures
of the real state of either nation. Almost the sole remains of the Greek literature of this period are, perhaps, that treatise on public economy or finance, which
has been falsely ascribed to Aristotle,1 and the corrupt fragments of Dicmear4 Thucydides, VIII. 44.                 3 Diodorus, XX. 82, 83.
n Diodorus, XIII. 75.                   40 Diodorus, XX. 98.
38 Compare Strabo, XIV. p. 843, and Aristot.  41 That it is not Aristotle's work seems to me
Politic. II. 6, and Diodorus, XIX. 45.  certain; but I do not think that it can be much
3 Strabo, XIV. p. 652,.653, wroXrevojdv; cdX- later than Aristotle's age, for the writer appears
Acra rsv 'EXXvwv, is the character given of to regard the dominion of Alexander as still
Rhodes by Diodorus, XX. 81.              being one governed by the king, with his saSDiodorus, XXI. 81. Strabo, XIV. p. 652.  traps in the several provinces, a notion which




ï~~CHAP. XXXV.]

SICILY-SYRACUSE.

369

chus, a scholar of Aristotle, and a friend of Theophrastus, on the topography of
Greece. And not only the contemporary, but the later literature, which might
have illustrated these times, has also for the most part perished; the entire and
connected history of Diodorus ends for us with the 119th Olympiad, and the
history of the subsequent years can be gleaned only from scattered and meagre
sources; from one or two of the lives of Plutarch, from Justin's abridgment, from
the mere sketches contained in Appian, and from the fragments of the chronologers, which are exclusively chronological, preserved to us by Eusebius.
The names of Sicily, of Syracuse, and of Agathocles, are never once mentioned
in the ninth and tenth books of Livy, while he is giving the his- Sicily. The Roman,
mst have  regarded
tory of the second and third Samnite wars; nor would any one ith nxiaty e reg ret
suspect, from his narrative, that there had existed during a period power of Agathocles.
of twenty-eight years, from 436 to about 464 or 465,42 separated from Italy only
by a narrow strait, one of the greatest powers ard one of the most remarkable
men to be found at that time in the world. But this is merely one of the conse.
quences of the absence of all Roman historians contemporary with the fifth century. Livy did and could only copy the annalists of the seventh, or of the middle of the sixth century, and the very oldest of these, separated by an interval
of a hundred years from the Samnite wars, and having no original historian older
than themselves, did but put together such memorials of the past as happened
to be still floating on the stream of time, stories which had chanced to be preserved in particular families, or which had lived in the remembrance of men
generally. Thus, as I have before observed, the military history of the Samnite
wars is often utterly inexplicable: the detail of marches, the objects aimed at in
each campaign, the combinations of the generals, and the exact amount of their
success, are lost in oblivion; but particular events are sometimes given in great
detail, and anecdotes of remarkable men have been preserved, while their connection with each other has perished. Agathocles never made war with the Romans, and his name therefore did not occur in the triumphal Fasti of any great
Roman family. What uneasiness his power gave to the senate; how gladly they
must have seen his arms employed in Africa;43 how anxiously they must have
watched his movements when his fleet invaded and conquered the Liparman
islands,44 or when he crossed the Ionian gulf, and defended Corcyra with success against the power of Cassander;45 above all, when he actually landed in
Italy, with Etruscan and Ligurian soldiers in his service, and formed an alliance
with the Apulians and Peucetians or Pediculans,46 to assist him in his conquest of
Bruttium: this no Roman tradition recorded, and therefore no later annalist has
mentioned; but they who can represent to themselves the necessary relations of
events, can have no difficulty in conceiving its reality.
It is mentioned also that Agathocles,47 in his African wars, had many Samnite
soldiers in his army as well as Etruscans, and in the year 446 or 447, an Etrus
certainly may have outlasted the life of Alexander himself, for his generals for several years
professed to be the subjects of his infant son,
but which must have passed away, at any rate
within a few years, when the generals assumed
severally the kingly diadem.
42 The beginning of Agathocles' dominion is
placed by Diodorus in Olymp. 115-4, which, according to his synchronism, is the year of the
zonsulship of M. Foslius and L. Plautius, and
the ninth year of the second Samnite war. His
death cannot be determined exactly, because
of the confusions and different systems of the
Roman chronology. It would fall in Olymp.
122-4, or B. c. 289; but whether that year would
coincide with the consulship of M. Valerius
and Q. Ciedicius, one year after the end of the
third Samnite war, or with one of the two succeeding consulships, it is impossible to fix
24

certainly.  Agathocles reigned in all twentyeight years. See Diodorus, XXI. 12. Fragm.
Iloeschel.
43 During four years, from Olymp. 117-3 to
118-2 inclusive; that is, during the Etruscan
campaigns of Q. Fabius in the second Samnite
war.
44 In Olymp. 119-1, the last year of the second
Samnite war. Diodorus, XX..101.
4 In the 120th Olympiad, but the exact year
is not known, and therefore, somewhere about
the beginning of the third Samnite war. Diodorus, XXI. 2. Fragm. Hoeschel.    Compare
also Fragm. Vatican, XXI. 2.
46 About the same period, just after his expedition to Corcyra. Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel,
XXI. 8, 4.
*4 Diodorus, XX. 11 64.




ï~~370

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXV

can fleet of eighteen ships" came to his relief at Syracuse, when
His  connection  with
soe ofth tions of he was blockaded by the Carthaginians, and enabled him to defeat
Ialy.         the enemy and effect his passage once more to Africa. This was
three or four years before the end of the second Samnite war, and just after
the submission of the principal Etruscan states to Rome, in consequence of the
great successes of Q. Fabius. We are told, also, that at one time the Tarentines49
applied to him to command their forces against the Messapians and Lucanians,
and that he went over to Italy accordingly, which, though the date is not mentioned, must have taken place in the latter part of his reign, when he was making war upon the Bruttians; that is, as nearly as we can fix it, in the 120th or
121st Olympiad, whilst the third Samnite war was raging. It is strange that
neither the Samnites nor the Etruscans ever asked him to aid them against Rome,
or, if they did, that he should not have been tempted to engage in so great a
contest. But the nearer interest of humbling the Carthaginians, and of establishing his power on the south coast of Italy, prevented him from penetrating
through the straits of Messana, and sending a fleet to the mouth of the Tiber.
And no doubt, if he had attacked the Romans, they would have formed a close
alliance with Carthage against him, as they did shortly afterwards against Pyrrhus; nay, it is probable that the renewal of the old league between the two
countries, which took place in 448,50 may have been caused in some degree by
their common fear of Agathocles, who had at that period finally evacuated Africa,
but had not yet made peace with Carthage.
Agathocles died in the last year of the 122d Olympiad, about three years after
Distracted state of si_ the end of the third Samnite war. Had he lived fifty years earlier,
ey dria his g overn- he, like Dionysius, would have been known by no other title than
moait. Misery of hii.                   ae        onw          ohrtteta
later years.  that of tyrant; but now the successors of Alexander had accustomed men to tolerate the name of king, in persons who had no hereditary right
to their thrones; and Agathocles certainly as well deserved the title as Lysimachus, or the ruffian Cassander. Polybius accused Timmus of calumniating him;
but surely his own character of him must be no less exaggerated on the other
side, when he says5t that although in the beginning of his career he was most
bloody, yet when he had once firmly established his power, he became the
gentlest and mildest of men. Like Augustus, he was too wise to indulge in
needless cruelty; but his later life was not so peaceful as that of Augustus, and
whenever either cruelty or treachery seemed likely to be useful, he indulged in
both without scruple. The devastation and misery of Sicily during his reign
must have been extreme. Dinocrates, a Syracusan exile,"2 was at the head of an
army of 20,000 foot and 3000 horse, and had made himself master of several
cities, and so well was he satisfied with his buccaneer condition, that he rejected
Agathocles' offer of allowing him to return to Syracuse, and of abdicating his own
dominibn that the exiles might return freely. Then Agathocles called the Carthaginians over to put Dinocrates down; and gave up to them as the price of
their aid all the cities which they had formerly possessed in Sicily. The exiles
were afterwards defeated, and Dinocrates was now glad to make his submission;53
and from this time, A. u. c. 449, we hear of no further civil wars or massacres
in Sicily, till the period immediately preceding Agathocles' death, which took
place sixteen or seventeen years later. But his last days were full of misery.
His son, Agathocles,54 was murdered by his grandson Archagathus, and the old
tyrant, who was now reduced almost to the brink of the grave by a painful and
hopeless disorder, dreaded lest Archagathus should murder the rest of his family
as soon as he should himself be no more. Accordingly, he resolved to send his
wife,.Texena,5t with his two young sons, and all his treasure, to Egypt, her naD iodorus, XX. 61. In Olymp. 118-2.    2 Diodorus, XX. 77, 78.
* Strabo, VI. p. 280.                   3 Diodorus, XX. 89, 90.
5 Livy, IX. 43.                        5 Diodorus, XXI. 12. Fragm. Hoeschel.
n1 Polybius, IX. 28.                   5 Justin, XXIII. 2. The account of the part,




ï~~OHAP. XXXV.]

DEATH OF AGATHOCLES.

371

tive country, whilst he himself should be left alone to die. On his death, the
old democracy56 was restored without a struggle, his property was confiscated,
and his statues thrown down. But it was a democracy in name only, for we
find that the same man, Hicetas, was continued ia'n the office of captain-general
for the next nine years57 successively; and so long a term of military command
in times of civil and foreign war was equivalent to a despotism or tyranny.
At the moment of Agathocles' death, there was a Syracusan army58 in the
field, consistinog, as usual, chiefly of mercenaries, and commanded
Excesses committed by
by the tyrant's grandson, Archagathus. But Mmnon, who is said the mercenary soldiers.
S  They occupy Messana.
in Diodorus' account to have poisoned Agathocles, and who was     yoccpy Messana.
now with the army of Archagathus, contrived to murder Archagathus, and to get
the army into his own hands. He then attempted to get possession of Syracuse,
and to make himself tyrant, and finding himself resisted by the new government
and the captain-general, Hicetas, he too called in the Carthaginians. Syracuse
was quite unable to resist, and submitted to the 'terms which they imposed.
They gave 400 hostages, and consented to receive back all the exiles, under which
term  all Maenon's army were included. What was become of Mmnon himself
we know not; but the mercenaries, being mostly Samnite or Lucanian foreigners,
were still looked upon as an inferior caste to the old Syracusan citizens; and as
these last formed the majority of the people, none of the new citizens could ever
get access to any public office. This led to fresh disturbances, but at last the
strangers agreed to sell their properties within a certain time, and to leave Sicily.
They accordingly came to Messana,55 in order to cross the strait and return to
Italy; but being admitted into the city, they rose by night and massacred the
principal inhabitants, and kept the women and the city for themselves. From
this time forwards the inhabitants of Messana were known by the name of Mamertini, sons of Mamers or Mars, that being the name by which these Italian soldiers of fortune had been used to call themselves.
While Messana had thus fallen into the hands of a barbarian soldiery, the condition of the rest of Sicily was scarcely happier. Hicetas had the Tyrants i the several
power of a tyrant in Syracuse, Phintias6Â~ was tyrant in Agrigen- cities of Sicily.
tum, Tyndarion in Tauromenium, Heraclides in Leontini, and other men whose
names have not reached posterity exercised the same dominion in the smaller
cities. Hicetas and Phintias made war upon each other, made plundering inroads
into each other's territories, and mutually reduced the frontier districts to a state
of utter desolation. Gela was destroyed by Phintias, and its inhabitants removed
to a new town which he founded on the coast near the mouth of the Himera,
and called after his own name. And the Mamertines availed themselves of all
this misery to extend their own power, even t: the opposite side of the island;
they sacked Camarina and Gela,6' which had been again partially inhabited after
its destruction by Phintias, and obliged several of the Greek cities to pay them
tribute. Thus the Greek power in Sicily, which had been so formidable under
Agatholes, was now quite prostrated, and the whole island seemed likely to
become the spoil of the Carthaginians and Mamertines. This course of events
on one side of the strait, and the extension of the Roman dominion a few years
later to the extreme coast of Bruttium on the other side, tended inevitably to
bring about a collision between Rome and Carthage, such as Pyrrhus foretold
when he found it impossible to revive and consolidate the Greek interest, and
restore in a manner the dominion of Agathocles.
ing between Agathocles and his family is given expressions are, 'lrscf vvi'a rg 6vvaerctiasby Justin with much simplicity and good feel- ite/3dhXeraL is rvervpavvi3o.
ing, and it is much to his credit that he pre-  n Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXI. 12, 13.
ferred this story to the horrible and incredible  89 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXI. 13. Potales about the last days of Agathocles which lybius, I. 7.
Diodorus has copied apparently from Timnus.  60 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXII. 2, 11.
s6 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXI. 12.  oz Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIII. 2. Pc7 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXII. 6. His lybius, I. 8.




ï~~372

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXV

And now, before I speak of Pyrrhus himself and the fortunes of his early years,
Greece. Its degraded we must turn our eyes to Greece, the worn-out and cast-off skin
od Get  Atraoetof from which the living serpent had gone forth to carry his youth
the Greeks to throwr
off the Macedonian and vigor to other lands. Greek power, Greek energy, Greek
yoke after the death of  beery
Seleu.us.      genius, might now be found indeed anywhere rather than in
Greece.   Drained of all its noblest spirits, for so hopeless was the prospect at
home, that any foreign service62 offered a temptation to the Greek youth to enter
it; yet exposed to the miseries of war, and eagerly contended for by rival sovereigns, because its possession was still thought the most glorious part of every
dominion; mocked by every despot in turn with offers of liberty, yet as soon as
it was delivered from the yoke of one, condemned under some pretence to receive
the garrison of another into its citadels; Greece, in the middle of the fifth century of Rome, seemed utterly exhausted, and lay almost as dead. Demetrius
Poliorcetes had retained his hold upon it after his Asiatic dominion had been lost
by the event of the battle of Ipsus; and even when he himself engaged in his
last desperate attempt upon Asia, and whilst he was passing the last years of his
life as a prisoner in the hands of Seleucus, Greece was still, for the most part,
under the power of his son, Antigonus Gonatas. But upon the death of Seleucus Nicator, when Antigonus was disputing the sovereignty of Macedonia with
Ptolemy Ceraunus, Seleucus' murderer, the Greeks made63 a feeble attempt to
assert their liberty.  Sparta once more appeared at the head of the national confederacy, and Areus, the Spartan king, was intrusted with the conduct of the
war.   The Greeks attacked.Etolia, which appears at this time to have been in
alliance with Antigonus, but they were repulsed with loss; and then, as usual,
jealousy broke out, and the confederacy was soon dissolved. Yet, almost immediately afterwards, there was formed the first germ of a new confederacy, which
existed from this time forwards till the total extinction of Grecian independence,
and in which there was revived a faint image of the ancient glory of Greece, the
pale martinmas summer of her closing year. This confederacy was the famous
Achaian or Achman league.
The Achaian name is conspicuous in the heroic ages of Greece, and in her last
Formation oftheAche- decline, but during the period of her greatness is scarcely ever
an league.     brought before our notice.  The towns of Achaia were small and
unimportant, and the people lived for many generations in happy obscurity; but
after the death of Ptolemy Ceraunus, when dread of a Gaulish invasion kindled
a general spirit of exertion, and when Antigonus was likely to have sufficient
employment on the side of Macedonia, four Achmean cities,t4 Dyme, Patre, Trituea, and Pharme, formed a federal union for their mutual defence. According to
the constitution of the league, each member was to appoint in succession, year
by year, two captains-general,5 and one secretary, or civil minister, to conduct
the affairs of the union. These four states, like the forest cantons of Switzerland,
were the original members, and in a manner the founders of the confederacy;
and at the period of Pyrrhus' invasion of Italy, it consisted of these alone.
It is not possible to discover the condition of the several states of Greece,
however much their ancient fame must excite an interest even for
The cities of Peooesmostl y he~tPdo  their last decay.  But generally they were subjected to the Masubjectioa nbytyrants. cedonian king, Antigonus,66 either directly, by having a Macedonian garrison in their citadels, or indirectly, as being ruled by a tyrant from
among their own people, who for his own sake upheld the Macedonian supremacy. Sicyon6 had been governed by various tyrants ever since it had been
taken by Demetrius Poliorcetes, when he destroyed the lower town, and removed
IDiodorus XX. 40.                    He says that when Aratus delivered Sicyon in
* Justin, XXIV. 1.                     251 B. c. some of the exiles whom he then re"Polybius, II. 41.                     stored had been in banishment fifty years. And
8 Polybius, II. 48.                    Cicero, copying from the same source however,
" Polybius, II. 41. IX. 29.            namely, Aratus' own memoirs, says the same
S Diodorus, XX, 102. Pnlutarch, Aratus, 9. thing. De Officiis, II. 28.




ï~~CUSP. XXXV.]

NORTHERN GREECE.

373

the whole population within the precincts of the old citadel. Megalopolis, about
this time must have been under the dominion of its tyrant, Aristodemus, of Phigalea, who owed his elevation to factions in the oligarchy by which the city had
been before governed. In Argos69 Aristippus had the ascendency, through the
support of king Antigonus. The Acropolis of Corinth"Â~ was held by one Alexander (we know not when or by what means he won it), and the strength of the
place enabled him to enjoy a certain degree of independence; so that, after his
death, Antigonus was obliged to employ stratagem in order to get it for himself
out of the hands of Alexander's widow, Nicaea. Society was generally in a state
of disorder, robbery and plundering forays were almost universal, and Greece
could no longer boast that she had banished the practice of carrying arms in
peace;71 for men now went armed so commonly, that conspirators could meet
and arm themselves in open day without exciting any suspicion.
Something more of life was to be seen in the states to the north of the isthmus
of Corinth. When the Gauls invaded Greece in the second year Northern Greece. State
of the 125th Olympiad, Athens, Megara, Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, of ootia. ]ieordar
and Altolia sent a confederate army to Thermopylae to opposeat Theb'
them; and the Boeotian force72 amounted to 10,000 heavy-armed infantry, and
500 horse, a number equal to that which won the battle of Delium against the
whole power of Athens in the Peloponnesian war. Thebes had twice revolted
from Demetrius Poliorcetes, and had been twice reduced by him,3 and after his
second conquest of it he had pulled down its walls4 and left it defenceless.
Antigonus Gonatas retained possession of it till he succeeded in establishing himself in Macedonia; then his hold upon southern Greece was relaxed, except on
those cities where he still kept a garrison of his soldiers, or where a tyrant who
looked to him for protection governed almost as his officer. But Boeotia seems
to have been left to itself, with nearly its old constitution; according to which
Thebes enjoyed a certain supremacy over the other cities, but nothing like that
dominion which she had claimed in the days of her greatness. The country was
safe and flourishing when compared with Peloponnesus, and Tanagra is mentioned5
as a place at once prosperous and deserving its prosperity; its citizens were
wealthy yet simple in their manners, just, and hospitable. Thebes, on the contrary, is described as a scene of utter anarchy; acts of violence were constantly
committed with impunity, and justice was so evaded or overborne by violence,
that twenty-five or even thirty years sometimes elapsed before the injured party
could obtain a hearing for his cause before the magistrates. This was owing
principally to the numerous societies or clubs which existed, avowedly for mere
objects of convivial entertainments; but which becoming extremely wealthy, for
men without children, and even some who had children, often left all their property to their club, were enabled no doubt to corrupt justice, in order to screen

6 Pausanias, VIII. 27. He puts Aristodemus,
however, too early, when he says that he became tyrant soon after the Lamian war, and
confounds Acrotatus, son of Areus, with Acrotatus, son of Cleomenes. In 818 B. c. Megalopolis was governed by a strict oligarchy. See Diodorus, XVIII. 68. Compare Polybius, X. 25.
69 Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 80.
70 Plutarch, Aratus, 16, 17.
1 Plutarch, Aratus, 6.
a Pausanias, X. 20.
" Plutarch, Demetrius, 39, 40.
4 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXI. 10.
7 Dicnarchus, Stat. Grec. p. 18. Ed. Hudson. The inscriptions of this period show that
there was still a government for all Boeotia,
Koiv IIapl3oeriv rvvi3pcov, and Bceotarchs, as in
ancient times; there was also a magistrate
called epxwv iv KovL BoLrwTv, or epxcv BoLwrois,
who seems to have been the head of the Boeotarchs, and of whom there is no mention, I be
lieve, in the older constitution. Bdckh thinks
that it was one of the prerogatives of Thebes,
that this magistrate should be always a Theban.
Corpus Inscript. Vol. I. p. 729.
6 Polybius, XX. 6. Dicnarchus, Stat. Grec.
p. 15, et seqq. Hudson. The text in these fragments of Dicearchus is often hopelessly corrupt; but they seem also, independently of
such faults, to have been interpolated by some
more modern writer, or rather their substance
to have been given by him in his own language,
not without many additions. We know the
manner in which old topographical accounts
are copied by one writer after another, each of
whom adds something to them of his own; and
thus the work of Dionsarchus seems to have
formed the groundwork of the existing fragments, which have been wrought up by a later
writer, and altered both in their language and
matter.




ï~~374

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CII XXXV

the outrages of their members. A strong but not improbable picture of the
worst abuses of such clubs, which even in their best state, and in the healthiest
condition of society, are always fraught with evil either politically or morally.
Forty years had now passed since Athens had lost Demosthenes. His death,
as was most fitting, coincided exactly with the period of his counAthens. The democncyovethrewn byAn. try's complete subjection; within a month" after Antipater had
tipter.        established a Macedonian garrison in Munychia, Demosthenes escaped his vengeance by a sudden and painless death" in the island of Calauria.
The shade of Xerxes might have rejoiced to see that his own people had a share
in the humiliation of his old enemy; for in the army with which Antipater crushed
the Greek confederates in the Lamian war there were Persian archers, slingers,
and cavalry," who had been brought to his aid from Asia by Craterus, and who
thus strangely found, in their actual subjection to a Greek power, an opportunity
of revenging the fatal days of Salamis and Platea. That great democracy, with
all its faults, by far the noblest example of free and just government which the
world had then witnessed, was again destroyed by Antipater, after a duration of
seventy-one years since its restoration by Thrasybulus. All citizens whose property fell short of 2000 drachmme were deprived of their political rights; and
more than half of the Athenian people were thus disfranchised.  Lands in Thrace
were offered to them, and they migrated thither in great numbers;80 whilst the
remnant, who were now exclusively the Athenian people, were left in mockery
to the enjoyment of Solon's laws, while a Macedonian garrison occupied Munychin, ind commanded the entrance into the harbor of Piraeus.
Then followed a period of fifteen years, during which Athens remained subAnd onny restore ject, first to Antipater and then to Cassander his son; and alAnd neminally restored
by.emetriu   lor- though the qualification of a citizen was reduced by Cassander
cetes.         to 1000 drachme, only half of the sum fixed by his father, and
thus the internal government became somewhat more popular, yet still, whilst
Munychia and Pirmus were in the power of a foreign prince, Athens could have
no independent national existence.  In the year of Rome 447, three years before
the end of the second Samnite war, Cassander's garrisons were driven out by
Demetrius Poliorcetes,8" the old democracy was restored, and the Athenians were
declared to be free.  But it was only a shadow of the "fierce democratic," and
of the real freedom of the days of Pericles and Demosthenes. The utmost baseness of flattery was lavished on Demetrius, such flattery as was incompatible with
any self-respect, and which confessed that Athens was dependent3 for the greatest national blessings not on itself, but on foreign aid.
A few years afterwards, when his fortune was ruined by the event of the
emetrius, himself o- battle of Ipsus, the Athenians refused to receive him into their
A lenia Ah.ivea.d hcity; and this so stung him that when his affairs began to mend,
garrisons.     he laid siege to Athens, and having obliged it to surrender, he not
only occupied Piraeus and Munychia, but put a garrison into the city itself, converting the hill" of the Museum into a Macedonian citadel. It was recovered
7 Plutarch, in Demosth. 28.            Sons of the brave who fought at Marathon!
7 Ibid. 80. The common story was that De- Your feeble spirits. Greece her head hath
mosthenes killed himself by a poison which he  bowed
carried about him; but his nephew, Demo- As if the wreath of Liberty thereon
chares, expressed his belief that his death was Would fix itself as smoothly as a cloud,
natural; or rather, in his own language, "that Which, at Jove's will, descends on Pelion's
the gods, in their care for him, had rescued  top.
him from the cruelty of the Macedonians by a  *
speedy and gentle death."               Ah! that a conqueror's word should be so
" Diodorus, XVIII. 16.                      dear!
8 Diodorus, XVIII. 18.                 Ah! that a boon could shed such rapturous
8' Diodorus, XVIII. 74.                     joys 1
8 Diodorus, XX. 45, 46.                A gift of that which is not to be given
SWho can help remembering Mr. Words- By all the blended powers of earth and hearWorth's beautiftil lines?                    en."

" o ve prop,

p  Plutarch, Demetr. 80, 84. Pausanias, I. 25




ï~~CHAr. XXXV.].ETOLIA.

375

again, when he had been driven out of Macedonia by Lysimachus and Pyrrhus,
by one of the last successful efforts of Athenian valor. Olympiodorus,86 who
had already acquired the reputation of a soldier and a general, led the whole
population of Athens into the field; he defeated the Macedonians, stormed the
Museum, and delivered Piraeus and Munychia. This was in the second year of
the 123d Olympiad: so that when Pyrrhus sailed for Italy seven years afterwards, Athens was really independent, for she had gained her freedom, not by
the gift of another, but by her own sword.
This, however, was almost a solitary gleam of light amidst the prevailing
darkness. In general there were neither soldiers, statesmen, nor Inteectual state a
orators now to be found in Athens. The great tragedians had Athens. Zeno and Eplong since become extinct; and Thucydides has neither in his irus.
own country, whether free or in subjection, nor in any other country or age of
the world, found a successor to rival him. Plato's divine voice was silent, and
the "Master of the Wise"" had left none to inherit his acuteness, his boundless
knowledge, and his manly judgment, at once so practical and so profound. The
theatre, indeed, could boast of excellence, but it was only in the new comedy, the
sickliest refinement of the drama, and a sure mark of a declining age. Still there
was intellectual life of no common kind existing at this time in Athens. There
were now living and teaching within her walls, two men whose doctrines in philosophy were destined to influence most widely and lastingly the characters and
conduct of their fellow-creatures, the founders of the two great rival sects of the
later age of the Roman republic,-Epicurus and Zeno.
But Bceotia and Athens were no longer the principal powers of northern
Greece; the half-barbarous Atolians had risen to such an emi-Eti. Its ads o,,  to  c  o  ia. v ndv n " Its  b nde  of
nence, that we find them able, at a somewhat later period, to con- adventurers or  itend single-handed with the kingdom of Macedon. Their country rates."
was still, as in the days of Thucydides, separated from Acarnania1 by the Achelous, and was strdtched in length from the shores of the Gulf of Corinth to
those of the Malian Bay, at the back of Locris, Doris, and Phocis. But a sort
of federal government succeeded, in later times, to the multitude of scattered and
independent villages which formerly composed the.Etolian nation; a general
assembly of deputies from all the Etolian towns met every year at Thermum to
elect a captain-general," a master of the horse, and a secretary for the general
government of the confederacy; great fairs89 and festivals, to which the people
came up from all parts of the country, were held at the same place; and Thermum thus grew in wealth and magnificence, and its houses became noted for the
magnificence of their furniture, as the inhabitants, on these great occasions,
opened their doors to receive all comers, with a hospitality not common in Greece
since the heroic ages. But there were other points in which the Etolians equally
retained the habits of an early state of society; in the best days of Grecian civ
y Plutarch, Demetr. 46. Pausanias, I. 26.
a  Vidi '1 maestro di color che sanno
Seder tra filosofica famiglia."
DANTE, Inferno, IV.
7 It had, however, acquired several towns
Atuated in its neighborhood which had formerly been independent. The date of these several
acquisitions is difflult to fix precisely. The
Mtolians had occupied the famous Cirrhnan
plain just after the death of Seleucus; a repetition of the old Phocian sacrilege, which was
the cause or pretence of a general attack upon
them by the Peloponnesian Greeks under the
supremacy of Sparta. But in this new sacred
war, the authors of the sacrilege were more
fortunate than the Phocians of old, and the
iEtolianms repelled their assailants with great
loss  Justin, XXIV. 1. About the same time,

in the year before the Gaulish invasion, the
iEtolians obtained possession of Heraclea in
Trachinia. (Pausanias, X. 20, Â~ 9.) At a later
period, Naupactus was become an        Etoiian
town, but we do not know when it was conquered.
SPolybius, V. 8, XXII. 15, Â~ 10. The captain-general and secretary were officers also of
the Achman league.     Whether the     Etolian
leagute was formed on the Achan model, or
whether it existed earlier, we cannot tell.
o9 yopai scai ravny6bspm. Polyb. V. 8. These
fairs and religious festivals, held along with the
assemblies for political purposes, remind us of
the great Etruscan assemblies at the temple of
Voltumna. The fairs seemed to imply that the
towns in Atolia were still little better than villages, so as to have but few shops for the regular supply of commodities.




ï~~376

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Cxr. XXXV

ilization, when life and property were scarcely less secure at Athens than they
are at this day in the best governed countries of Europe, the.Etolians went
always armed;90 and the character of a robber was still deemed honorable
amongst them, as it had been in all parts of Greece in the Homeric age. As
the nation became more powerful, this spirit was displayed on a larger scale, and.~Etolian adventurers, countenanced, but not paid or organized, by the national
government, made plundering expeditions on their own account both by land
and sea, and were not very scrupulous in their choice of the objects of their
attack. These adventurers were called "pirates,"    a sigc, a name" which occurs
in the written language of Greece for the first time about this period, when the
long wars between Alexander's successors and the general decline of good government had multiplied the number of such marauders.
The iLEtolians will play an important part hereafter in this history, when their
Poiica relation  of quarrels with Macedon and the Achman league led them to conEtolia.        clude an alliance with Rome, and to array themselves with the
Roman armies, on their first crossing the sea to carry on war in Greece. At
present their place in the Greek political system seems not to have been definitely fixed; they were in alliance with Antigonus Gonatas9" before he obtained
possession of Macedon, at the time when their occupation of the Cirrhman plain
involved them in a sacred war with Peloponnesus, and they were also the allies
of Pyrrhus and the Epirots; but their peculiar hostility to Macedon and to the
Achmans had not as yet been called into existence. Polybius, from whom
we derive most of our knowledge of them, was too much their enemy to do
them full justice; and on the great occasion of the Gaulish invasion of Greece,
they performed their duty nobly, and no state served the common cause more
bravely or more effectually. Yet a people who made plunder their glory can
have had little true greatness; and it must have been an evil time for Greece,
when the.2Etolians became one of the most powerful and most famous of the
Grecian states.
Northward of the Ambracian gulf, and lying without the limits of ancient as
Epirns. Its varioun of modern Greece, the various Epirot tribes occupied the coast of
tibs, their "'  of the Ionian sea as far as the Acroceraunian promontory, reaching
living, a   early hso
ry and traditions.  inland as far as the central mountains which turn the streams eastward and westward, and from the western boundary of Thessaly and Macedonia.
Within these limits the Molossians, Thesprotians, Chaonians, and many other
obscurer people, had from the earliest times led the same life, and kept the
same institutions. They lived mostly in villages"93 or in small village-like towns,
scattered over the mountains, in green glades opening amidst the forests, or
along the rich valleys by which the mountains are in many places intersected,
going always armed, and, with the outward habits, retaining also much of the
cruelty and faithlessness of barbarians, attended by their dogs, a breed of surpassing excellence,94 and maintaining themselves chiefly by pasturage, their ox" Thucydides, I. 5.                      92 Justin, XXIV. 1. Dion Cassius, Fragm.
91 Polybius, IV. 3. 6. Valckenaer says that Peiresc. XXXIX.
the word 7rar  aris occurs, for the first time in  9 olKo"aL cara sca, is the character given by
the surviving Greek literature, in the Septua- Scylax of the Chaonians, Thesprotians, and
gint translation of the Bible. There it is to be Molossians equally. Periplus, p. 11. 12, Ed.
found in Job XXV. 3, and Hosea VI. 10; in Hudson. But we hear of some towns among
both instances, I think, signifying a robber by them, although of none of any considerable size
and rather than by sea. And so rparptov is or importance.
used in Genesis XLIX. 19. Thus the Scholiast  94 The ancient character of the Molcssian
on Pindar, Pyth. 62, says that reparal properly dogs is well known. Mr. Hughes found them
means of v 1bU KaKovpyoeWeTg. See Valckenaer as numerous and as fierce as they were in anon Ammonius, p. 194. The Greek translators cient days; the breed, he thinks, has in no.of the Bible could not have got the word from  respect degenerated. He describes them as,old Greece, but the robber population of Isauria " varying in color through different shades
and Cilicia, who made the name of pirate so from a dark brown to a bright dun, their long
famous about two centuries afterwards, had fur being very soft, and thick and glossy; in
probably already begun to be troublesome, and size they are about equal to an English mastiff:
to molest the Egyptian merchant vessels,  they have a long nose, delicate ears finely point




ï~~CHAP. XXXV.]

FAMILY OF PYRRHUS.

377

en95 being amongst the best of which the Greeks had any knowledge. In the heart
of their country stood the ancient temple of Dodona, a name famous for generations before Delphi was yet in existence; the earliest seat of the Grecian oracles,
whose ministers, the Selli, a priesthood of austerest life, received the answers of
the god through no human prophet, but from the rustling voice of the sacred
oaks which sheltered the temple. These traditions ascend to the most remote
antiquity: but Epirus had its share also in the glories of the heroic age, and
Pyrrhus the son of Achilles was said to have settled in the country of the Molossians after his return from Troy,9" and to have been the founder of the line of
Molossian kings. The government, indeed, long bore the character of the heroic
period; the kings, on their accession, were wont, it is said, to meet their assembled people97 at Passaron, and swore to govern according to the laws, while the
people swore that they would maintain the monarchy according to the laws.    In
later times Epirus had become connected with Macedonia by the marriage of
Olympias, an Epirot princess, with Philip the father of Alexander. Her brother,
Alexander of Epirus, was killed, as we have seen, in Italy, where he had carried
on war in defence of the Greek Italian cities against the Lucanians; and on his
death his first cousin98 Eacides succeeded to the throne..Eacides married Pthia,
the daughter of Menon of Pharsalus, a distinguished leader in the last struggle
between Greece and Macedon after the death of Alexander, and the children of
this marriage were two daughters, Troias and Deidamia, and one son, Pyrrhus.
_Eacides had taken     part with   his cousin Olympias,"9 when     Cassander
wanted to destroy all the family of Alexander in order to seatEry fortunes of r
Earty fortunes of Pyrhimself on the throne of Macedon. But Cassander had tampered      huo.0He is brueni up
with some of the Epirot chiefs; the cause of Olympias was not in exile in Illyria.
popular, and the Epirots did not wish to be involved in a quarrel with the
party which was likely to be the ruling power in Macedon. They accordingly
met in a general assembly, and deposed and banished their king.  AEacides himself was out of their power, as he was still in the field on the frontiers of Macedonia with the few soldiers who remained true to him, and his daughter Deidamia was with Olympias. But Pyrrhus, then an infant, had been left at home,
and the rebel chiefs1Â~Â~ having murdered many of his father's friends, sought for
him also to destroy him. He was hurried off in his nurse's arms by a few devoted followers, and carried safely into Illyria, where Glaucias, one of the Illyrian
kings, protected him, and as his father was killed in battle soon afterwards,'01 Pyrrhus remained under Glaucius' care, and was brought up by him along with his
own children.
Ten or eleven years afterwards, when the power of Cassander in Greece
seemed to be tottering, and Demetrius Poliorcetes had re-estab-    orecover ather
lished the democracy at Athens, Glaucias'2 entered Epirus with throne,  loses it, anda roan armed force, and restored Pyrrhus to the throne.    But again covers taai.
the face of affairs changed; the great league between Cassander, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus was formed, and Demetrius was obliged to loosen his
hold on Greece, that he might help his father in Asia; thus Cassander's party
recovered their influence in Epirus, and Pyrrhus, who was still only seventeen
years old, was driven a second time into exile. He now joined Demetrius, who,
besides their common enmity to Cassander, had married Deidamia his sister;
ed, magnificent tail, legs of a moderate length, might mislead; as, for instance, he confounds
with a body nicely rounded and compact." Tharyntas or Tharypus, the great grandfather
Travels in Albania, &c., Vol. I. p. 483.  of.Eacides, with Arybas his father, and makes
9 See Kruse's Hellas, Vol. I. p. 368, and the  tacides and Alexander brothers instead of
authorities there quoted.               cousins, unless by the term " frater" he means
8 Pausanias I. 11.                     frater patruelis" and not "frater germanus."
97 Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 56.               99 Diodorus, XIX. 36.
9 For the family of Pyrrhus, see Plutarch,  10 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 2.
Pyrrh. I. Pausanias, I. 11. Diodorus, XVI.  10 Diodorus, XIX. 74.
72, and XIX. 51. See also Justin, XVII. 83; but  10 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 3.
in his account there are some things which




ï~~378

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXV

and with him he crossed over into Asia, and was present at the battle of Ipsus.
After that great defeat he still remained faithful to Demetrius, and went as a
hostage for himo3 into Egypt, when Demetrius had concluded a separate peace
with Ptolemy Soter.    Here fortune first began to smile upon him; he obtained
the good opinion and regard of Ptolemy's queen, Berenice, and received in marriage Antigone, her daughter by a former husband. By Berenice's assistance he
was supplied with men and money, and returned once more to Epirus. His
kinsman, Neoptolemus, the son apparently of Alexander, who had died in Italy,
had been placed on the throne, when he himself had been driven from it; but
Neoptolemus was become unpopular, and Pyrrhus found many partisans. Dreading, however, lest Neoptolemus should apply to some foreign prince for aid, he
entered into a compromise with him,'04 and the two rivals agreed to share the
regal power between them. The end of such an arrangement could not be
doubtful; suspicions arose, and Pyrrhus accusing Neoptolemus of forming designs against his life, did himself what he charged his rival with meditating, and
having treacherously murdered him, after having invited him to his table as a
guest, he remained the sole sovereign of Epirus.
His old enemy Cassander died in the first year of the 121st Olympiad, five
He interferes  o years after the battle of Ipsus.  Not one of Alexander's succesquarrels between the sors had gained his power by more or worse crimes than Cassansons of Cassander.  der; and as his house had been founded in blood, by the murder
of Alexander's family, so now in its own blood was it to perish. His sons Antipater and Alexander'i5 quarrelled for his inheritance.  Antipater murdered his
own mother, Thessalonica, the daughter of the great Philip of Macedon, and halfsister of Alexander; and now the last survivor of the old royal family of the race
of Hercules. Alexander his brother applied to Pyrrhus for aid, and purchased
it by ceding to him all that the Macedonian kings had possessed on the western
side of Greece; Tymphaea and Paraumea,0 just under the central ridge which
turns the streams to the two opposite seas, and Ambracia, Acarnania, and Amphilochia, on the northern and southern shores of the Ambracian gulf. These were
added permanently to the kingdom of Pyrrhus, and he fixed his capital at Ambracia.
The price was thus paid, and Alexander drove out his brother, by Pyrrhus'
Extinetion of Cassan- help, and became king of Macedonia.  Antipater fled to Lysimader's family.  chus for protection, and was afterwards put to death by him.'0
Alexander was in his turn murdered by Demetrius Poliorcetes, who, after all his
reverses, thus established his family on the throne of Macedon; and the bloody
house of Cassander utterly perished.
Six or seven years afterwards the restless ambition of Demetrius leagued his
Pyrrhus wins Macedo- old enemies, Seleucus, Ptolemy, and Lysimachus, once more
Sand los.es it. He against him, and they encouraged Pyrrhus to invade Macedonia.
reigns over Epirus and  beb                                do               p
paris of the neighbor- Pyrrhus dethroned Demetrius,10s and obtained possession of a part
for about six years.  of his dominions, the other part being claimed by Lysimachus.
1o Plutarch, Pyrrh. 4.   '04 Ibid. 5.  tribes by Thucydides, II. 80, and it appears
10o Porphyry and Dexippus; apud Euseb. that Alexander was but restoring to Pyrrhus
Chronic. Ed. Scaliger. p. 58, 63. Plutarch, countries which geographically belonged more
Pyrrh. 6.                                to Epirus than to Macedon, and some of which
10S Plutarch, Pyrrh. 6. The present text had in earlier times been connected with it
reads TiP re Nisaiav eal Tiri rapa.ian r MaKxeo- politically.
viast. Palmer had corrected xrvsgaiav or Tvy~aav  In Stephanus Byzant. in Xaovita, there is a
instead of Nvpealav, and Niehuhr with no less quotation from Proxenus (an historian who
certainty has restored Ilapavaiav for 7rapaX'iav. wrote about Pyrrhus; see Dionys. Halic. XIX.
Reiom. Geschichte, Vol. III. p. 586. He ob- 11, Fragm. Mai. and Fynes Clinton, Fasti Helserves that irapaiavl could only mean the coast len. Vol. III. 563) enumerating the people of
between Dium and the Strymon, which it is ab- Chaonia. It runs, Tvppaiots, Tapav'tot, 'Apesovz,
surd to suppose ceded to Pyrrhus. Tymphna where K. O. Muller corrects Tvfpaoi, IIapavaios.
and Parauea, Niebuhr adds, are mentioned to- " Uber die Makedoner. N. 33." His correction
gether by Arrian, Exped. Alexand. I. 7, as and Niebuhr's mutually confirni one another.
countries which Alexander passed by on his  o107 Porphyry and Dexippus, apud Euseb. pp.
march from Illyria into Thessaly. The Pa- 58-63. Plutarch, Pyrrh. 7. Demetrius, 86.
rauans are reckoned along with the Epirot  10 Plutarch, Demetrius, 44. Pyrrh. 11.




ï~~Ca. XXXV.]

HE IS INVITED TO ITALY.

379

But at the end of seven months'09 Lysimachus made himself master of the whole
of Macedonia, and drove Pyrrhus across the mountains into his native kingdom
of Epirus. There he reigned in peace for about six years, his dominions including not Epirus only, but those other countries which had been the price of his
first interference in the quarrels of Cassander's sons, Tymphrea and Parausea on
the frontiers of Macedonia, and the coasts on both sides of the Ambracian gulf.
He united himself in an alliance with his neighbors the Â~tolians, which was renewed in the reign of his son. And thus he had leisure to ornament his new
capital, Ambracia, which he enlarged by adding to it a new quarter"0 called
after his own name, and decorated it with an unusual number of statues and
pictures.
But although Pyrrhus himself was reigning peaceably in Epirus, yet the period
which elapsed between his expulsion from Macedonia and his Ital- Revolutionsduringtht
ian expedition was marked by great revolutions elsewhere. Ptol- period in other counemy, the founder of the Macedonian dynasty in Egypt, died aftere.
a reign or dominion of forty years from the death of Alexander. Demetrius
Poliorcetes ended his days about the same time after a two years' captivity in
Syria. Lysimachus was killed soon afterwards, as has been already mentioned,,
in a battle with Seleucus, and Seleucus himself, the last survivor of Alexander's
immediate successors, was murdered seven months after his victory by Ptolemy
Ceraunus. The murderer, who was half brother to Ptolemy Philadelphus, the
second of the Macedonian kings of Egypt, took possession of the vacant throne
of Macedonia, and became immediately involved in war with Antiochus, son of
Seleucus, and with Antigonus, the son of Demetrius;"' the first of whom wished
to revenge his father's death, while the other was trying to recover Macedonia,
which, as having been held by his father during six or seven years, he regarded
as his lawful inheritance. In the mean time, he was actually the sovereign of
Thessaly, and exercised a great power over all the states of Greece; and was in
alliance with Pyrrhus and the JEtolians. The Greeks, as we have seen, made a
fruitless attempt to assert their independence, by attacking his allies, the iEtolians; but they were easily beaten, and Antigonus seems to have reigned without further molestation in Thessaly and Boeotia, whilst Ptolemy Ceraunus still
held his ill-gotten power in Macedonia.
Things were in this state when ambassadors"' from Tarentum entreated Pyrrhus to cross over into Italy, to protect both themselves and the
Pyrrhus is invited by
other Greek cities of Italy from a barbarian enemy far more for- the Tarentines, into
midable than the Lucanians, the old enemies of his kinsman Alex- Itnaly.
ander. Times were now so changed that the Lucanians and Samnites were
leagued in one common cause with the Greeks, with whom they had been so
long at enmity; the Etruscans had taken part also in the confederacy; yet the
united efforts of so many states were too weak to resist the new power which
had grown up in the centre of Italy, and was fast arriving at the dominion of the
whole peninsula. To conquer these fierce barbarians, and to save so many Greek
cities from slavery was a work that well became the kinsman of the great Alexander, the descendant of Achilles and AEacus.
The prayer of the Tarentines suited well with the temper and the circumstances of Pyrrhus. He promised them his aid, and began forthwith to prepare for
his passage to Italy, and for his war with the Romans.
Isn Porphyry and Dexippus, apud Euseb. pp.  11 Justin, XXIV. 1. Memnon, apud Pho.
68-68.                                tium, p. 226. Ed. Bekker.
'll See Polybius, XXII. 10, 13.       1 Plutarch, Pyrrh.18.




ï~~CHAPTER XXXVI.
ROME AND THE ROMAN PEOPLE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR WITH THE
TARENTINES AND WITH PYRRHUS.
" Privatus illis census erat brevis
Commune magnum; nulla decempedis
Metata privatis opacam
Porticus excipiebat Arcton,
Nec fortuitum spernere cespitem
4eges sinebant, oppida publico
Sumtu jubentes et deorum
Templa novo decorare saxo."
HORAT. Carmin. II. 15.
THE preceding chapter has been compiled from materials which in their actual
sketch of the internal state are often fragmentary, and even when they are perfect, are
tate of R ome.  not original.  But yet they were derived from    original sources;
for although the contemporary histories of Alexander's successors have long
since perished, yet they did once exist, and were accessible to the writers whom
we read and copy now. We cross the Adriatic to inquire into the state of Italy,
and not only are our existing materials the merest wreck of a lost history, not only
would they tell their story to us at second hand, if they had been preserved entire; but even these very accounts could have been taken from no contemporary
historians, for none such ever existed. In this absolute dearth of direct information, it is impossible that the following sketch should be other than meagre, and
it must also rest partly on conjecture. Unsatisfactory as this is, yet the nature
of the case will allow of nothing better; and I can but encourage myself, while
painfully feeling my way amid such thick darkness, with the hope of arriving at
length at the light, and enjoying all the freshness and fulness of a detailed contemporary history.
In the middle of the fifth century, the Roman people was divided into threeThe divisionsof the Roe- and-thirty tribes;1 and the total number of citizens, which included,
1 people.      besides those enrolled in the tribes, the merarians, and the people
of those foreign states, which had been obliged to receive the civitas sine suffragio, amounted to 272,000.2 What proportion of these were enrolled in the
tribes, or, in other words, enjoyed the full rights of citizenship, we cannot tell,
nor have we any means of estimating the number of the erarians; nor again,
can we draw any inference as to the population of the city of Rome, as distinguished from the country tribes; nor can we at all compute the proportion of
slaves at this time to freemen. The class of merarians, however, must have been
greatly diminished, since freedmen and persons engaged in retail trade or manufactures had been enrolled in the tribes; and it could have only contained those
I That is to say, twenty tribes are known to tribes were created, which included the Priverhave existed in the earliest period of the com- natians, and the settlers in the Falernian plain.
monwealth, and another was added soon after- And, lastly, after the Equian war, two moro
wards. The number of twenty-one continued were added in 455, the Aniensian and the Tetill after the Gaulish invasion, when four more rentine, in which were enrolled the,Equians.
were added on the right bank of the Tiber, in  All these are clearly local tribes, and their
868; namely, the Stellatine, the Tromentine, situation is well known. The same may be
the Sabatine, and the Arniensian. Two more said of the four city tribes, the Colline, the Eswere added in 397 for the inhabitants of the old quiline, the Palatine, and the tribe of Subura.
Volscian lowlands near the Pomptine marshes, But to the remaining seventeen, which are
the Pomptine and the Publilian. Two more were mostly named after some noble Roman family,
added after the Latin war in 422, the Macian as the.fmilian, the Cornelian, the Fabian, &c.,
and the Scaptian, for the Lanuvians and some it is extremely difficult to assign their proper
other people of Latium. In the second Sam- locality.
nite war, in 436-7, the Ufentine and Falerian  2 Livy, Epit. XI.




ï~~CHAr. XXXVI.] MANNER OF LIFE OF THE COUNTRY TRIBES.

381

who had forfeited their franchise, either in consequence of their having incurred
legal infamy, or by the authority of the censors.
The members of the country tribes, of those at least which had been created
within the last century, lived on their lands, and probably only Manner o f life of the
went up to Rome to vote at the elections, or when any law of citiens of the country
great national importance was proposed, and there was a power- ribes.
ful party opposed to its enactment. They were also obliged to appear on the
Capitol on the day fixed by the consuls for the enlistment of soldiers for the
legions.3 Law business might also call them up to Rome occasionally, and the
Roman games, or any other great festival, would no doubt draw them thither in
great numbers. With these exceptions, and when they were not serving in the
legions, they lived on their small properties in the country; their business was
agriculture, their recreations were country sports, and their social pleasures were
found in the meetings of their neighbors at seasons of festival; at these times
there would be dancing, music, and often some pantomimic acting, or some rude
attempts at dramatic dialogue, one of the simplest and most universal amusements of the human mind. This was enough to satisfy all their intellectual
cravings; of the beauty of painting, sculpture, or architecture, of the charms of
eloquence and of the highest poetry, of the deep interest which can be excited
by inquiry into the causes of all the wonders around us and within us, of some of
the highest and most indispensable enjoyments of an Athenian's nature, the agricultural Romans of the fifth century had no notion whatsoever.
But it was not possible that an equal simplicity should have existed at Rome.
Their close and constant intercourse with other men sharpens and And of tho of the city
And of those of the city
awakens the faculties of the inhabitants of cities; and country Study of the la. Apias Claudius, Ti. Coo.
sports being by the necessity of the case denied to them, they uncanins, and the Ogullearn earlier to value such pleasures as can be supplied by the art u.
or genius of man. Besides, the conduct of political affairs on a large scale,
much more when these affairs are publicly discussed either in a council or
in a popular assembly, cannot but create an appreciation of intellectual power
and of eloquence; and the multiplied transactions of civil life, leading perpetually to disputes, and these disputes requiring a legal decision, a knowledge
of law became a valuable accomplishment, and the study of law, which is
as wholesome to the human mind as the practice of it is often injurious, was
naturally a favorite pursuit with those who had leisure, and who wished either
to gain influence or to render services. Thus the family of the Claudii seem
always to have aspired after civil rather than military distinction. Appius
Claudius, the censor, was a respectable soldier, but he is much better known by
his great public works and by his speech against making peace with Pyrrhus,
than by his achievements in war; nay, it is said, that his plebeian colleague in
the consulship, L. Volumnius, taunted him with his legal knowledge and his eloquence, as if he could only talk4 and not fight. The Claudii, however, were distinguished by their high nobility, independently of any personal accomplishments; but the family of the Coruncanii owed its celebrity entirely, so far as it
appears, to their acquaintance with the law. Ti. Coruncanius5 was consul with
P. Lmvinus in the year when Pyrrhus came into Italy, and was named dictator
more than thirty years afterwards for the purpose of holding the comitia. He
left no writings behind him, but was accustomed to the very latest period of his
life to give answers on points of law to all that chose to consult him; and his
reputation was so high that he was the first plebeians who was ever appointed to
the dignity of pontifex maximus. The Ogulnii also appear to have been a family
distinguished for knowledge and accomplishments.   Two brothers of this name
were, as we have seen, the authors of the law which threw open the offices of
* Polybius, VI. 19.                      Pomponius, de Origine Juris, Z 15, 88. Ci* Livy, X. 19.                        cero, Brutus, 14. Cato Major, 9.
SLivy, Epit. XVIII.




ï~~382

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXVI

augur and pontifex to the commons, and afterwards in their edileship they ornamented the city with several works of art; and one of them, besides his embassy
to Epidaurus, already noticed, was sent as one of three ambassadors to Ptolemy
Philadelphus, king of Egypt, soon after the retreat of Pyrrhus from Italy.
There was as yet no regular drama, for Livius Andronicus did not begin to exTotalabsence of all lit- hibit his plays till after the first Punic war;* but there were panerature.      tomimic dances performed by Etruscan actors;9 there were the
saturme" or medleys, sung and acted by native performers; and there were the
comic or satirical dialogues on some ludicrous story (fabelle atellanae), in which
the actors were of a higher rank, as this entertainment was rather considered an
old national custom, than a spectacle exhibited for the public inusement. There
were no famous poets, nor any Homer, to embody in an imperishable form the
poetical traditions of his country; but there were the natural elements cf poetry,
and the natural love of it; and it was long the custom at all entertainments" that
each guest in his turn should sing some heroic song, recording the worthy deeds
of some noble Roman. So also there was no history, but there was the innate
desire of living in the memory of after-ages; and in all the great families, panegyrical orations were delivered at the funeral of each of their members, containing a most exaggerated account of his life and actions.12 These orations existed
in the total absence of all other statements, and from these chiefly the annalists
of the succeeding century compiled their narratives; and thus every war is made
to exhibit a series of victories, and all the most remarkable characters in the Roman story are represented as men without reproach, or of heroic excellence.
But whilst literature was unknown, and poetry, and even the drama itself,
Public amusementswere in their earliest infancy, the Romans enjoyed with the keen
Publ~e  amusements.
The greoat games of the est delight the sports of the circus, which resembled the great
ci...      national games of Greece. Every year in the month of September13 four days were devoted to the celebration of what were called indifferently,
the Great or the Roman Games. Like all the spectacles of the ancient world,
they were properly a religious solemnity, a great festival in honor of the three
national divinities of the Capitoline temple, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.  On
the first day of the festival, the whole people went in procession4 from the Capitol through the Forum to the circus; there the sacrifice was performed, and
afterwards the exhibition of the various games began, which was so entirely a

SDionysius, XX. 4. Fragm. Vatic. Valer.
Maxim. IV. 3. Â~ 9.
3 Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, Vol. 11I. p. 25, B. c.
240.
* Livy, VII. 2.
Co I am not venturing to determine the etymology of this word, but giving merely a description of the thing. " Olim carmen quod ex
variis poematibus constabat, satyra vocabatur,
quale scripserunt Pacuvius et Ennius."  Diomedes, III. 9. Livy speaks of the sature or
satyre, as an intermediate state in the dramatic
art between the acting of regular stories with a
plot, and the mere rude sparring with coarse
jests, " versum incompositum temere ac rudem
atternis jaciebant," which used to go on between
two performers. The sature appear, then, to
have been comic songs in regular verse, in
which a great variety of subjects were successively noticed, without any more connection
than as being each of them points on which the
hearers could be readily excited to laughter.
n Cicero, Brutus, 19.
12 Cicero, Brutus, 16. Livy, VIII. 40.
13 The fullest work on the games of the circus is, I suppose, that of Onuphrius Panvinius
(Onofrio Panvini, a Veronese, who flourished.
in the latter part of the 16th century), published
in the ninth volume of Greuvius' Collection of

Roman Antiquities. The view of the circus
and the Palatine, given in Panvinius' work, i
curious as showing how greatly Rome has
changed in the last 250 years. A shorter account may be found in Rosini and Dempster's
work on Roman antiquities; and the topography of the circus is given in Bunsen and
Platner's description of Rome, Vol. III. p. 91.
Gibbon has given one of his lively and conmprehensive sketches of the games of the circus,
in his account of the reign of Justinian, which
notices every important point in the subject.
A representation of the circus is given on several coins which may be seen in Panvinius'
work, and which enables us to form a sufficient
notion of its appearance. The bands or factions
of the drivers are noticed in numerous inscriptions.
14 Tertullian, De Spectaculis, VII. His enumeration of the several parts of the great procession is full and lively. " De, simulacrorum
serie, de imaginum agmrine, de curribus, de
thensis, de armamaxis, de sedibus, de coronis,
de exuviis, quanta preterea sacra, quanta sacrificia precedant, intercedant, succedant, quot
collegia, quot sacerdotia, quot officia moveantur,
sciunt homines illius urbis in qua demomniorum
conventus consedit."




ï~~CA. XXXVI.]

PUBLIC BUILDINGS, TEMPLES, ETC.

383

national ceremony, that the 'magistrate of highest rank who happened to be in
Rome gave the signal for the starting of the horses in the chariot race. The
circus itself was especially consecrated to the sun, and the colors by which the
drivers of the chariots were distinguished, were supposed to have a mystical
allusion to the different seasons.15  Originally there were only two colors, white
and red, the one a symbol of the snows of winter, the other of the fiery heat
of summer; but two others were afterwards added, the spring-like green, and
the autumnal gray or blue. The charioteers, who wore the same colors, were
called the red or white, or green or blue band (factio), and these bands became
in later times the subject of the strongest party feeling; for men attached themselves either to the one or the other, and would have as little been induced to
change their color in the circus as their political party in the commonwealth.
It does not appear that these colors were connected with any real differences,
social or political; there were no ideas of which they were severally the symbols; and thus, while the commonwealth lasted, the bands of the circus seem to
have excited no deeper or more lasting interest than the wishes of their respective partisans for their success in the chariot race.  But afterwards, s,-hen the
emperor was known to favor any one color mome than another, that color would
naturally become the badge of his friends, and the opposite color the rallying
point of his enemies; and when a real political feeling was connected with these
symbols, it was not wonderful that the bands of the circus became truly factions,
and that their quarrels in the lower empire should have sometimes deluged Constantinople with blood.
The Romans in the fifth century enjoyed the games as keenly as their descendants under the emperors; but the lavish magnificence of the im-       works.  mer.
Public works,. Numer.
perial circus was as yet altogether unknown. Wooden boxes'6 onus temples built asd
supported on poles, like the simplest form of a stand on an Eng- ornamented.
lish race-course, were the best accommodation as yet provided for the specta.
tors; and it was only in the fifth century that the carceres7 were first erected,
a line of buildings of the common volcanic tufo of Rome itself, extending along
one end of the circus, each with a door opening upon the course, from which the
horses were brought out to take their places, before they started on the race.
But although the works of this period were simple, yet they now began to be
very numerous, and some of them were on a scale of very imposing grandeur.
Livy has recorded the building of seven new temples8 within ten years, between
452 and 462; for the period immediately following we have no detailed history,
but the foundation of the temple of.Esculapius, about two years later, is noticed
in the epitome of Livy's eleventh book; and many others may have been founded,
of which we have no memorial.      It is mentioned also that C. Fabius   ornamented one of these temples, that of Deliverance from Danger, with frescoes of
his own execution, in consequence of which he obtained the surname of Pictor.
The date of the Greek artists, Damophilus and Gorgasus,Â~ who painted the
frescoes of the temple of Ceres, close by the circus, we have no means of determining, but several notices show that a taste for the arts was beginning at this
time to be felt at Rome. The colossal bronze statue of Jupiter, set up by Sp.
Carvilius in the Capitol, in the year 461, has been already noticed, as well as the
famous group of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, which was placed
in the comitium three years before. And at the same time a statue of Jupiter in
156 Tertullian, ibid. VIII. IX.        in the great battle of Sentinun (X. 29); a third
is Livy, I. 85.                        near the circus, dedicated to Venus (X. 31); a
7 Livy, VIII. 20. Suetonius in Clanud. 21. fourth dedicated to Victory (X. 33); a fifth to
There are representations of the carceres in one Jupiter the Stayer of Flight (X. 37); a sixth to
or two of the engravings of Panvinius' work, Fortis Fortuna (X. 46); and a seventh to Salus,
copied from antiques.                   or Deliverance from Danger, which was the
t Namely, a temple of Bellona, vowed by temple painted by Fabius Pictor (Livy. X. 1).
Appius Claudius in 458 (Livy, X. 19); another  1Pliny, Hist. Natur. XXXV. Â~ 19.
of Jupiter the Victorious, vowed by Q. Fabius   Pliny, Hist. Natur. XXXV. 45.




ï~~384

HISTORY OF ROME.

[OHAP. XXXVL

a chariot drawn by four horses,' the work of an Etruscan artist, and wrought in
clay, was erected on the summit of the Capitol.
The temple of Bellona, built by Appius Claudius" in fulfilment of a vow made
ramily images worn on the field of battle, was decorated with a row  of shields or
like masks at funerals. escutcheons, on which were represented his several ancestors with
scrolls recording the offices which they had filled, and the triumphs which they
had won.    Whoever of these had been the father of a family was represented
with all his children by his side, as in some of our old monuments. In these
and in all similar works, an exact likeness3 was considered of much greater importance than any excellence of art; for the object desired was to transmit to
posterity a lively image of those who had in their generation done honor to
their name and family. For this purpose waxen busts, the scorn of the mere
artist, were kept in cases ranged along the sides of the court in the houses of all
great families; these were painted to the life, and being hollow, were worn like
a mask24 at funerals by some of the dependents of the family, who also put
on the dress of the office of rank of him whose semblance they bore; so that it
seemed as if the dead were attended to his grave by all the members of his race
of past generations, no less than by those who still survived. None were so
represented who had not in their lifetime filled some honorable public station,
and thus the number of images worn at any funeral was the exact measure of
the family's nobility.
No other aqueduct had yet been added to that constructed by Appius ClauThe Appian roadpaved dius in his famous censorship; nor had any later road rivalled
as far as Bovil.  the magnificence of the Appian. This was paved with lava in the
year 461, from the temple of Mars,25 a little on the outside of the city walls, to
Boville, at the foot of the Alban hills.
The city itself was still confined within the walls of Servius Tullius. The
Extent and aspect of Capitol and the Quirinal hills formed its northern limit, and
the city.      looked down immediately on the open space of the Campus Martius, now covered with the greatest part of the buildings of modern Rome. Art or
caprice had not yet effaced the natural features of the ground, by cutting down
hills and filling up valleys, nor had the mere lapse of time as yet raised the soil
by continued accumulations to a height far above its original level. The hills,
with their bare, rocky sides, and covered in many parts with sacred groves,
the remains of their primeval woods, rose distinctly and boldly from the valleys
between them; on their summits were the principal temples and the houses of
the noblest families; beneath were the narrow streets and lofty houses,26 roofed
only with wood, of the more populous quarters of the city, and in the midst,
reaching from the Capitoline hill to the Palatine, lay the comitium and the Roman Forum.
A spot so famous well deserves to be described, that we may conceive its prinDescription of the Fo- cipal features, and image to ourselves the scene as well as the actors
ra.           in so many of the great events of the Roman history.    From the
foot of the Capitoline hill" to that of the Palatine, there ran an open space of
21 Pliny, Hist. Natur. XXXV.  158.    the ancestors of the first Appius, and what
P liny (Hist. Nat. XXXV. Â~ 2, 8) ascribes offices could they have filled at Rome, when he
these shields to the first Appius Claudius, who himself was the first of his family who became
was consul with P. Servilius in 259. But un- a Roman?
less the words " qui consul cum Servilio fuit  23 Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXXV. Â~ 4. 6.
anno urbis CCLIX." are an unlucky gloss of  2 Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXXV. Â~ 6. Polybius,
some ignorant reader, as is most probable, they VI. 53.
seem to show an extraordinary carelessness in  2' Livy, X. 47.
Pliny himself; for to say nothing of the direct  26 Pliny, XVI. Â~ 86, quoting from Cornelius
testimony, which ascribes the foundation of the Nepos.
temple of Bellona to Appius the Blind in 458,  2 The whole of the following description of
Pliny's own statement says, that Appius caused the Forum is taken from Bunsen's article in the
the figures of his ancestors, and scrolls record- third volume of the "Beschreibung def Stadt
ing the offices which they had filled, to be af- Rom." The substance of this article has been
fixed to this temple: but who could have been given by its author in another form, in a letter




ï~~CHAP. XXXVI.]

DESCKIPTION OF THE FORUM.

385

unequal breadth, narrowing as it approached the Palatine, and enclosed on both
sides between two branches of the Sacred Way. Its narrower end was occupied
by the comitium, the place of meeting of the populus or great council of the
burghers in the earliest times of the republic, whilst its wider extremity was the
Forum, in the stricter sense, the market-place of the Romans, and therefore the
natural place of meeting for the commons, who formed the majority of the Roman nation. The comitium was raised a little above the level of the Forum, like
the dais or upper part of our old castle and college halls, and at its extremity
nearest the Forum stood the rostra, such as I have already described it, facing
at this period towards the comitium, so that the speakers addressed, not indeed
the patrician multitude as of old, but the senators, who had, in a manner, succeeded to their place, and who were accustomed to stand in this part of the assembly, immediately in front of the senate-house, which looked upon the comitium from the northern side of the Via Sacra.    The magnificent basilice, which
at a later period formed the two sides cf the Forum, were not yet in existence,
but in their place there were two rows of solid square pillars of peperino, forming
a front to the shops of various kinds, which lay behind them.  These shops were
like so many cells, open to the street, and closed behind, and had no communication with the houses which were built over them. Those on the north side of
the Forum had been rebuilt or improved during the early part of the fifth century, and were called in consequence the new shops, a name which, as usual in
such cases, they retained for centuries. On the south side, the line of shops was
interrupted by the temple of Castor and Pollux, which had been built, according
to the common tradition, by the dictator, A. Postumius, in gratitude for the aid
afforded him by the twin heroes in the battle of the lake Regillus. On the same side
also, but further to the eastward, and nearly opposite to the senate-house, was
the temple of Vesta, and close to the temple was that ancient monument of the
times of the kings which went by the name of the court of Numa.
In the open space of the Forum might be seen an altar which marked the spot
once occupied by the Curtian pool, the subject of such various tra- statues, a&c.,inthe Fro.
ditions.  Hard by grew    the three sacred trees8 of the oldest rum.
known civilization, the fig, the vine, and the olive, which were so carefully preserved or renewed that they existed even in the time of the elder Pliny. Further
towards the Capitol, at the western extremity of the Forum, were the equestrian
statues of C. Mmenius and L. Camillus, the conquerors of the Latins.
Nor was the interior of the comitium destitute of objects entitled to equal veneration.  There was the black stone which marked, according to Stte nd other bStatues and other ohone tradition, the grave of Faustulus, the foster-father of Romulus, jeoots of interest in the
according to another that of Romulus himself.      There was the comitum.
statue of Attius Navius, the famous augur; and there too was the sacred figtree, under whose shade the wolf had given suck to the two twins, Romulus and
Remus. A group of figures representing the wolf and twins had been recently
set up in this very place by the mdiles, Q. and Cn. Ogulnius, and the fig-tree
the Chevalier Canina, written in French (Rome, history, that his topography is necessarily ren1837). He has also prefixed to some impressions dered of less value. Bunsen has had every adof his German article, which have been printed vantage of local knowledge no less than Nibby,
separately, all the passages in the ancient writers but with his local knowledge he combines other
which throw any light on the topography of the qualities which Nibby is far from possessing
Forum.                                   equally.
Since this chapter was written, I have seen  However, the general correctness of the deNibby's latest work on the topography of Rome, scription of the Forum in the fifth century of
which was published in 1839. His plan of the Rome, as given in the text, is independent of
Forum differs topographically from Bunsen's; the question whether the position of the Forum
he places it further to the west, and arranges is to be fixed a certain number of yards more
the buildings differently. But historically his to the eastward or to the westward. And most
views are so imperfect, and he follows so con- of those buildings, the site of which has been
tentedly the old popular accounts, without the so much disputed, were not in existence at the
slightest knowledge, so far as appears, of the period to which this sketch relates.
light which Niebuhr has thrown on the Roman  20 Pliny, Hist. Natur. XV. Â~ 78.
25




ï~~386

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXVI

itself had been removed by the power of Attius Navius, so said the story,29 from
its original place under the Palatine, that it might stand in the midst of the
meetings of the Roman people. Nor were statues wanting to the comitium any
more than to the Forum. Here were the three sibyls, one of the oldest works
of Roman art; here also were the small figures of the Roman ambassadors who
had been slain at Fidenm by the Veientian king Tolumnius; and here too, at the
edge of the comitium where it joined the Forum, were the statues which the
Romans, at the command of the Delphian oracle, had erected in honor of the
wisest and bravest of the Greeks, the statues of Pythagoras and Alcibiades.
The outward appearance of the Forum in the fifth century was very different
character of the popu- from its aspect in the times of the Caesars, and scarcely less diflaton; the shops,  &.ferent was the population by which it was frequented at either
period. Rome was not yet the general resort of strangers from all parts of the
world; the Tiber was as yet not only unpolluted by the Syrian Orontes, but its
waters had received no accession from the purer streams of Greece; and the
crowd which thronged the Forum, however numerous and busy, consisted mainly
of the citizens, or at least of the inhabitants of Rome. The shops of the silversmiths had lately superseded those of a less showy character on the north side of
the Forum; but, on the other side, the butchers' and cooks' shops still remained,
as in the days of Virginius, and it marks the manners of the times, that the
wealthier citizens used to hire cooks" from these places to bake their bread for
them, having as yet no slaves who understood even the simplest parts of the art
of cookery.
The names of the principal families, as well as of the most distinguished men
Great families of this of this period, have naturally been mentioned already in the course
period.       of the narrative. It is enough to remark that Appius Claudius
was still alive, though now old and blind, that M. Valerius Corvus was also living, but his public career had been for some time ended; and that Q. Fabius,
the hero of the third Samnite war, had died not long after its conclusion.  Q.
Publilius Philo was also dead, and with him expired the nobility of his family.
But there were ready to meet Pyrrhus, the two victorious generals of the great
campaign of 461, L. Papirius Cursor and Sp. Carvilius Maximus; M'. Curius
Dentatus was still in the vigor of life, and Q. Fabius and P. Decius had both left
sons to uphold the honor of their name. The great Cornelian house contributed
eminent citizens for their country's service from three of its numerous branches;
among the consuls of the fourth Samnite war we find a Cornelius Lentulus, a
Cornelius Rufinus, and a Cornelius Dolabella.  Two other names will demand
our notice for the first time, those of C. Fabricius and L. Cumcilius Metellus, the
first pre-eminenit in the purest personal glory, but a glory destined to pass away
from his family after one generation, "no son of his succeeding;" while L. Cmcilius,
if he did not attain himself to the highest distinction, was yet "the father of a line
of more than kings," of those illustrious Metelli who, from the first Punic war to
the end of the commonwealth, were amongst the noblest and the best citizens of
Rome.
Against a whole nation of able and active men the greatest individual genius
of a single enemy must ever strive in vain. The victory of Pyrrhus at Heraclea
was endangered by a rumor that he was slain, for in his person lay the whole
strength of his army and of his cause. But had the noblest of the Fabii or Cornelii fallen at the head of a Roman army, the safety of the commonwealth would
not have been for a single moment in jeopardy. This contrast alone was sufficient
to ensure the decision of the great war on which we are now about to enter.
' The passage in Pliny which mentions this  S Pliny, Histor. Natur. XVIII. Â~ 108. So in
story, XV. Â~ 77, is clearly corrupt, and various the Aulularia of Plautus, the cooks are hired in
corrections of it have been attempted. Bunsen the Forum to go to Euclio's house, and dress
has given one in a note to his article on the his daughter's wedding dinner.
Forum, Beschreib. der Stadt. Rom. III. p. 62.




ï~~CHAPTER XXXVII.

FOREIGN HISTORY FROM 464 TO 479-WARS WITH THE ETRUSCANS, GAUL,
AND TARENTINES-FOURTH SAMNITE WAR-PYRRHUS KING OF EPIRUS IN
ITALY-BATTLES OF HERACLEA, ASCULUM, AND BENEVENTUM.
Non Simois tibi nec Xanthus nec Dorica castra
Defuerint; alius Latio jam partus Achilles.
VIRGIL, 'En. VI. 87.
TiHE third Samnite war ended in the year 464, and Pyrrhus invaded Italy exactly ten years later, in the year 474. The events of the interven- Fourth Samnite we
ing period, both foreign and domestic, are, as we have seen, in- na coalition against
volved in the deepest obscurity; but as I have attempted t pre- Rome.
sent an outline of the internal state of Rome, so I must now endeavor to;race
the perplexed story of her foreign relations, from the first seeds of war, which
the jealousy of the Tarentines either sowed or earnestly fostered, to the organization of that great coalition, in which the Gauls at first, and Pyrrhus afterwards,
were principal actors.
On the side of Etruria there had been for a long time past neither certain peace
nor vigorous war. Jealousies between city and city, and party State and dipoitio
revolution in the several cities themselves, were, as we have seen, of the Etruscans.
forever compromising the tranquillity and paralyzing the exertions of the Etruscan nation. In 461 the cities of southern Etruria had taken up arms, and had
persuaded the Faliscans to join them; and in 462 we hear of victories obtained
over the Faliscans by the consul, D. Junius Brutus.' No further particulars are
known of the progress of the contest, but it appears from the epitome of Livy's
eleventh book, that at some time or other within the next eight years, the people of Vulsinii took a principal part in it, and in 471 the whole, or nearly the
whole, of the Etruscan nation were engaged in it once again.
Further to the north "the Senonian Gauls remained quiet," says Polybius,2
"for a period of ten years after the battle of Sentinum."  If w  Of the  G
take this statement to the letter, we must fix the renewal of the othau.
Gaulish war in 469; yet we cannot trace any act of hostility till the year 471.
The Gauls appear first to have engaged as mercenaries in the Etruscan service, and
afterwards to have joined the new coalition in their own name.
To the south of Rome, Lucania, during the third Samnite war, had remained
faithful to the Romans, and in the year 460 we expressly read of Of the Lucaians and
Lucanian cohorts serving with the Roman legions.  Of Tarentum   Tarentines.
nothing is recorded after its short war with the Lucanians and Romans in 451,
which appears to have been ended, as I have already observed,4 by an' equal
treaty.
Italy was in this state when the Lucanians attacked the Greek city of Thurii.
We know not the cause or pretext of the quarrel, but those unfor- The Lucanians attack
tunate Greek cities of Italy were at this time the prey of every Thuri, and the Thy                       pry         yriane apply to the Rospoiler; Agathocles had made repeated expeditions to that coast man for aid.
in the latter years of his reign, and had taken Croton and Hipponium,5 while the
Italian nations of the interior had from time immemorial regarded them as enemies. Thurii itself had been taken by Cleonymus in 4526 when he was playing
SZonaras, VIII. 1.                     4 See chap. XXXIII.
2 Polybius, II. 19.                    6 Diodorus, XXI. 4, 8, Fragm. Hoeschoel.
3 Livy, X. 88.                         6 Livy, X. 2.




ï~~388

IIISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXVIL

the buccaneer along all the coasts of Italy; and a Roman army had then come
to its aid, but too late to prevent its capture. This was perhaps remembered
now, when the city was threatened by the Lucanians, and the Romans were implored once again to bring help to the people of Thurii. The request was not at
first granted; as far as we can make out the obscure story of these times, the
first attacks must have been made about the period of the domestic troubles at
Rome, when the commons occupied the Janiculum, and obliged the senate to consent to the Hortensian laws. During two successive summers, the Lucanians
ravaged the territory of Thurii,1 and so far as appears, there was no power of resistance in the inhabitants themselves, and no foreign sword was drawn to defend
them.
Meanwhile the Hortensian laws were passed, and with them, or shortly before,
The people  theiran agrarian law had been passed also. The power of the assembly
tribes vote for wrwith of the tribes had been acknowledged to be sovereign, and the
the Lucanians.  popular party for some years from this time, feeling itself to have
the disposal of all that the state might conquer, appears to have been as fond
of war as ever was the Athenian democracy under Pericles, while the aristocratical party, for once only in the history of Rome, seems to have adopted the
peaceful policy of Cimon and Nicias. C. zElius, one of the tribunes, proposed
and carried in the assembly of the tribes what Pliny' calls a law against Stenius
Statilius,9 the captain-general of the Lucanians; in other words, he moved that
war should be declared against Stenius Statilius and all his followers and abettors; and the tribes gave their votes for it accordingly. The people of Thurii
voted to..lius, as a mark of their gratitude, a statue and a crown of gold, and
probably a Roman army was sent to their aid, and relieved them from the present danger; but the Lucanians were not subdued, and it was evident that they
would not be left to contend against Rome single-handed.

' The data for the arrangement of all these
events in order of time are as follows: 1. The
interposition of the Romans in behalf of the
Thurians is mentioned in the epitome of the
eleventh book of Livy, and the twelfth book began apparently with the consulship of Dolabella
and Domitius in the year 471. 2. M'. Curius
obtained an ovation or smaller triumph for his
victories over the Lucanians. (Auctor de Viris
Illustribus, in M'. Curio.) This must either
have been in the year after his consulship, when
he was perhaps prutor, or else in 471, when we
know that he was appointed pritor after the
defeat and death of L. Cucilius. 3. But when
C.   lins carried his resolution for a war with
the Lucanians, the Lucanian general Sthtilius
had twice assailed the Thurians (1 bis infestaverat, Pliny, Hist. Natur. XXXIV. Â~ 32), which,
I think, implies that he bad ravaged their lands
for two successive years; but the peace with
the Samnites was only concluded in the year
when Curius was consul; and throughout the
war the Lucanians were in alliance with Rome,
nor were they likely then to meddle with the
Thurians. 4. C. Alius passed his resolution as
tribune; but before the Hortensian laws were
carried, such a resolution was not likely to have
been brought forward by a tribune, nor would
it have been carried had the senate been opposed
to it; and had they not been opposed to it, it
would have been moved probably by one of the
consuls with their authority. 5. There is a C.
Â~lius recorded in the consular Fasti, as having
been consul in 468; we do not know whether
this is the same person with the tribune; but
if he were, his tribuneship, as preceding his
consulship, must have taken place before the
y sr 468. 6. The date of the Hortensian laws
is -nknown, but several modern writers place

it in the very year 468, when C. Elius was consul. On the whole, I would arrange these
events in the following order:
A. U. C. 464. End of the third Samnite war.
A. U. C. 466, 467. Lucanians attack the Thurians.
A. U. C. 467.   The Hortensian laws.    C..lius, tribune, carries his motion in the assembly of the tribes for a war with the Lucanins.
A. U. C. 468. C. Elius, consul, chosen perhaps as a reward for his popular conduct in his
tribuneship.
A. U. C. 471. M'. Curius prntor. His ovation over the Lucanians.
A. U. C. 472. C. Fabricius consul. He defeats the Lucanians, and raises the siege of
Thurii.
If it be thought that this scheme leaves too
great an interval between the declaration of war
against the Lucanians, and any recorded events
of the war (although, in the total absence of all
details of this period, this objection is not of
much weight), then we must suppose that C..Elius, the tribune, and C. Elius, the consul,
were different persons; and we might then
place the resolution against the Lucanians a
year or two later. But it seems more probable
that the consul and the tribune were one and
the same man, and then I think the above scheme
offers fewer difficulties than any other.
 Histor. Natur. XXIV. Â~ 32.
s It was probably a rogatio to the following
effect: "  Vellent juberentne cumr Stenio Statilio
Lucanorum prmtore, quique ejus sectam secuti
essent, bellum iniri."  If there was a Roman
party still predominant in any part of Lucania,
it would explain why the rogatio should have
rather specified Statilius personally than declared war against the whole Lucanian people.




ï~~CHAP. XXXVII.]

ROMAN AMBASSADORS MASSACRED.

389

These events appear to have taken place about six years after the conclusion
of the third Samnite war, in the year 470, when C. Servilius Tucca The Tarentine are b
The Treniin arce buand L. Caecilius Metellus were consuls. Whatever was the cause, ae in forming acoa.ithe Tarentines1Â~ at this period were most active in forming a new tion against Rome.
coalition against Rome. They endeavored to excite the Samnites to renew the
war, and the Samnites, with the Lucanians, Apulians, and Bruttians, were to
form a confederacy in the south of Italy, of which Tarentum was to be the head.
The Romans sent C. Fabricius to the several Samnite and Apulian cities, to persuade them, if possible, to remain true to their alliance with Rome. But the
states to whom he was sent laid hands on him and arrested him, and then dispatched an embassy with all speed into Etruria, to secure, if possible, the aid of
the Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls. Fabricius, we may suppose, was made a
hostage for the safety of those Samnite hostages who had been demanded by the
Romans after the late peace, and his release was probably the stipulated price of
theirs.
In the following year, 471, the Roman consuls were P. Cornelius Dolabella
and On. Domitius Calvinus. The storm broke out against Rome General war. The
in  vey  iretin.General war. The
in every direction. In the south the Samnites, Lucanians, Brut- Etre canandGabesiege Arretium, which
tians, and probably the Apulians, were now in a state of declared remain. faithfal to
hostility; while in the north the mass of the Etruscans were in Rome.
arms, and had engaged,1' it seems, large bodies of the Senonian Gauls in their
service, although the Senonians, as a nation, still professed to be at, peace with
Rome.    In Arretium, however, the Roman party was still predominant; the
Arretines would not join their countrymen against Rome; and A. U. c. 471. A. C.
accordingly Arretiumr" was besieged by an Etruscan army, of which 283.
a large part consisted, as we have seen, of Gaulish mercenaries.
The new consuls came into office at this period, about the middle of April; so
that the season for military operations had begun before they L.eaniu Metetnsis
could be ready to take the field.  Thus L. Cmcilius Metellus, the defeated and ain in a
consul of the preceding year, had been left apparently with his battle near Arreium.
consular army in Etruria during the winter; and when the Etruscans began the
siege of Arretium, he marched at once to its relief. According to the usual
practice of this period, he was elected prmtor for the year following his consulship, and he seems to have just entered upon his new office when he led his
army against the enemy. We know nothing of the particulars of the battle, but
the result was most disastrous to the Romans."  L. Metellus himself, seven military tribunes, and 13,000 men were killed on the field; and the remainder of the
army were made prisoners.
The consternation caused by such a disaster at such a moment must have been
excessive. M'. Curius Dentatus was appointed praetor in the room  Theausmassare the
of Metellus, and sent off with all haste with a fresh army to main- Roman ambassadors.
tain his ground if possible. At the same time an embassy was sent to the Gauls
to complain that their people were serving in the armies4 of the enemies of Rome,
while there was peace between the Gauls and Romans, and to demand that the
prisoners taken in the late battle might be released.  But the Gauls were at once
elated and rendered savage by their late victory. The Romans assuredly had
not sold their lives cheaply; many brave Gauls had fallen, and amongst the rest
one of their noblest chiefs, Britomaris. His son, the young Britomaris, called for,0 Zonaras, VIII. 2, and Dion Cassius, Fragm. writers shows that both are taken from a comUrsin. CXLIV.                           mon source, which doubtless was Livy. They
n Appian, de Rebus Gallic. XI. Samnitic. vary from the account given by Polybius, in repVI.                                     resenting the murder of the Roman ambassa2 Polybius, II. 19.                   dors as preceding the defeat of Metellus. Ap1 Orosius, III. 22, and Augustine, de Civi- plan, copying from Dionysius, agrees with Potate Dei, III. 17. Orosius dedicated his history lybius.
to Augustine, and the exact similarity of the  1 Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. VI. Gallic. XI.
notices about the defeat of L. Metellus in both




ï~~390

IISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXVII

vengeance for his father's blood; and the Roman ambassadors, the sacred fecieles
themselves, were murdered by the barbarians, and their bodies hewed in pieces,
and the mangled fragments cast out without burial..
The consul, P. Dolabella, had already left Rome with the usual consular army,
rand was on his march into northern Etruria,'5 when he received
Greet vieorien obtinod e the Senolena the tidings of this outrage. Immediately he resolved on vengeance,
Gal..          and instead of advancing into Etruria, he turned to the right,
marched through the country of the Sabines into Picenum, and from thence led
his army into the territory of the Gauls. The flower of their warriors were absent in Etruria; those who were left, and endeavored to resist the invaders, were
defeated with great slaughter: no quarter was given to any male able to bear
arms: the women and children were carried off as slaves, the villages and houses
were burnt, and the whole country was made a desert. Meanwhile the Gauls
in Etruria, maddened at these horrors, and hoping to enjoy a bloody revenge,
urged the Etruscans to seize the opportunity, and to march straight upon Rome.
But On. Domitius, with the other consular army,' was covering the Roman territory; perhaps M'. Curius had joined him, or was hanging on the rear of the
enemy during their march through Etruria, and was so at hand to co-operate
in the battle.  At any rate, the victory of the Romans was complete; and the
Gauls who survived the battle slew themselves in despair. It was resolved by
the senate to occupy their country without delay, and to plant in it a Roman
colony.
These events had passed so rapidly that the season for military operations was
And also over the Boian not yet nearly at an end. The Boian Gauls," the neighbors of the
Guttle of the take yA Senonians, enraged and alarmed at the total extermination of their
dimon.         countrymen, took up arms with the whole force of their nation,
poured into Etruria, and encouraged the party adverse to Rome to try the fortune of war once again. What the Samnites and Lucanians were doing at this
moment we know not; but probably a preetorian or proconsular army with the
whole force of the Campanians, and perhaps of the Marsians and Pelignians, was
in the field against them; and after the loss of C. Pontius we hear of no Samnite leader whose ability was equal to the urgency of the contest. Thus Dolabella and Domitius were enabled to turn their whole attention to the Etruscans
and Gauls. Again, however, all details were lost, and we only know that the
scene of the decisive action8 was the valley of the Tiber, just below its junction
with the Nar, and the neighborhood of the small lake of Vadimon, which lay in
the plain at no great distance from the right bank of the river.
The victory of the Romans was complete;19 the flower of the Etruscan army
perished, while the Gauls suffered so severely that a very few of their number
were. all that escaped from the field.
The consuls of the ensuing year were C. Fabricius and Q.       milius Papus.
A.. c. 4. A. c. Again the Etruscans and Gauls renewed their efforts, but one
282. The Gauls make consular army was now thought enough to oppose to them, and
pace withR ome.  A.Emilius alone defeated them  utterly, and obliged the Gauls to
conclude a separate peace.20  The Etruscans, who seemed to " like nor peace nor
15 Appian, Samnitic. VI. Gallic. XI.  rival of the consul's messenger. The same story
'  Appian, Samnitic. VI. Gallic. XI.  is told of one of the battles fought between Tar" Polybius, II. 20.                    quinius Priscus and the Sabines; but there, at
i Polybius, II. 20. Dion Cassius, Mai Scrip- any rate, the scene of the action was within a
tor. Vatican. t. II. p.536. Florus II.13. The very few miles of Rome. Livy, I. 87.
lake Vadimon was esteemed sacred. See Pliny,  o 2Polybius, II. 20. It must have been AmilEpist. VIII. 20, where he gives a description ofit. ius who defeated the Gauls because we know
1 Polybius, II. 20. One of the fragments of that Fabricius was employed in the south: but
Dion Cassius, published by Mai in his Scriptor. the fragments of the Fasti Capitolini for this
Veter. Vatican. Collect. Vol. II. p. 536, states year contain only thus much:
that Dolabella attacked the Etruscans as they  "... eisque.... III. Non. Mart."
were crossing the Tiber, and that the bodies of Dionysius, however, says expressly that Emilthe enemy carried down by the stream brought ius, the colleague of Fabricius, commanded
the news of the battle to Rome before the ar- against the Etruscans in this year. XVIII. 5.




ï~~CHAP.XXXVII.]

CRUISE OF THE ROMAN FLEET.

39]

war," would not yet submit; or perhaps some states yielded while others conr
tinued the contest; but there remained only the expiring embers of a great fire;
and the Roman party in the several cities was gradually gaining the ascendency,
and preparing the way for that lasting treaty which was concluded two years
afterwards.
In the south, C. Fabricius was no less successful. He defeated the Samnites,
Lucanians, and Bruttians in several great battles,21 and penetrated Victories of Fabricri
through the enemy's country to the very shores of the Iomnian sea, in the south over th
where Thurii was at that very time besieged by Statilius at the Lcanian..
head of a Lucanian and Bruttian army. Fabricius defeated the enemy, stormed
their camp, and raised the siege of Thurii;22 for which service the Thurians expressed their gratitude as they had done two years before to the tribune, C.
zElius, by voting that a statue should be made and given to him, to be set up
by him in Rome. Thus the coalition which the Tarentines had formed seemed
to be broken to pieces, while its authors had not yet drawn the sword, and were
still nominally at peace with the Romans.
Fabricius left a garrison in Thurii, and led his army back to Rome with so
rich a treasure of spoil,"3 that after having made a liberal distribu- A Roman fleet is sen
tion of money amongst his soldiers, and returned to all the citi- to croee on the co
zens the,amount of the war-taxes which they had paid in that of the Tarntines.
year, he was still able to put four hundred talents into the treasury. In the
mean time, as the army was withdrawn from Lucania, a fleet was sent to protect
the Thurians, and to watch probably the movements of the Tarentines, whose
dispositions must, ere this, have become sufficiently notorious. Accordingly, L.
Valerius,24 one of the two officers annually chosen to conduct the naval affairs of
the commonwealth, with a fleet of ten ships of war, sailed on to the eastward of
Thurii, and unexpectedly made his appearance before the walls of Tarentum,5
and seemed to be preparing to force his way into the harbor.
It was the afternoon" of the day, and as it was the season of the Dionysia,
when the great dramatic contests took place and the prizes were The Tarentines attack
awarded to the most approved poet, the whole Tarentine people nd defeat it.
were assembled in the theatre, the seats of which looked directly towards the
sea. All saw a Roman fleet of ships of war, in undoubted breach of the treaty
existing between the two states, which forbade the Romans to sail to the eastward of the Lacinian headland, attempting to make its way into their harbor.
Full of wine, and in the careless spirits of a season of festival, they readily listened to a worthless demagogue, named Philocharis, who called upon them to

21 Dionysius, XVIII. 5.
2 Dionysius, XVIII. 5. Valerius Maximus,
I. 8, Â~ 6. Pliny, Hist. Natur. XXXIV. Â~ 82.
Mr. Fynes Clinton, by mistake, refers the account in Valerius Maximu to Fabricius' second
consulship in 476. But the mention of the relief of Thurii shows clearly that it belongs to his
first consulship.
The story in Valerius Maximus relates a wonderftl appearance of a warrior of extraordinary
stature, who led the Romans to the assault of
the enemy's camp, and who was not to be found
the next day when the consul was going to reward him with a mural crown. This, it was
said, was no other than Mars himself, who
fought on this day for his people. Compare the
story in Herodotus of the gigantic warrior whose
mere appearance struck the Athenian Epizelus
blind at Marathon, VI. 117.
23 Dionysius, XVIII. 16.
24 Appian calls him "Cornelius," Samnitic.
Fragm. VII. Dion Cassius, Fragm. Bekker. e
libro IX. calls him  "Valerius," and so does
Zonaras, who copies Dion, VIII. 2.
1 The harbor of Tarentum was a deep gulf,

or land-locked basin, running far into the land,
and communicating with the open sea by a single narrow passage. It is now called the Mare
Piccolo. The ancient city formed a triangle,
one side of which was washed by the open sea,
and another by the waters of the harbor: the
base was a wall drawn across from the sea to
the harbor, and the point of the triangle came
down to the narrow passage which was the harbor's mouth. Here at the extreme point of the
city was the citadel, the site of which is occupied by the modern town. An enemy entering
the harbor of Tarentum would therefore be as
completely in the heart of the city, as in the
great harbor of Syracuse; and Cicero's description will apply even more strongly to Tarentum
than to Syracuse; "quo simul atque adisset
non modo a latere sed etiam a tergo magnam
partem urbis relinqueret."-Verres, Act. II.
V. 38. See Keppel Craven, Tour through the
southern provinces of Naples, p. 174, and Gagliardo, Descrizione di Taranto.
26 Dion Cassius, Fragm. Ursin. CXLV. Zoo
naras, VIII. 2.




ï~~392

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHA. XXXVII

punish instantly the treachery of the Romans, and to save their ships and their
city. Wiser citizens might remember, that by the Greek national law, ships of
war belonging to a foreign power appearing under the walls of an independent
city, in violation of an existing treaty," were liable to be treated as enemies. But
explanations and questionings were not thought of now: the Tarentines manned
their ships, sailed out to meet the Romans, put them instantly to flight, sunk four
of their ships without resistance, and took one, with all its crew. L. Valerius,
the duumvir, was killed, and of the prisoners, the officers and soldiers serving on
board were put to death, and the rowers were sold for slaves.
Thus fully committed, the Tarentines determined to follow up their blow.
They pel theRomans They taxed the Thurians25 with preferring barbarian aid to that of
from Tu rii.   Tarentum, a neighboring and a Greek city, and with bringing a
Roman fleet into the Ionian sea. They attacked the town, allowed the Roman
garrison to retire unhurt, on condition of their opening the gates without resistance, and having thus become masters of Thurii, they drove the principal citizens
into exile, and gave up the property of the city to be plundered.
The Romans immediately sent an embassy to demand satisfaction for all these
And insult the aba. - outrages.  L. Postumius was the principal ambassador," and the
demand satifao e ttfoinstant that he and his colleagues landed, they were beset by a
these aggressions.  disorderly crowd, who ridiculed their foreign dress, the white toga
wrapped round the body like a plaid, with its broad scarlet border. At last they
were admitted into the theatre, where the people were assembled, but it was
again a time of festival, and the Tarentines were more disposed to coarse buffoonery and riot than to serious counsel.   When Postumius spoke to them       in
Greek, the assembly broke out into laughter at his pronunciation, and at any mistakes in his language; but the Roman delivered his commission unmoved, gravely
and simply, as though he had not so much as observed the insults offered to him.
At last a worthless drunkard of known profligacy came up to the Roman ambassador, and purposely threw dirt in the most offensive manner upon his white
toga.  Postumius said, "We accept the omen; ye shall give us even more than
we ask of you," and held up the sullied toga before the multitude, to show them
the outrage which he had received. But bursts of laughter pealed from every
part of the theatre, and scurril songs, and gestures, and clapping of hands, were
the only answer returned to him.     "Laugh on," said the Roman, "laugh on
while ye may; ye shall weep long enough hereafter, and the stain on this toga
shall be washed out in your blood." The ambassadors left Tarentum, and Postumius carefully kept his toga unwashed, that the senate might witness with their
own eyes the insult offered to the Roman name.
He returned to Rome with his colleagues late in the spring of the year 473,
A. U.C.473. A.c. 8. after the new consuls, L. JEmilius Barbula and Q. Marcius Phiwo  ainsa. decare lippus, had already entered upon their office. Even now the Rowar against the Tarene
ine.,         mans were reluctant to enter on a war with Tarentum, whilst they
had so many enemies still in arms against them, and the debates in the senate
lasted for several day.  It was resolved" at last to declare war; but still, when
S The Corcyrmeans agreed to receive a single Ursin. CXLV. Who this L. Postumius was is
Athenian or Lacedanmonian ship into their har- not known. He may have been one of the Posbor, but if a greater number appeared, they tumii Albini, although the L. Postumius Albiwere to be treated as enemies. Thucyd. III. nus, who was consul in 520, was the son and
71. And when the Athenian expedition coasted  grandson of two Auli Postumii. But it may
along lapygia on its way to Syracuse, Tarentum have been the consul who had been fined for
would neither allow them to enter the city, nor his mad conduct in 464, for with all his faults
even to bring their vessels to shore under the he was an able and resolute man, and the amwalls. Thucyd. VI. 44. So again the Came- bassadors sent to so great a city as Tarentum
rinnans, although they had been in alliance were likely to have been men of consular digwith Athens a few years before, refused to ad- nity.
mit more than a single ship of the Athenian ar-  3 Dionysius, XVII. 10. Reiske has made
mament within their harbor. VI. 52.      Dionysius say just the contrary to this, by aln Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. VII.        tering orot into a1. He gives no reason for the
SZonaras, VIII. 2. Dion Cassius, Fragm. alteration, but merely says, 1 al de meo dedi




ï~~CHAP. XXXVII.]

WAR WITH THE TARENTINES.

393

the consuls took the field as usual with their two consular armies, Q. Marcius was sent against the Etruscans, and L. iEmilius was ordered, not immediately to attack Tarentum, but to invade Samnium and subdue the revolted
Samnites.
But whether the exhausted state of Samnium assured Emilius that no great
danger was to be apprehended       there, or whether a praetorian L.miliuinvadesand
L. tEmilius invades and
army was sent to keep the Samnites in check, and to leave the a ye.wte the Taentine territory.. Strugconsul at liberty for a march into southern Italy, it appears that glenof partiesinTare.
instructions were sent to L. Aimilius soon after his arrival in Sam-t"
nium,3' to advance at once into the territory of Tarentum, and after offering once
again the same terms which Postumius had proposed before, to commence hostilities immediately if satisfaction should still be refused. The terms were again
rejected by the Tarentines, and Amilius began to ravage their territory with
fire and sword. But knowing that the aristocratical party in Tarentum, as elsewhere, were inclined to look up to Rome for protection, he showed much tenderness to some noble prisoners who fell into his hands," and dismissed them unhurt.   Nor did the result disappoint him, for the presence of the Roman airmy
struck terror into the democratical party, while the mildness shown to those who
had taken no part in the shameful outrages offered to the Romans, induced moderate men to hope that peace with Rome was a safer prospect for their country
than an alliance with Pyrrhus. Agis, one of the aristocratical party, was chosen
captain-general, and it was likely that the Tarentines would now in their turn
offer that satisfaction which hitherto they had scornfully refused.
But before any thing could be concluded, the popular party regained their ascendency. An embassy to Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, had been Pyrrhus is invited ainto
sent off early in the summer,33 inviting him   over to Italy in the holy.
name of all the Italian Greeks, to be their leader against the Romans.    All the
nations of southern Italy, he was assured, were ready to join his standard; and
he would find amongst them a force of 350,000 infantry, and 20,000 cavalry
able to bear arms in the common cause.
Every Greek looked to foreign conquest only as a means of establishing his
supremacy over Greece itself, the proudest object of his ambition. n.a          to
He sende ever Mlue In
Victorious over the Romans,4 thence easily passing over into occpy the citadel f
Tarentum. The popuSicily, and from thence again assailing more effectually than Aga- lar.rty recovers the
b                                                ascendency.
thocles the insecure dominion of the Carthaginians in Africa, Pyr- acenency.
rhus hoped to return home with an irresistible force of subject allies, to expel
Antigonus from Thessaly and Boeotia, and the ruffian Ptolemy Ceraunus from
Macedonia, and to reign over Greece and the world, as became the kinsman of
Alexander and the descendant of Achilles.      He promised to hel' the Tarentines; but the force needed for such an expedition could not be raised in an
instant; and when the invasion of the Roman army, and the probable ascendency
of their political adversaries, made the call of the popular party for his aid more
pro vulg. oret."  The old reading, however, at the extremity of Italy till measures had been
is quite correct in grammar, and perfectly in- taken to secure it against an attack of the Samtelligible, and seems to be recommended by the nites on its rear. When this was provided for,
general structure of the passage. It may be the consul might safely be ordered to advance
thought that it is inconsistent with Appian's upon Tarentum.
account, who says that the consul.Emilius was  -1 The consuls came into office in April, and
already in Samnium when he received orders JEmilius was in the Tarentine territory before
to march against the Tarentines (Samnitic. the corn was cut, for the Fragment of DionysFragm. VII. 3), whereas Dionysius makes him  ins, XVII. 12, clearly relates to this invasion:
to have been present in the senate when the apotpac r &Kfaiov Ji7 r eLTrLav Oipos  oeoeaS
question of war or peace was debated; and had  p npi ~aof. In 1818, Mr. Keppel Craven found
immediate war been then resolved upon, would the harvest going on briskly a little to the
he not, it may be said, have been ordered to southwest of Tarentum on the 1st of June.attack Tarentum at once, instead of being sent Tour through the southern provinces of Naples,
into Samnium, and receiving asubsequent order p. 197.
to march against Tarentum? This, however,  32 Zonaras, VIII. 2.
would not necessarily follow; for the senate  3 Zonaras, VIII. 2. Plutarch, Pyrrh. 1
may have thought it unsafe to hazard an army  1 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 14.




ï~~394

HISTORY OF ROME.

LCHAP. XXX y

urgent, he sent over Cineas,35 his favorite minister, to assist his friends by his
eloquence and address, and shortly afterwards Milo, one of his generals, followed
with a detachment of 3000 men, and was put in possession of the citadel. A
political revolution immediately followed;"8 Agis was deprived of his command,
and succeeded by one of the popular leaders who had been sent on the embassy
to Pyrrhus; all prospect of peace was at an end, and the democratical party
held in their hands the whole government of the commonwealth.
The Tarentines were masters of the sea, and the arrival of an experienced
s r...... - general and a body of veteran soldiers gave a strength to their
Tro t otherT re  land-forces, which in numbers were in themselves considerable.
ine territory.  Winter was approaching, and Al milius proposed to retreat into
Apulia, to put his army into winter quarters in those mild and sunny plains.
He was followed by the enemy," and as his road lay near the sea, the Tarentine
fleet prepared to overwhelm him with its artillery, as his army wound along the
narrow road between the mountain sides and the water.  Amilius, it is said, put
some of his Tarentine prisoners in the parts of his line of march most exposed
to the enemy's shot, and as the Tarentines would not butcher their helpless
countrymen, they allowed the Romans to pass by unmolested. The Roman
army wintered in Apulia, and both parties had leisure to prepare their best
efforts for the struggle of the coming spring.
It was still the depth of winter8 when Pyrrhus himself arrived at Tarentum.
Pyrrhs arrives at Tr- His fleet had been dispersed by a storm on the passage, and he
rertuso. His srict dih
eiplise is irksome to the himself had been obliged to disembark on the Messapian coast
Trentines.    with only a small part of his army, and to proceed to Tarentum
by land. After a time, however, his scattered ships reached their destination
safely, and he found himself powerful enough to act as the master rather than
the ally of the Tarentines. He shut up the theatre, the public walks, and the
gymnasia, obliged the citizens to be under arms all day, either on the walls or
in the market-place, and stopped the feasts of their several clubs or brotherhoods, and all revelry, and all riotous entertainments throughout the city.
Many of the citizens, as impatient of this discipline as the lonians of old when
Dionysius of Phocaea tried in vain to train them to a soldier's duties, left the
city in disgust; but Pyrrhus, to prevent this for the future, placed a guard at
the gates, and allowed no one to go out without his permission. It is further
said that his soldiers were guilty of great excesses towards the inhabitants, and
that he himself put to death some of the popular leaders, and sent others over
to Epirus; and this last statement is probable enough, for the idle and noisy
demagogues of a corrupt democracy would soon repent of their invitation to
him, when they experienced the rigor of his discipline; and if they indulged in
any inflammatory speeches to the multitude, Pyrrhus would consider such conduct as treasonable, and would no doubt repress it with the most effectual severity.
So passed the winter at Tarentum. But the Italian allies, overawed perhaps
Amount of lsforces of by the Roman army in Apulia, were slow in raising their promised
Pyrrhus.      contingents," and Pyrrhus did not wish to commence offensive
preparations till his whole force was assembled. What number of men he had
brought with him or received since his landing from Greece itself, it is not easy
to estimate: 3000 men crossed at first under Milo; the king himself embarked
with 20,000 foot, 3000 horse,40 2000 archers, 500 slingers, and 20 elephants,
and Ptolemy Ceraunus is said to have lent him for two years the services of
5000 Macedonian foot, 4000 horse, and 50 elephants.4' The Macedonian foot
93 9s Zonaras, VIII. 2.               39 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 16.
SZonaras, VIII. 2. Frontinus, Strategem.  4o Plutarch, Pyrrh. 15. Zonaras agrees as to
1. 4, Â~ 1.                             the number of elephants; of the numbers of the
SZonaras, VIII. 2. Plutarch, Pyrrh. 15, 16. infantry and cavalry he gives no account.
Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. VIII.          4, Justin, XVII. 2.




ï~~OCla XXXVII.]

AMOUNT OF THE ROMAN FORCES.

395

may have been included in the 20,000 men whom he himself brought into Italy;
the cavalry ahd elephants of course cannot have been so, if the numbers are correctly given; but we find his cavalry afterwards spoken of as amounting only to
3000, and we can hardly think that he had at any time so many as 70 elephants.
Some deductions must also be made, in all probability, for losses sustained by
shipwreck, when the armament was dispersed by a storm in its passage. Yet
still the Greek army with which Pyrrhus was ready to take the field from Tarenturn in the spring of the year 474, must have been more numerous, both in foot,
horse, and elephants, than that with which Hannibal, about sixty years later, issued from the Alps upon the plain of Cisalpine Gaul.
The Romans, on their part, finding that not Tarentum only, but so great a king
and good a soldier as Pyrrhus was added to their numerous enemies, And of the Romans.
made extraordinary exertions to meet the danger. Even the pro- A. U. C. 44 A. C.0.
letarians,2 or the poorest class of citizens, who were usually exempt from the
military service, were now called out and embodied, and these probably formed
a great part of the reserve army kept near Rome for the defence of the city.
The new consuls were P. Valerius Lhevinus and Ti. Cobruncanius, of whom the
latter was to command one consular army against the Etruscans, while the
former was to oppose Pyrrhus in the south. No mention is made of the army of
L..Emilius, which had wintered in Apulia, so that we do not know whether it
joined that of Levinus, or was employed to watch the doubtful fidelity of the
Apulians, and to prevent the Samnites from joining the enemy's army. We
learn accidentally,43 that a Campanian legion was placed in garrison at Rhegium,
and other important towns were no doubt secured also with a sufficient force;
but the whole disposition of the Roman armies in this great campaign cannot be
known, from the scantiness of our remaining information respecting it.
It is briefly stated in the narrative of Zonaras"44 that the Romans chastised
some of their allies who were meditating a revolt, and that some state of the alieo0
citizens of Praeneste were suddenly arrested and sent to Rome, Rome.
where they were imprisoned in the vaults of the merarium on the Capitol, and
afterwards put to death. If even the Latin city of Praeneste could waver in its
fidelity, what was to be expected from the more remote and more recent allies
of Rome, from the Vestinians, Marsians, Pelignians, Sabines, and even from the
Campanians, whose faith in the second Samnite war, little more than thirty years
before, had been found so unstable?  Yet one of the consuls for this year, Ti.
Coruncanius, was a native of Tusculum, and those Latin, Volscian, and.,Equian
towns which had received the full rights of Roman citizenship were incorporated
thereby so thoroughly into the Roman nation, that no circumstances could rend
them asunder. Still the senate thought it best on every ground to keep the
war, if possible, at a distance from their own territory, and Levinus therefore
marched into Lucania, to separate Pyrrhus from his allies, and to force him to a
battle whilst he had only his own troops and the Tarentines to bring into the
field.
"Laevinus," says Zonaras, 5 "took a strong fortress in Lucania, and having left
a part of his amy to overawe the Lucanians, he advanced with Lavinus, the Roman
consul, marches against
the remainder against Pyrrhus."  Yet Pyrrhus, after all, fought, Pyrrh s
we are told, with an inferior army;" nor indeed can we conceive that so able a
general would have exposed himself to the unavoidable disadvantage of seeming to dread an encounter with the enemy, had the number of his troops been equal
to theirs. But a Roman consular army never contained more than 20,000 foot
soldiers, and 2400 horse; and the army which Pyrrhus brought with him from
Epirus was more numerous than this, without reckoning the Tarentines,
and allowing that Milo and his detachment of 3000 men still garrisoned the
" Orosius, IV. 1.                     4 VIII. 8.
43 Orosius, IV. 3. Polybius, I. 7.    ' Justin, XVIII. 1.
44 Zonaras, VIII. 8.




ï~~396

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAT. XXXVII,

citadel of' Tarentum. It is clear, then, either that Lmvinus had taken with him
the whole or the greater part of the consular army which had wintered in Apulia, or
that a prmatorian army had marched under his command from the neighborhood
of Rome, so that his force cannot be estimated at less than 30,000 foot and
3600 horse.
Pyrrhus not thinking himself strong enough to meet the enemy with the army
Pyrehus enr s to actually at his disposal, endeavored to gain time by negotiation.
gain timetO1 t nlie He wrote to Lmvinus,4 offering his mediation between the Roshonlhn  him  ans and his Italian allies, and saying that he would wait ten
days for the consul's answer.  But his offer was scornfully rejected; and in the
same spirit, when one of his spies was detected in the Roman camp, Levinus is
said to have allowed the spy to observe his whole army on their usual parade,48
and then to have sent him back unharmed, with a taunting message, that if
Pyrrhus wished to know the nature of the Roman army, he had better not send
others to spy it out secretly, but he should come himself in open day, and see
it and prove it.
Thus provoked, or more probably fearing to lose the confidence of his allies
Tn Renans a's if he should seem to have crossed the sea only to lie inactive in,
him. Battle of H ra- Tarentum, Pyrrhus with his own army and with the Tarentines
took the field and advanced towards the enemy.      The Romans
lay encamped on the right or southern bank of the Siris not far from the sea,
and Pyrrhus having crossed the Aciris between the towns of Pandosia and Heraclden, encamped in the plain49 which lies between the two rivers, and which was
favorable at once for the operations of his heavy infantry, and for his cavalry and
elephants.  A nearer view of the strength of the Roman army determined him
still to delay the battle, and he stationed a detachment of troops on the bank of the
Siris, to obstruct, if possible, the passage of the stream.  But the river, though
wide, is shallow,"5 and while the legions prepared to cross directly in front of the
enemy, the cavalry' passed above and below, so that the Greeks, afraid of being
surrounded, were obliged to fall back towards their main body. Pyrrhus then
gave orders to his infantry to form in order of battle in the middle of the plain,
while he himself rode forward with his cavalry, in hopes of attacking the Romans
before they should have had time to form after their passage of the river. But
he found the long shields of the legionary soldiers advancing in an even line from
the stream, and their cavalry in front ready to receive his attack. He charged
instantly, but the Romans and their allies, although their arms were very unequal
to those of the Greek horsemen, maintained the fight most valiantly, and a Frentanian captain2 was seen to mark Pyrrhus himself so eagerly, that one of his
officers noticed it, and advised the king to beware of that barbarian on the black
horse with white feet.  Pyrrhus, whose personal prowess was not unworthy of
his hero-ancestry, replied, "What is fated, Leonatus, no man can avoid; but
neither this man nor the stoutest soldier in Italy shall encounter with me for nothing."  At that instant, the Frentanianrode at Pyrrhus with his levelled lance, and
killed his horse; but his own was killed at the same instant, and while Pyrrhus was
remounted instantly by his attendants, the brave Italian was surrounded and slain.
Finding that his cavalry could not decide the battle, Pyrrhus at length
47 Dionysius, XVII. 15, 16.            Heraclea, for about three miles, and is ft'r the
4 Dionysius, XVIII. 1. Zonaras, VIII. 3.  most part highly cultivated.
4*Â~ Plutarch, Pyrrh. 16. At present a thick  60 Keppel Craven, p. 204. Mr. Keppel Craforest covers the western part of this plain, ex- yen forded it below the point where the Rotending along the left bank of the Siris for sev- man army effected its passage.
eral miles upwards from its mouth, as far as the  51 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 16.
point where the hills begin. See Keppel Cra-  32 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 16. Dionysius, XVIII.
ven, p. 208, and Zannoni's map. But in ancient 2-4. Part of this story of the Frentanian captimes it is probable that the whole plain be- tain has been copied by Plutarch from Dionystween the two rivers was open, and mostly corn ius, but he has some other particulars which
land. The plain rises in a gradual slope from  are not,to be found in Dionysius, and  hich he
Policoro, supposed to be the site of the ancient got probably from Hierorymus.




ï~~CHAP. XXXVII.]

THE ROMANS ARE DEFEATED.

397

ordered his infantry to advance and attack the line of the Roman P anic  a.i onod by th
legions."  He himself, knowing the importance of his own life to oppoaed deathof Pyran army in which his personal ascendency was all in all, gave rh.
his own arms, and helmet, and scarlet cloak to Megacles, one of the officers of
his guard, and himself put on those of the officer in exchange. But Megacles
bought his borrowed splendor dearly: every Roman marked him, and at last he
was struck down and slain, and his helmet and mantle carried to Levinus, and
borne along the Roman ranks in triumph. Pyrrhus feeling that this mistake was
most dangerous, rode bareheaded along his line to show his soldiers that he
was still alive; and the battle went on so furiously that either army seven
times," it is said, drove the enemy from the ground, and seven times was driven
from its own.
Levinus, true to the tactic of his country, proposed to win the battle by
keeping back his last reserve5 till all the enemy's forces were in The o   dThe Homanaore deaction. His triarii, it seems, were already engaged, and their long  oted, and thoir camp
spears might enable them to encounter, on something like equal ta.
terms, the pikes of the phalanx; but Levinus held back a chosen body of his
cavalry, hoping that their charge might at last decide the day.  They did charge,
but Pyrrhus met them with a reserve still more formidable, his elephants. The
Roman horses could not be brought to face monsters strange and terrible alike to
them and to their riders; they fell back in confusion-the infantry were disordered
by their flight; and Pyrrhus then charged with his Thessalian cavalry, and totally routed the whole Roman army. The vanquished fled over the Siris,56 but
did not attempt to defend their camp, which Pyrrhus entered without opposition.
They retreated to a city in Apulia,' which Niebuhr supposes must have been
Venusia, with a loss variously estimated as usual by different writers,5" but sufficient at any rate to cripple their army, and to leave Pyrrhus undisputed master
of the field.
His Italian allies now joined him;59 and though he complained of the tardiness
of their aid, he distributed to them a share of the spoils of his vic- Effect of the victory.
tory. The allies of Rome began to waver; and the Roman garrisons in distant cities, cut off from relief, were placed in extreme jeopardy. The

8 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 17.
STpordix, rra  ysran <vydvrwv AvdrasLv Kai
wcoc6vrwv ysvieOac. Plutarch, Pyrrh. 17. From
this and other circumstances related of this battle, it appears certain that only a very small part
of Pyrrhus' infantry could have had the arms
and array of the regular phalanx. For as the
ground was open and level, and the two armies
met front and front, if Pyrrhus' heavy-armed
infantry had been numerous, they must have
had the same advantage which the phalanx had
at Cynocephalm and at Pydna as long as it kept
its line unbroken; and the Roman infantry
could not have maintained the contest. While,
on the other hand, if the phalanx did not keep
its order, so that the Romans were able to penetrate it in several places, then they would have
obtained an easy victory, as the phalanx when
once broken became wholly helpless. But it
would seem that the Greek infantry in this battle consisted mostly of peltastne, or troops not
formed in the close array of the phalanx; such
were the Epirots generally, and such would be
also the Etolians and Illyrians, some of whom, it
is said [Dion Cassius, Fragm. Peiresc. XXXIX.],
were serving at this time in Pyrrhus' army.
Thus the infantry in both armies were armed
and formed in a manner not very different from
each other; and this would account for the
length and obstinacy of the action, and the
unber of slain on both sides.
5 Zonaras1 VIII. 8. Plutarch, Pyrrh. 17.

50 The destruction of the Roman army was
prevented, according to Orosius, by an accident. One Minucius, a soldier of the fourth
legion, cut off with his sword the trunk of one
of the elephants; which made the animal turn,
and run back upon his own army. The confusion and delay thus occasioned enabled the
Romans to escape over the Siris with the bulk
of their army. Orosius, IV. 1.
5 Zonaras, VIII. 8.
5 Hieronymus, a contemporary, who in his
account of the loss sustained in the battle of
Asculum, is known to have copied Pyrrhus' own
commentaries, makes the Roman loss in the
first battle to have amounted to 7000 men, and
that of Pyrrhus to less than 4000. Dionysius
stated the Roman loss at 15,000 and that of Pyrrhus at 18,000, copying probably from the exaggerated accounts of some of the Roman annalists, perhaps from Valerius Antias himself.
See Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 17. Orosius, copying
from Livy, who in his turn probably followed
Fabius, reckons the Roman loss at 11,880 killed,
and 310 prisoners; while of their cavalry 243
were killed and 802 taken. He says also that
twenty-two standards were taken. But what is
curious, and which shows that neither he himself nor Livy could have at all consulted the
Greek writers on this war, he asserts that of the
loss on Pyrrhus' side no record had been preserved.
no Zonaras, VIII. 8. Plutarch, Pyrrh. 17.




ï~~398

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CIE.P. XXXVIL

The Roman garrioon Locrians rose upon the garrison of their city, and opened their
seizes R.ho.m, and gates to Pyrrhus.60  At Rhegium6' the garrison, which consisted
ti.      ia    of the eighth legion, composed of Campanian soldiers, acted like
the garrison of Enna, in similar circumstances in the second Punic war: they
anticipated the inhabitants by a general massacre of all the male citizens, and
made slaves of the women and children. For this alone they might have received
reward rather than punishment from the Roman government; and the Roman
annalists would have pleaded necessity as a sanction for the act. But the Campanians, looking to the example of their Mamertine countrymen on the other side
of the strait, and thinking that Rome was in no condition to enforce their allegiance any more, held the city in their own name, and refused to obey the consul's orders. Thus Rhegium, no less than Locri, was for the present lost to the
Romans.
Pyrrhus, however, had not won his victory cheaply. Nearly four thousand of
Pyrrhss resolves tohis men had fallen, and amongst these a large proportion of his
send an embassy to best officers and personal friends; for the Greek loss must have
Rome.         fallen heavily on the cavalry, and when the king exposed his own
life so freely, those immediately about his person must have suffered in an unusual proportion.' The weather also, if we may trust some stories in Orosius,62
was very unfavorable, and the state of the roads may have retarded the advance
of the victorious army, and particularly of the elephants.  Besides, so complete
a victory, won by Pyrrhus with his own army alone, before the mass of his allies
had joined him, might dispose the Romans to peace without the risk of a second
battle. Accordingly, whilst the army advanced slowly from the shores of the
Ionian sea towards central Italy, Cineas was sent to Rome with the king's terms
of peace and alliance.63
The conditions offered were these: peace, friendship, and alliance between
He proposes terms of Pyrrhus and the Romans;64 but the Tarentines were to be included
peace.        in it, and all the Greek states in Italy were to be free and independent. Further, the king's Italian allies, the Lucanians, Samnites, Apulians,
and Bruttians, were to recover all towns and territories which they had lost in
war to the Romans. If these terms were agreed to, the king would restore to
the Romans all the prisoners whom he had taken without ransom.
Cineas, the ambassador of Pyrrhus on this memorable occasion, was, in the
cineos sent as his am- versatility and range of his talents, worthy of the best ages of
bassador.      Greece.  He was a Thessalian,65 and in his early youth he had
heard Demosthenes speak; and the impression made on his mind by the great
orator was supposed to have enkindled in him a kindred spirit of eloquence: the
tongue of Cineas, it was said, had won more cities than the sword of Pyrrhus.
Like Themistocles, he was gifted with an extraordinary memory; the very day
after his arrival at Rome, he was able to address all the senators6 and the citizens of the equestrian order by their several proper names. He had studied
philosophy, like all his educated countrymen, and appears to have admired particularly the new doctrine of Epicurus;6" which taught that war and state affairs
were but toil and trouble, and that the wise man should imitate the blissful rest
of the gods, who, dwelling in their own divinity, regarded not the vain turmoil
6o Justin, XVIII. 1.                  showed sufficient respect on the part of Pyrrhus
Â~' Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. IX. Dion Cas- for the power and resolution of the Romans,
sius, Fragm. Peiresc. XL.               but they would, not satisfy the Roman vanity,
" Orosius, IV. 1. One of the Roman forag- and accordingly, Plutarch says that "the king
ing parties, soon after the battle, was overtaken merely asked for peace for himself and indemby so dreadful a storm, that thirty-four men nity for the Tarentines, and offered to aid the
were knocked down, and twenty-two left nearly Romans in conquering Italy." Pyrrh. 18.
dead; and many oxen and horses were killed  6 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 14.
or mtuaime..                             6 Pliny, Histor. Natur. VII. Â~ 88.
63 Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. X. Plutarch,  67 Cicero, de Senectut. 18. Plutarch, Pyrrh.
Pyrrh. 18.                              20.
' Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. X. These terms




ï~~CHnA. XXXVII.]  APPIUS CLAUDIUS SPEAKS AGAINST PEACE.

399

of this lower world.  Yet his life was better than his philosophy; he served his
king actively and faithfully in peace and in war, and he wrote a military work,6S
for which he neither wanted ability nor practical knowledge. He excited no
small attention as he went to Rome, and his sayings at the places through which
he passed were remembered and recorded.69 Some stories said that he was the
bearer of presents to the influential senators, and of splendid dresses7o to win the
favor of their wives; all which, as the Roman traditions related, were steadily
refused. But his proposals required grave consideration, and there were many
in the senate who thought that the state of affairs made it necessary to accept
them.
Appius Claudius, the famous censor, the greatest of his countrymen in the
works of peace, and no mean soldier in time of need, was now, min Appus Claudius is
the thirtieth year after his censorship, in extreme old age, and had lpto the  a gsat th
been for many years blind.   But his active mind triumphed over Peace.
age and infirmity; and although he no longer took part in public business, yet
he was ready71 in his own house to give answers to those who consulted him on
points of law, and his name was fresh in all men's minds, though his person was
not seen in the Forum. The old man heard that the senate was listening to the
proposals of Cineas, and was likely to accept the king's terms of peace. He immediately desired to be carried to the senate-house, and was borne in a litter by
his slaves through the Forum.    When it was known that Appius Claudius was
coming, his sons and sons-in-law2 went out to the steps of the senate-house to
receive him, and he was by them led into his place. The whole senate kept the
deepest silence as the old man arose to speak.
No Englishman can have read thus far without remembering the scene, in all
points so similar, which took place within our fathers' memory in Similar scene in Engour own house of parliament. We recollect how the greatest of list history.
English statesmen, bowed down by years and infirmity like Appius, but roused,
like him, by the dread of approaching dishonor to the English name, was led by
his son and son-in-law into the house of lords, and all the peers, with one impulse, arose to receive him. We know the expiring words of that mighty voice,
when he protested against the dismemberment of this ancient monarchy, and
prayed that if England must fall, she might fall with honor. The real speech of
Lord Chatham against yielding to the coalition of France and America, will give
a far more lively image of what was said by the blind Appius in the Roman
senate, than any fictitious oration which I could either copy from other writers,
or endeavor myself to invent; and those who would wish to know how Appius
spoke should read the dying words of the great orator of England.
When he had finished his speech, the senate voted that the proposals of Pyrrhus should be rejected, that no peace73 should be concluded with The senate rejects the
him  so long as he remained in Italy, and that Cineas should be terms proposed.
ordered to leave Rome on that very day.
Even whilst the senate had been considering the king's proposals, there had
been no abatement of the vigor of their preparations for war.  Two And prepare vigorously
new legions," which must have been at least the ninth and tenth for war.
0 At least Cicero, in writing to Poetus, says,  70 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 18.
"Plane nesciebam te tam peritum esse rei mili-  7 Cicero, de Senectut. 67 11. Tusculan. Disp.
taris. Pyrrhi te libros et Cinete video lectitas- V. 38.
se."  Ad Familiar. IX. 25. Now the comn-   2 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 18. He had four sons and
mentaries of Pyrrhus are referred to by Plutarch, five daughters, but how many of his daughters
and it would seem therefore that the allusion to were married, we know not. See Cicero de
the writings of Cineas is also to be taken literally. Senect. 11. A speech was extant in Cicero's
t At Aricia, on the Appian Way, Cineas had time purporting to be that which Appius spoke
remarked the luxuriance of the vines, as they on this occasion. De Senectut. 6. Brutus, 16.
festooned on the very summits of the elms, and But Cicero does not seem to have regarded it
at the same time complained of the harshness as genuine.
of the wine. "The mcther which bore this   7 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 19. Appian, Samnitic.
wine well deserves," he said, " to be hung on so X. 2. Zonaras, VIII. 4.
high a gibbet." Pliny, Hist. Natur. XIV. q 12.  7 Appian, Samnitic. X. 3. The Campanian




ï~~400

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHA. XXXVII

in number, were raised while Cineas was at Rome by voluntary enlistment, proclamation being made, that whoever wished to offer his services to supply the place
of the soldiers who had fallen in battle, should enrol himself immediately. Niebuhr supposes that this was the period of P. Cornelius Rufinus' dictatorship, and
that he superintended the recruiting of the armies. The new legions were sent
to reinforce Levinus, who, as Pyrrhus began to advance northwards, followed
him hanging upon his rear, but not venturing to engage in a second battle.
Cineas returned to the king, to tell him that he must hope for nothing from
Pyrrhus advances into negotiation.  He expressed, according to the writers'S whom we
Campania.      are obliged to follow, the highest admiration of all that he had
seen.  "To fight with the Roman people was like fighting with the hydra, so
inexhaustible were their numbers and their spirit."   "Rome was a city of generals, nay, rather of kings," or, according to another and more famous version of
the story, "The city was like a temple, the senate was an assembly of kings."
Did we find these expressions recorded by Hieronymus of Cardia, who wrote
before Rome was the object of universal flattery, we might believe them; but
from the later Greek writers they deserve no more credit than if reported merely
by the Romans themselves; and nothing is more suspicious than such statements
of the language of admiration proceeding from the mouth of an enemy. But be
this as it may, Pyrrhus now resolved to prosecute the war with vigor. At the
head of a large army,76 for the Italian allies had now joined him, hlie advanced
through Lucania and Samnium into Campania. The territory of the allies of
Rome had now for some years been free from the ravages of war,7 and its scattered houses, its flourishing cultivation, and luxuriant fruit-trees, were a striking
contrast to the wasted appearance of Samnium and Lucania. All was ravaged
and plundered without mercy, by the Italians in revenge, by the Greeks to enrich
themselves and force their enemy to submission, but in some instances it only
provoked a firmer resistance, and Neapolis and Capua8" were attacked, but refused to surrender, nor could Pyrrhus make himself master of either of them.
From Campania he ascended the valley of the Liris, and followed the Latin
road towards Rome.     Fregelle,79 wrested formerly from the Vo1 -And through lihe Heri.n contry. He scians by the Samnites, and the occupation of which by the Rotakes  Przeneste,  and
advances wi thin eig- mans had led to the second Samnite war, now yielded to the
teen miles ot ome.  Greek conqueror.  The Hernicans, who, under the name of Roman citizens, without the right of suffrage, were in fact no better than Roman
subjects, received Pyrrhus readily, and Anagnia,yo their principal city, opened its
gates to him.   Still advancing, he at last looked out upon the plain of Rome
from the opening in the mountains under Preneste; and Prmneste itself,8" with
its almost impregnable citadel, fell into his hands, for the Pronestines remembered the execution of their principal citizens a few months before, and longed
for vengeance.   Preneste is barely twenty-four miles distant from    Rome, but
Pyrrhus advanced yet six miles further,"2 and from the spot where the road
legion which garrisoned Rhegium had been the Siris, for it would have been very hard to have
eighth. Orosius, IV. 3. But perhaps the pro- involved in their sentence the newly raised solletarians raised to form the army of reserve had diers who had no share in the defeat.
already formed a ninth and tenth legion, in  71 Plutarch, in Pyrrh. 19. Appian, Samnit.
which case those now raised would be the X.3. Florus, I.18. DionCassiusapudMaiunm,
eleventh and twelfth. We cannot account for Script. Veter. Collect. tom. II. p. 588.
four legions in the two consular armies, two  '6 Zonaras, VIII. 4. Eutropius, II. Florus,
more under the proconsul, L.,Emilius; one or I. 18.
two, we know not which, forming the reserve  "7 Dion Cassius, Fragm. 50. Script. Veter.
army under the walls of Rome, and one in gar- Collect.
risen at Rhegium. The legions of Luvinus had  78 Zonaras, VIII. 4.
suffered so 'greatly in the battle that their. num- 7 Florus, I. 18.
bers were no doubt very incomplete; but the  a Appian, Samnitic. X. 3.
reinforcements formed two fresh legions, and  8i Florus, I. 18. Eutropius, II.
did not merely serve to recruit the old ones, as  82 "Milliario ab urbe octavodecimo." Eutroappears both by Appian's express language, and pius. If this statement is correct, Pyrrhus
also by what is afterwards said of the punish- must have passed beyond Zagarolo, and reached
ment of the legions which had fought on the the spot where the road descends to the level




ï~~CHAP. XXXVII.]

EMBASSY SENT TO PYRRHUS.

401

descends from the last roots of the mountains to the wide level of the Campagna
he cast his eyes upon the very towers of the city.
One march more would have brought him under the walls of Rome, where,
as he hoped, there was nothing to oppose him but the two legions, The Etru.as soddenwhich, at the beginning of the campaign, had been reserved for y make p.eace with
Rome, and the second
the defence of the capital. But at this moment he was informed consular army is em.
ployed  against  Pyrthat the whole Etruscan nation had concluded a peace3 with Rome, hy He re treats to
and Ti. Coruncanius, with his consular army, was returned from     Campania.
Etruria, and had joined the army of reserve.    At the same time Levinus was
hanging on his rear, and before he could enter Rome, both consuls would
be able to combine their forces, and he would have to deal with an army of
eight or nine Roman legions, and an equal number of their Latin and other
allies. Besides, his own army was feeling the usual evils of a force composed
of the soldiers of different nations; the Italians complained of the Greeks,84
and charged them with plundering the territory of friends and foes alike; the
Greeks treated the Italians with arrogance, as if in themselves alone lay the
whole strength of the confederacy. Pyrrhus retreated, loaded with plunder,
and returned to Campania; Lrevinus fell back before him, but it is said that
when Pyrrhus"t was going to attack him, and ordered his soldiers to raise their
battle-cry, and the Greeks to strike their spears against their brazen shields, ane
when the elephants, excited by their drivers, uttered at the same time their fearful roarings, the Roman army answered with a shout so loud and cheerful, that
he did not venture to bring on an action. Neither party made any further attempts at active operations; the Samnites and Lucanians wintered in their own
countries, Pyrrhus himself returned to Tarentum, and the Romins remained
within their own frontiers," excepting only the legions which had been beaten in
the first battle,; and which were ordered to remain in the field during the winter
in the enemy's country, with no other supplies than such as they could win by
their own swords.
As soon as the campaign was over, the senate dispatched an embassy te
Pyrrhus to request that he would either allow them to ransom his A Romn embassy sen.
Roman prisoners, or that he would exchange them      for an equal to Pyrrhus. His interview with Fabricius.
number of Tarentines and others of his allies who were prisoners
at Rome.87 The ambassadors sent to Pyrrhus were O. Fabricius, Q. IEmilius,
and P. Dolabella, all of them men of the highest distinction; but Fabricius was
the favorite hero of Roman tradition, and the stories of this embassy spoke of
him alone. That Pyrrhus was struck with the circumstance of his being at once
so eminent among his countrymen, and yet so simple in his habits, and even, according to a king's standard of wealth, so poor, is perfectly probable: he may
have asked him to enter into his service, for the Greeks of that age thought it
no shame to serve a foreign king; and if the Thessalian Cineas was his minister,
he could not suppose that a similar office would be refused by the barbarian Fabricius. It was the misfortune of Pyrrhus to live in a state of society where
of the Campagna, close by what is called the Hernican town, had revolted, and that these lelake of Regillus, and just at the junction of the gions were employed in reducing it. But nomodern road from La Colonna. (Labici.)   thing can be decided with certainty.
3 Zonaras, VIII. 4. See also Appian, X. 8,  S Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. X. 4, 5. The
although his statement is not quite accurate as names of the Roman ambassadors, and long
to time.                                 speeches put into the mouths of Pyrrhus and of
84 Dion Cassius, Fragm. 50. Script. Veter. Fabricius, are to be found in the fragments of
Collect.                                 Dionysius, XVIII. 5-26. The famous anec* Zonaras, VIII. 4. Dion Cassius, Fragm. dotes, how Fabricius was neither to be bribed
LI.                                      by the king's money, nor frightened by the
88 Frontinus, Strategem. IV. 1. Â~ 24. The sudden sight of one of his elephants, which at
name of the place to which Levinus' armywas a signal given stretched out its trunk immesent is corrupt. Oudendorp and the Bipont diately over his head, are given by Plutarch,
edition read "Firmum," which, of course, must Pyrrh. 20. Speeches of Pyrrhus and of Fabribe wrong, as Firmum was far away from the cius in answer, declining the king's offers, are
seat of war. Niebuhr conjectures Samnium or also preserved in the Vatican Fragments o
Ferentinum, supposing that Ferent inum, the Dion Cassius, LIII.. LIV.
20




ï~~402

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXVII

patriotism was become impossible; the Greek commonwealths were so fallen,
and their inner life so exhausted, that they could inspire their citizens neither
with respect nor with attachment, and the military monarchies founded by Alexander's successors could know no deeper feeling than personal regard for the
reigning monarch; loyalty to his line could not yet have existed, and love for the
nation under a foreign despotism  is almost a contradiction.  In Rome, on the
other hand, the state and its institutions were in their first freshness and vigor,
and so surpassed any individual distinction, that no private citizen could have
thought of setting his own greatness on a level with that of his country, and the
world could offer to him nothing so happy and so glorious as to live and die a
Roman.    But the particular anecdotes recorded of the king and Fabricius are so
ill attested and so suspicious, and the speeches ascribed to them  both are so
manifestly the mere invention of the writers of a later age, that I have thought
it best to exclude them from this history, and merely to give a slight mention of
them in a note, on account of their great celebrity.
Pyrrhus would neither ransom nor exchange his prisoners, unless' the Romans
His generous treatment would accept the terms of peace proposed to them  by Cineas.8
of theRomanprisoners. But to show how little he wished to treat them with harshness,
he allowed Fabricius to take them all back with him to Rome to pass the Saturnalia, their winter holydays, at their several homes, on a solemn promise that they
would return to him when the holydays were over, if the senate still persisted in
refusing peace. The senate did persist in its refusal, and the prisoners returned
to Pyrrhus; the punishment of death having been denounced by the Roman
government against any prisoner who should linger in Rome beyond the day
fixed for their return. And thus both parties prepared to try the fortune of
war once again.
The new consuls were P. Sulpicius Saverrio, whose father had been consul in
A. U. c.5A. the last year of the second Samnite war, and P. Decius Mus, the
579. Second campai, son of the Decius who had devoted himself at Sentinum, and the
Both consuls are
posed to Pyrhus o  grandson of him who had devoted himself in the great battle with
Apulia.        the Latins.  The legions required for the campaign were easily
raised," every citizen being eager to serve in such a season of danger, and C.
Fabricius acted as lieutenant to one of the consuls; but beyond this we know
nothing of the number or disposition of the Roman armies, nor of their plan of
operations, nor of the several generals employed in different quarters.  Nor do
we know whether any of the places which had revolted to Pyrrhus during his
advance upon Rome continued still to adhere to him after his retreat; nor, if
they did, how much time and what forces were required to subdue them. We are
only told that Pyrrhus took the field in Apulia, and reduced several places in that
quarter;90 and that he was employed in besieging Asculum when both consuls,
with their two consular armies, advanced to relieve it and to offer him battle.
The ancient Asculum, if its site was exactly the same with that of the modern
Preparations for battle Ascoli, stood on a hill of inconsiderable size9' on the edge of the
on both sides.  plains of Apulia; but, geologically speaking, it belongs to the
plains, for the hill is composed only of beds of sand and clay, and the range of
the limestone mountains sweeps round it at some distance on the west and south.
The country is, for the most part, open, and must have been favorable for the
operations of the king's phalanx and elephants, as the soil, which after the winter
rains is stiff and heavy, must, later in the year, have recovered its hardness.
I Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. X. 4, 5. Zona-  s Dion Cassius, Fragm. Vatic. LV. Ororas, following Dion Cassius, and Dionysius also, sius, IV. 1.
place.t this period the free release of all the  8 Zonaras, VIII. 4.
Roman prisoners by Pyrrhus without ransom.  * See Dr. Daubeny's Excursion to AmsancAnd so also does the epitome of Livy, XIII. tus, p. 80. Ascoli is a poor town, though it
Plutarch agrees with Appian, and their account contained in 1797, according to Giustiniani,
is so much the more probable of the two that 5270 souls. It has suffered repeatedly from
I have not hesitated to follow it.      earthquakes.




ï~~CHAP. XXXVII.]

BATTLE OF ASCULUM.

403

When the armies were opposed to each other, a rumor spread among Pyrrhus'
soldiers2 that the consul Decius intended to follow the example of his father
and grandfather, and to devote himself, together with the enemy's army, to the
powers of death, whenever they should join battle. The men were uneasy at
this report, so that Pyrrhus thought it expedient to warn them against yielding
to superstitious fears, and to describe minutely the dress worn by any person so
devoting himself.  "If they saw any one so arrayed," he said, "they should not
kill him, but by all means take him alive;" and he sent a message to the consuls, warning them that if he should take any Roman practising such a trick,
he would put him to an ignominious death as a common impostor. The consuls
replied, that they needed no such resources, and trusted to the courage of Roman soldiers for victory.
The first encounter took place on rough ground,9" and near the swampy banks
of a river; 'and Pyrrhus having assailed the Romans in such a posi- Battlo of Asoulum.
tion, was repulsed with loss. But he manceuvred so as to bring
them fairly into the plain, and there the two armies engaged. He kept his
cavalry and elephants to act as a reserve; the Tarentines formed the centre of
his line; the Lucanians, Bruttians, and Sallentines94 were on the left, and the
Greeks and Samnites on the right. The Romans, as usual, had their cavalry on
the wings, and their own legions formed the 'first line, and also the reserve; the
troops of their allies forming a second line between them. If this be true, the
Romans must have suspected the fidelity of their allies; for their courage had
been proved in a hundred battles; and the Marsians and Pelignians now, as at
Pydna, would have thrown themselves on the pikes of the phalanx as fearlessly
as the bravest Roman. On the other hand, Pyrrhus intermingled the Samnites
with his Greek infantry, on purpose to combine the advantages of the Italian
tactic" with those of the Macedonian; that if his line should be attacked in flank,
or if the enemy should penetrate it in any quarter, the Samnites might meet the
Romans with their own weapons, and allow the Greeks time to recover the position and close order which, to their mode of fighting, were indispensable.
But he had no occasion to try the effect of this disposition; for his phalanx
kept its advantage, and as the nature of the ground obliged the Thoe R oman, are -
Romans to attack it in front, they hewed in vain with their swords96 feated.
at the invincible mass of the Macedonian pikes, or tried to grapple them with
their hands and break them. The Greeks kept an even line, and the Romans,
finding it impossible to get within the hedge of spears, were slaughtered without
returning a wound. At last they gave way, and then the elephants charged, and
completed the rout. The other parts of the line opposed to the Tarentines and
Lucanians were obliged to follow the example, and the Roman army fled to its
camp. This was so close at hand that the loss did not' exceed six thousand
men, while in the army of Pyrrhus there had fallen 3505 according to the statement copied by Hieronymus from the commentaries of the king himself. This
loss must again have fallen on the cavalry, light troops, and peltaste of Pyrrhus'
army, unless it was sustained chiefly by his allies on the centre and left wing;
for the circumstances of the battle make it certain that the victory of his heavyarmed Greek infantry must have been almost bloodless.
In this account of the actual battle of Asculum, Plutarch luckily' chose to copy
Hieronymus; but immediately after it he follows Dionysius, and Exaggerated and falseo
we have nothing but the usual exaggerations of Roman vanity, account ofthisbattle.
which leave the real facts of the campaign in utter darkness. The victory of
Asculum was not improved, and at the end of the season the Romans wintered
in Apulia, and Pyrrhus again returned to Tarentum.:A victory followed by no
0 Zonaras, VIII. 5. Dion Cassius,' Fragm.  95 Polybius, XVIII. 11.
v'atican. LV.                          96 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 21, copying:apparently
43 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 21.             from Hiieronymus.
9 Frontinus, Stratagem. II. 3, Â~ 21.




ï~~404

HISTORY OF ROME.

(CHAr. XXXVIL

results is easily believed to be a defeat; and where there is no other memorial
of events than unchecked popular report and unsifted stories, facts which have
no witness in their permanent consequences are soon hopelessly perverted.
Niebuhr declares from his own personal observation, that within a few days after the
battle of Bautzen every Prussian who had not been actually engaged in the action,
maintained that the allies had been victorious; and we can remember the extraordinary misrepresentation which for a moment persuaded the English public
that Napoleon had been defeated at Borodino. The successive steps of Roman
invention with respect to the battle of Asculum are so curious, that I have given
a view of them in a note:97 but it is not so easy to determine what were the
real causes which neutralized to Pyrrhus the result of his victory, and made the
issue of the campaign, as a whole, decidedly unfavorable to him.
Both Zonaras and Dionysius relate that the baggage of Pyrrhus was plundered
It is attended with no during the battle by his Italian allies; by the Apulians according
results. League.  toe Zonaras, or according to Dionysius by the Samnites. If this
tenthe Romans andtoZnr    acrig         unyushs
carthaginia..  were so, not only did it imply such bad discipline and bad feeling
on the part of his allies as to make it impossible for Pyrrhus to depend on their
co-operation for the future; but the loss of their plunder and baggage would
greatly discourage his own soldiers, and indispose them to the continuance of the
war. Besides, it was manifest that the brunt of every battle must fall on the
Greeks; already Pyrrhus had lost many of his best officers, and as he never lost
sight of his schemes of conquest in Greece, he would not be willing to sacrifice
his bravest soldiers in a series of hard-won battles in Italy, for the sake of allies
on whom he could place no reliance. It is likely also that the Apulian cities
which he had taken, overawed by the Roman power, and disgusted with the
arrogance and indiscriminate plundering of the Greeks, were ready to return to
their alliance with Rome; and as the Roman army was certain to be speedily
reinforced, whilst Pyrrhus could look for no additional soldiers from Epirus, it
might be absolutely impossible for him to keep the field. Finally, the Romans
had concluded a defensive alliance98 with the Carthaginians, for their mutual
support against Pyrrhus; and towards the autumn of the year Ptolemy Ceraunus, king of Macedon, was defeated and killed by the Gauls," and the presence
of these barbarians in Macedonia made it certain that no more soldiers could be
spared from Epirus for foreign warfare, when their own frontier was in hourly
danger of invasion.
Thus left with no prospect of further conquests in Italy, Pyrrhus eagerly listened during the winter to offers from other quarters, inviting him to a new field

The account in the text is Plutarch's, copied,
as I have said, from Hieronymus of Cardia, a
contemporary historian. And Justin agrees
with it: "The issue of the second battle," he
says, "was similar to that of the first," XVIII.
1. Livy if we may trust the epitome of his
18th book, describes the action as a drawn battle: " dubio eventu pugnatum est."  But Florus calls it a victory on the part ofthe Romans;
and Eutropius and Orosius, copying apparently
from the same source, says that Pyrrhus was
wounded, many of his elephants destroyed,
and 20,000 of his men killed, the Roman loss
not exceeding 5000. Zonaras, copying from
Dion Cassius, says that Pyrrhus was wounded,
and that his army was defeated; owing chiefly
to an attack made on his camp during the battle by a party of Apulians, which spread a panic
among his soldiers. According to Dionysius,
as quoted by Plutarch, Pyrrhus was wounded,
the Samnites, and not the Apulians, assaulted
his camp during the action, and the loss on
both sides was equal, amounting to 15,000 men
in each army. It is no less remarkable that
according to Cicero, the consul P. Decius did

actually devote himself in this battle as his
father and grandfather had done before him.
De Finib. II. 19. Tusculan. Disp. I. 37. No
other existing account notices this circumstance; and according to the author " de Viris
Illustribus," Decius was alive some years afterwards, and was engaged in the last war with
Volsinii. Probably it was either a forgetfulnessin
Cicero himself, or he followed some exaggerated
account, which, as he was not writing a history
of the period, he did not criticise, but adopted
it without inquiry. But such enormous discrepancies in the several accounts show what is
the character of the Roman history of this
period, that, except in particular cases, it is
merely made up of traditional stories and panegyrical orations, and can scarcely be called history at all. How different is the account given
of the battle by the contemporary historian
Hieronymus, who was writing from really good
materials, not from guess or fancy, but from
knowledge!
en Livy, Epitome, XIII.   Polybius, III. 25
Justin, XVIII. 2.
9 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 22.




ï~~CHAP. XXX VII.]

PYRRHUS IS INVITED TO SICILY

405

of action.  The death of Ptolemy Ceraunus and the anarchy Pyehus cro... over
which followed tempted him to win back his old dominion in into Sicily.
Macedonia, while envoys from some of the principal cities of Sicily called upon
him to aid them against Carthage, and promised to make him master of the
whole island.   He was thus eager to seize the first pretext for abandoning Italy,
and early in the following spring such an occasion was afforded him. The new
consuls, C. Fabricius and Q..Emilius, were sent against him:100.. v. c. 476. A. c.
and he soon received a message from    them to say that one of his 2.
servants had offered to poison him, and had applied to the Romans to reward his
crime, but that the consuls, abhorring a victory gained by treason, wished to give the
king timely notice of his danger. Pyrrhus upon this expressed his gratitude in
the warmest terms, furnished all his prisoners with new clothing, and sent them
back to their own country, without ransom and without conditions.' Immediately afterwards, without paying any regard to the remonstrances of his allies,
he left Milo still in possession of the citadel of Tarentum,1'a and his second son
Alexander at Locri, and set sail with the rest of his army for Sicily.
It was apparently soon after the battle of Asculum, that a Carthaginian fleet
of 120 ships01Â~ was sent to Ostia to offer aid to the Romans, and     crhgi    et
A Carthaginian fleet is
the senate declining this succor, the Carthaginian commander rent to the aid of the
sailed away to the south of Italy, and there it is said proposed to Romans.
Pyrrhus that Carthage should mediate between him           and the Romans, his
real object being to discover what were the king's views with respect to Sicily.
Was then the Tarentine fleet wasting the coasts of Latium, so that Rome stood
in need of naval aid? Or did so large a fleet contain a Carthaginian army, and
was Rome wisely unwilling to see an African general making war in Italy, and
carrying off the plunder of Italian cities? The insinuation against the good faith
of the Carthaginian commander seems quite unfounded; this very armament
helped the Romans'M in attempting to recover Rhegium, and though the seige
did not succeed, yet a large supply of timber, which the Campanians had collected for building ships, was destroyed, and the Carthaginians having made a
league with the Mamertines of Messana, watched the strait with their fleet to
intercept Pyrrhus on his passage. But it seems that their fleet was called off in
the next year to be employed in the siege of Syracuse, so that Pyrrhus, avoiding
Messana, crossed from Locri to Tauromenia105 without opposition, and being welcomed there by the tyrant Tyndarion, landed his army, and marched to the
deliverance of Syracuse. His operations in Sicily lasted more than two years;10G
his fortune, which at first favored him in every enterprise, was wrecked in a
fruitless siege of Lilybaum;107 disgusts arose, as in Italy, between him and his
allies; they were unmanageable and he was tyrannical, so that when at length
his Italian allies implored him to come once again to their aid, he was as ready
to leave Sicily as he had before been anxious to invade it.
During his absence the Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttians, and Tarentines still
1oo Claudius Quadrigarius, quoted by A. tained no triumph over Tarentum, and the
Gellius, III. 8. Appian, Samnitic. Fragm. XI. success for which Fabricius triumphed "do
Plutarch, Pyrrh. 21.                      Tarentinis" (Fasti Capitol.) may have been ob101 Plutarch and Appian say that the senate tained in the early part of his consulship, before
released an equal number of Tarentine and Sam- the truce with Pyrrhus was concluded.
nite prisoners, and that Cineas was again sent  1o0 Justin, XVIII. 2. Zonaras, VIII. 5.
to Rome to negotiate apeace, but that the Romans  103 Justin, XVIII. 2.
refused to treat, while Pyrirus remained in  104 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXII. 9.
Italy. Yet Appian, in another fragment, says  105 Diod., Fragm. Hoeschel. XXII. 11.
that Pyrrhus, "after his treaty with the Ro-  1o6 From the middle of 476 to the latter end
mans," pcru rag 7rpac 'Pwpatovg ovvOeiKac, went of 478.  re rpitrw is Appian's expression, Samover to Sicily. Probably a truce for a certain nitic. Fragm. XII., which Mr. Fynes Clinton
period was agreed to, and with it a general ex- wrongly understands of the year 479, for that,
change of prisoners. Whether Pyrrhus stipu- according to the Greek mode of reckoning,
lated any thing for the Tarentines we cannot would not have been htru rp ry, but rerdp_ p.
tell; but the consuls of the two succeeding  o10 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXII. 14.
years, although they triumphed over the Sam- Plutarch, Pyrrh. 22, 23.
nites and Lucanians, yet appeared to have o




ï~~406

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXVII

A. U. C. 476,471.A.c. continued the war.  They ventured no battles in the field, but
S8a rin. Progressg resolutely defended their towns and fastnesses,0s and sometimes,
Ohs war iaItaly during
e absence ofPyrrhus. as always happens in such warfare, inflicted some partial loss on
the enemy, without being able to change in any degree the general fortune of the
contest.  The consuls employed against them     enjoyed a triumph at the end of
each campaign; Fabricius at the end of the year 476,109 C. Junius Brutus at the
end of 477, and Q. Fabius Gurges at the end of 478. In the mean time P. Cornelius Rufinus, the colleague of C. Junius in 477, had recovered Croton and Locri; but as he was considered the principal cause of a severe repulse sustained
by himself 1o and his colleague from the Samnites at the beginning of the year,
he was not thought deserving of a triumph.
It seems to have been in the autumn of 478 that Pyrrhus returned to Italy.'"
A. U. c. 478. A. c. But his return was beset with enemies, for a Carthaginian fleet
276. Pyrrhus returns attacked him  on his passage, and sunk seventy of his ships of
to Italy.      war,"12 and when he landed on the Italian coast he found that the
Mamertines had crossed over from Messana to beset his road by land, and he
had to cut his way through them with much loss.       Yet he reached Tarentum
with a force nearly as large as that which he had first brought over from Epirus;
as large in numbers, but of a very different quality, consisting principally of mercenaries raised in his Sicilian wars, men of all countries, Greek and Barbarian,
and whose fidelity would last no longer than their general was victorious.
No sooner had he arrived at Tarentum than he commenced active operations.
He plunders the templo The Roman consuls were employed in Lucania and in Samnium,"'3
of Preserpine atLori. but he received no interruption from  them, and recovered Locri.
He next made an attempt upon Rhegium, a place so important from its position
to the success of any new expedition to Sicily, but the Campanian garrison resisted Pyrrhus"4 as stoutly as they had resisted the Romans, and the king was
obliged to retire with loss.  His old allies, the Samnites and Lucanians,"' received him coldly, and, however anxious to obtain his aid, they had not, exhausted as they were, the means of supplying him with money, even if they
had been disposed to rely on his constancy in their cause.    Thus embarrassed,
as he passed by Locri on his return from Rhegium to Tarentum, he listened to
the advice of some of his followers,'  and plundered the temple of Proserpine.
In the vaults underneath this temple was a large treasure, which had been buried
for unknown generations, and no mortal eye had been allowed to look on it.
This he carried off, and embarked his spoil on board of his ships, to transport it
by sea to Tarentum.    A storm, however, arose and wrecked the ships, and cast
ashore the plundered treasure on the coast of Locri.   Pyrrhus was moved, and
ordered it to be replaced in the temple of the goddess, and offered sacrifices to
propitiate her anger. But when there were no signs given that she accepted his
offering, he put to death the three men who had advised him to commit the
sacrilege, and even yet his mind was haunted by a dread of divine vengeance,
and his own commentaries"7 recorded his belief that Proserpine's wrath was still
108 Zonaras, VIII. 6.                  ginians employed in their engagement with
10 Fabricius triumphed in December, Brutus Duilius in the first Punic war a large ship,
in January, thirteen months afterwards, and Fa- which they took from Pyrrhus probably on his
bius in the February of the year following, when retreat from Sicily.  (Polybius, I. 23.) We
Pyrrhus in all probability was already returned must suppose that the ships of war were conto Italy.                                voying the transports on which Pyrrhus had
no Zonaras, VIII. 6.                   embarked his army; and that their resistance
"' Zonaras expressly says that Pyrrhus re- enabled the transports to escape.
turned in the year after the consulship of P.  113 Zonaras, VIII. 6.
Rlufinus, that is, in 478. VIII. 6.       114 Zonaras, VIII. 6.
112 Appian, Samitic. Fragm. XII. Plutarch,  1a Plutarch, Pyrrh. 25. Dion. Cassius, Fragm.
Pyrrh. 24. Pyrrhus had obtained this fleet Peiresc. XLII.
chiefly from the Syracusaus, who, on his first  116 Dionysius, XIX. 9. Appian, Samnitio
arrival in Sicily, gave up to him their whole Fragm. XII.
navy, amounting to 140 ships of war. Diodo-  1 Dionysius, XIX., ns ~e.,osris IIiog byo ro
rus, Fragm. Hoescehel. XXII. 11. The Cartha- fIog ftropvsraat ypdo.




ï~~CHAP. XXX TII.]

PREPARATIONS OF THE ROMANS.

407

pursuing him, and bringing on his arms defeat and ruin. If Pyrrhus nimself, after
his long intercourse with the Epicurean Cineas, entertained such fears, they weighed
far more heavily doubtless on the minds of many of his soldiers and his allies;
and the sense of being pursued by the wrath of heaven may have well chilled
the hearts of the bravest, and affected in no small degree the issue of the war.
This was fast approaching.    The consuls chosen for the year 479 were '.
Curius Dentatus and L. Cornelius Lentulus. The Romans on their
Religious  terrors  at
side also were visited by religious terrors; during the year 478 a Rome. A. U. C. 479.
fatal pestilence had raged amongst them,"8 and now the clay A. C. 275.
statue of Jupiter on the summit of the Capitoline temple was struck by lightning, and shattered to pieces. The head of the image was nowhere to be found,
and the augurs declared that the storm had blown it into the Tiber, and commanded that it should be searched for in the bed f the river.    It was found
in the very place in which the augurs had commanded the search to be made.
Fears of the anger of the gods, together with the dread of the arms of Pyrrhus, made the Romans backward to enlist in the legions.   Those seve~ty of the consul
who were summoned did not answer to their names, upon which in the enlistment of
the consul, M'. Curius,"19 commanded that the goods of the first de- soldiers.
faulter should be publicly sold. A public sale of a man's property by the sentence of a magistrate rendered him incapable of exercising afterwards any political rights; but the necessity of a severe example was so felt that no tribune interposed in behalf of the offender, and the consul's order was carried into execution.  The usual number of legions was then raised; Lentulus2Â~ marched into
Lucania, Curius into Samnium.
Pyrrhus took the field against Curius with his own army, and the flower of the
force of Tarentum, and a division of Samnites; the rest of the Pyrhs nd M'. Curiu
Pyrrhus and MI. Curium
Samnite army was sent into Lucania to prevent Lentulus from       oppoosed to each other
coming to join his colleague. Curius, finding that Pyrrhus was near Beneventum.
marching against him, sent to call his colleague to his aid; and in the mean
while the omens would not allow him to attack the enemy,"' and he lay encamped in a strong position near Beneventum. There is much rugged and difficult country behind the town on the road towards Apulia, and there is a considerable extent of level ground in the valley of the Calore below it, which was
the scene of the decisive battle between Manfred and Charles of Anjou. But
whether they fought on the same ground which had witnessed the last encounter
between Pyrrhus and the Romans, it is not possible to determine.
Pyrrhus resolved to attack Curius before his colleague joined him, and he
planned an attack upon his camp by night.'        He set out by Unuccesful  ighttorchlight, with the flower of his soldiers and the best of his ele-  "pro ~U'f i
phants; but the way was long, and the country overgrown with eanmp.
wood, and intersected with steep ravines; so that his progress was slow, and at
last the lights were burnt out, and the men were continually missing their way.
Day broke before they reached their destination; but still the enemy were not
aware of their approach till they had surmounted the heights above the Roman
camp, and were descending to attack it from the vantage-ground. Then Curius
led out his troops to oppose them; and the nature of the ground gave the Romans a great advantage over the heavy-armed Greek infantry, as soon as the
attempt to surprise them had failed. But the action seems to have been decided
118 Orosius, IV.- 2. Livy, Epitom. XIV. Cicero, most tolerant even of the greatest severity when
de Divinat.. 10.                      the public service seemed to require it. But
no Livy, Epitom. XIV. Valerius Maximus  the authority of a collector of anecdotes is so
VI. 3, Â~ 4, adds to this story that Curius sold small, that Valerius' addition to the story must
not only the property of the defaulter, but the be considered very doubtful.
man himself, saying "that the commonwealth  1 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 25.
wanted no citizen who did not know how to  12 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 25.
obey." If the tribunes did not interfere, the  122 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 25. Dionysius, XIX
consul's power might indeed extend to any 12-14.
thing; and we know that the Romans were




ï~~408

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXVIIH

by an accident; for one of Pyrrhus' elephants was wounded, and running wild
among its own men, threw them into disorder; nor could they offer a long resistance, being almost exhausted with the fatigue of their night-march. They were
repulsed with great loss;123 two elephants were killed, and eight being forced
into impracticable ground from which there was no outlet, were surrendered to
the Romans by their drivers.
Thus encouraged, Curius no longer declined a decisive action on equal ground;
Battle of Beneventum. he descended into the plain,"' and met Pyrrhus in the open field.
Pyrrhus is defeated.  On the one wing the Romans were victorious; on the other, op.
pressed by the weight of the 'dephants' charge, they were driven back to their
camp.'25 But their retreat was covered by a shower of missiles from the guards
on the rampart, and these so annoyed the elephants that.they turned about, and
fled through their own ranks, bearing down all before them. When the phalanx
was thus disordered the Romans attacked it vigorously,,and made their way into
the mass; and then their swords had an immense advantage over the long spears
of the enemy, and their victory was speedy and complete.
What number of men were killed or taken is variously reported; but the overe finally leaves Italy throw was decisive; and Pyrrhus, retreating to Tarentum, resolved
and returns to Epirus. immediately to evacuate Italy.  Yet, as if he still clung to the
hope of returning hereafter, he left Milo with his garrison in the citadel of Tarentum, and then embarked for Epirus.'26    He landed in his native kingdom with no
more than eight thousand foot and five hundred horse,"' and without money to
maintain even these.    Thus he was forced to engage in new enterprises; and
often victorious in battle, but never successful in war, he perished two or three
years afterwards, as is well known, by a woman's hand, in his attack upon Argos.
CHAPTER     XXXVIII.
GENERAL HISTORY FROM THE DEPARTURE OF PYRRHUS FROM ITALY TO THE
BEGINNING OF THE FIRST PUNIC WAR-FINAL SUBMISSION OF SAMNIUMCONQUEST     OF  TARENTUM-PICENTIAN          AND    VOLSINIAN     WARS-ROME
ACQUIRES THE      SOVEREIGNTY     OF   ALL ITALY-DETACHED         EVENTS AND
ANECDOTES RELATING TO THIS PERIOD.-479 TO 489 A. U. C., 275 TO 265 A. C.
" France was now consolidated into a great kingdom... And thus having conquered herself, if I may use the phrase, and no longer apprehensive of any foreign enemy, she was prepared to carry her arms into other countries."--HALLA, Middle Ages, Chap. I. Part 11.
WE have seen that a Carthaginian fleet appeared on the coasts of Latium in
Relations  between the heat of the war with Pyrrhus, to offer its assistance to the
Rome and Carthage.  Romans.  The offer was then refused, but very soon afterwards a
1 Dionysius, XIX. 14.                   mother, and so excited her, that she, too, be124 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 25. The scene of the came ungovernable, and threw the Greek army
battle is placed by Orosius and Florus "in into disorder, and that this accident first turned
campis Arusinis," or " sub campis Arusinis," the fortune of the day.
but this name is unknown to us, and does not  126 It is said that a report was purposely cirenable us to determine the place exactly.  culated by Pyrrhus, of the speedy arrival of re125 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 25. The story which  inforcements from the kings of Macedonia and
'ionysius and Plutarch relate of the first action Syria, and that the Romans therefore did not
is by Zonaras and Florus referred to the last venture to advance upon Tarentum. Pausanias,
and decisive battle; namely, that a young ele- I. 18; compare Niebuhr, Vol. III. p. 610, and
phant having been wounded, and running note 927.
about screaming, its cries were heard by its ' Plutarch, Pyrrh. 26.




ï~~CHAT. XXXVIII.]

PREPARATORY EVENTS.

409

treaty was concluded between Rome and Carthage,' in which both nations engaged to reserve to themselves the right of assisting one another, even if either
should conclude an alliance with Pyrrhus; that is to say, their alliance with
him was to be subordinate to their alliance with each other, and instead of aiding
him in his attacks against the other, they were in such a case to aid one another,
even against him. Such were the relations subsisting between Rome and Carthage in the year 479; eleven years afterwards these friendly ties were broken
to pieces, and the two nations were engaged in the first Punic war.
In fact, from the moment that Pyrrhus embarked at Tarentum to return to
Epirus, the whole stream of our history begins to set towards that Preparation of events
great period when Rome and Carthage first became enemies.    The for the firstPunie war.
relics of wars in Italy, which still remain to be noticed, are only like a clearing
of the ground for that mightier contest; and the union of all Italy under one
dominion is rather to be regarded for the present as the forging of that iron
power by which Carthage was to be crushed, and the whole civilized world
bowed into subjection, than as the completion of the magnificent and complicated
fabric in which law and polity were to abide as in their appointed temple. The
very barrenness of the political history of Rome during the half century which
followed the war with Pyrrhus, is in itself a presumption that the energies of the
Roman people at this time were employed abroad rather than at home. I shall
therefore defer all notice of the internal state of Italy under the Roman sovereignty, till we come to the period of the second Punic war. Then, when Hannibal's sword was probing so deeply every unsound part in the Roman dominion,
and when he was laboring to array Campania and Samnium and Lucania and
Bruttium in a fifth coalition against Rome, the internal relations of the Italian
states towards the Romans and towards each other will necessarily demand our
attention. But for the present I shall merely regard them as blended into one
great mass, which was presently to be engaged in deadly conflict with the dominion of Carthage.
After Pyrrhus left Italy, his general, Milo, retained the citadel of Tarentum for
nearly four years.  The aristocratical party, which had been from A... 48. A..
A. U. c. 482. A. C.
the beginning opposed to the Epirot alliance, now endeavored to 272. Siege of T.re
ur. Mite  retires t
rid themselves of it by force of arms.   They failed, however, in  iro. s.urrender of
their attempt to recover the citadel, and then leaving Tarentum, the town.
they occupied a fort in the neighborhood,' from whence they carried on a plundering warfare against the city, and were able to make their own peace with the
Romans.    Even the popular party were tired of the foreign garrison and its governoi-, but, feeling that they never could be forgiven by the Romans, they looked
elsewhere for aid, and sent to the Carthaginian commanders3 in Sicily to deliver
them from  Milo's dominion.   A Carthaginian fleet appeared accordingly before
the harbor, while L. Papirius Cursor, the Roman consul, was besieging the town
by land. But Papirius, dreading the interference of Carthage, treated secretly
with Milo,' and persuaded him to deliver up the citadel to the Romans, on condition of being allowed to retire in safety to Epirus with his garrison and all their
baggage. Thus Tarentum was given up into the hands of the Romans, and the
Carthaginian fleet returned to Sicily. The Roman government complained of its
appearance on the coast of Italy,5 when its assistance had not been requested by
Polybius, III. 25.                    between the Roman and Carthaginian forces, in
2 Zonaras, VIII. 6. This was like the aristo- which the Romans were victorious.
cratical party in Corcyra, who, after their expul-  4 Zonaras, VIII. 6. Frontinus, Strategem.
sion from the city, built afort in the mountains, III. 8, Â~ 1.
from whence they plundered the lands of their 5  Orosius, IV. 5. That the interference of the
opponetnts. Thucyd. III. 85.             Carthaginians on this occasion was complained
Zonaras, VIII. 6. Orosius, IV. 3. But the of by the Romans appears also from Livy,
account in Orosius is greatly distorted and ex- Elitom. XIV. and from Dion Cassius, Fragm.
aggerated, for he makes the Tarentines call in V tican. LVII. Yet as Pyrrhus was the enemy
the aid of Carthage not against Milo, but against of Carthage, the Carthaginians might lawfully
Rome, and says that a regular action took place aid the Tarentines against his officer; the a  -




ï~~410

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXVIII

Rome; and the Carthaginians, now that Tarentum was actually in the Roman
power, disavowed the expedition as an unauthorized act of their officers in Sicily.
The death or banishment of the leaders of the democratical party at Tarentum
Subjugation of Taren- atoned, no doubt, for the insult offered to the Roman ambassadors,
tom.           and for the zealous enmity which had organized against Rome the
fourth Samnite war.    When vengeance was satisfied, policy demanded the complete humiliation of a city which had shown both the will and the power to injure.' Tarentum was dismantled, its fleet and all its stores of arms were surrendered, it was made to pay a yearly tribute, and a Roman garrison,? it seems,
was quartered in the citadel. When thus effectually disarmed and fettered, the
Tarentines were allowed to retain their municipal freedom, as the allies, and not
the subjects of Rome.
In the same year, immediately before the fall of Tarentum, Samnium, Lucania,
and Bruttium had made their final and absolute submission. L.
Sabmisiion of the SamiteLucaitos, iia Papirius Cursor and Sp. Carvilius Maximus, who had been consuls, tt"e together one-and-twenty years earlier in the great campaign which
decided the third Samnite war, were elected consuls together for the second time,
to put the last stroke to the present contest.  Carvilius invaded Samnium, and
received the submission of the Samnites; Papirius received that of the Lucanians
and Bruttians.   The three nations all retained their municipal freedom, or rather
their several towns or districts were left free individually, but their national union
was dissolved; and they were, probably, not even allowed to intermarry with 'or
to inherit property from each other. Besides this, they made, undoubtedly, large
cessions of territory, and were obliged to give hostages9 for their future good
behavior. It is mentioned in particular that the Bruttians ceded the half of their
mountain and forest district, called Sila,10 or the Weald; a tract rich to this day
in all varieties of timber trees, and in wide ranges of well-watered pastures, and
famous for yielding the best vegetable pitch known to the ancients. The right
of preparing this pitch was let as usual by the censors, and brought into the republic a large revenue.
Thus the Romans had put down all their enemies in the south of Italy, except
A. U. C. 484. A. c. the rebellious soldiers of the eighth legion, who had taken posses270. Puismentof the                     hweer
revolted                                                              years later
0uie  ofs' sion of Rhegium.  Th~ose, hoeewere reuced twoyerlar
Rhegium.       by the consul, C. Genucius."    A separate treaty concluded with
the Mamertines of Messana1 had cut them off from their most natural succor,
and Hiero, who since Pyrrhus had left Sicily had been raised by his merit and
services'3 to the throne of Syracuse, took an active part against them, and supplied the Roman besieging army not with corn only, but with an auxiliary force
of soldiers.  Thus the town of Rhegium was at last stormed, and most of the
garrison put to the sword in the assault. Of the survivors, all except the soldiers of the original legion were executed'4 by the consul on the spot; but these,
as Campanian citizens,'5 and, therefore, having all the private rights of citizens of
Rome, were reserved for the judgment of the senate and people. When they
were brought to Rome, one of the tribunes pleaded in their behalf that they
fence complained of, however, was, in all prob- Lollius, a Samnite hostage, is said to have esability, the appearance of a foreign fleet, unin- caped from Rome.
vited by the Romans, on the coasts of what  10 Dionysius, XX. 5. Sila is, doubtless, the
they would consider the Roman dominion. But same word as Silva and as $ril. For the actual
the Carthaginians might answer that the coast state of this forest country, see Mr. Keppel
of lapygia was not yet to be regarded as belong- Craven, Tour in the Southern Provinces of
ing to Rome.                             Naples, p. 242.
6 Zonaras, VIII. 6.                      1 Dionysius, XX. 7.
In the interval between the first and second  2 Zonaras, VIII. 6.
Punic wars, a legion was regularly stationed at  1 Polybius, I. 8, 9. Justin, XXIII. 4. ZonaTarentum. Polybius, II. 24. Niebuhr thinks ras, VIII. 6.
that this had been the case ever since the sur-  4 Orosius, IV. 3.
render of the city.                        10 See Niebuhr, Rom. Hist. Vcl. II. p. 57.
Zonaras, VIII. 6.                      Eng. Transl.
This appears from Zonaras, VIII. 7, where




ï~~Car,. XXXVIII.]

CONQUEST OF THE PICENTIANS.

411

were Roman citizens,'i and ought not to be put to death, except by the judgment
of the people; but the people were as little disposed to mercy as the senate, and
the thirty-three tribes17 condemned them unanimously.  They were thus all
scourged and beheaded, to the number of more than three hundred, and their
bodies were cast out unburied. Rhegium and its territory were restored to the
survivors of the old inhabitants.
In the next year one of the Samnite5 hostages escaped from Rome, and revived a guerilla warfare in the country of the Caracenians in north- A. U.. 485. A...4. U. C. 485. A. C.
ern Samnium. Both consuls were employed to crush at once an 269. Short guerillawa,
enemy who might soon have become formidable, and the bands insanum.
which had taken up arms were soon dispersed, and their strongholds taken,
although not without some loss and danger on the part of the conquerors.
A war followed with a people whose name has only once before been heard
of in Roman history, the Picentians, on the coast of the Adriatic. A.U..4.A..98.
The Picentians had become the allies of Rome" thirty-one years War withdanconquest
before this period, at the beginning of the third Samnite war, and of teP.t.
they had ever since observed the alliance faithfully. But in the year 486 we
find two consular armies" employed against them, and after a short struggle they
submitted at discretion. A portion of them was removed to the coast of the
Tuscan sea, and settled in the country which had formerly belonged to the Samnites, on the shores of the gulf of Salernum.' It may have been that this migration had been commanded by the Roman government as a measure of state
policy, in order to people the old Samnite coast with less suspected inhabitants,
and to acquire as Roman domain the lands which the Picentians had left in their
old country; and the Picentians, perhaps, like the Carthaginians in the third
Punic war, unwilling to be torn from their native land, rose against Rome in mere
despair. But whatever was the cause of the war, it ended in the speedy and
complete conquest" of the Picentian people.
The last gleanings of Italian independence were gathered in during the two
years which next followed. The Sallentines and Messapians had A v. cU ad 488.
at one time taken part in the confederacy3 of southern Italy against A.C. 267 ando66. Co.
quest of the Mess.Rome, but they had withdrawn from the cause before its over- pians. Occupation of
throw. Their repentance, however, availed them nothing, for the Brundisum.
port of Brundisium, in the Sallentine territory, was a position which the Romans
were very anxious to secure;24 the more so as Alexander, the son of Pyrrhus,
was reigning in Epirus, and had inherited much of the warlike temper of his

i6 Valerius Maximus, II. 7, Â~ 15. The same
thing happened after the reduction of Capua in
the second Punic war. The Campanians being
Roman citizens, the senate could not determine
their fate without being empowered by the
people to do so; and accordingly the tribes
voted that whatever sentence the senate might
pass should have their authority for its full execution. Livy, XXVI. 33.   It is remarkable
that the power of taking up the Roman franchise at pleasure should be considered as so
completely equivalent to the possession of the
franchise actually, which is Niebuhr's explanation of the condition of the Campanians. Vol.
II. note 136. Eng. Transl. It rather appears
from the definition of the term municeps, given
by Festus from Ser. Sulpicius the younger, that
the Campanians, and others in the same relation to Rome, enjoyed actually all the private
rights of Roman citizens, without forfeiting
their own Campanian franchise; and this too
seems implied by the fact of their forming a
regular legion in war, instead of being reckoned
merely as auxiliaries.
1 Dionysius, XX. 7. Polybius, I. 7.
11 Zonaras, VIII. 7. Dionysius, XX. 9.

2s See page 33881.
20 The Fasti Capitolini record that both the
consuls of the year, P. Sempronius and Appius
Claudius, triumphed over the Picentians.
21 Strabo, V. p. 251.
22 The Picentian war is briefly noticed by
Florus, I. 19, by Eutropius, and by Orosius, IV.
4. A great earthquake happened just as the
Roman and Picentian armies were going to engage, upon which P. Sempronius, the consul,
vowed to build a temple to the earth. The
population of the Picentians, when they submitted to the Romans, amounted, according to
Pliny (Hist. Natur. III. Â~ 110), to 860;000 souls.
23 They had fought under Pyrrhus at Asculum; see Frontinus Strategem. II. 8, Â~ 21; and
they are not mentioned as conquered by Papirius and Carvilius, when the Samnites, Lucanians, and Bruttians submitted, so that they
had probably left the confederacy at an earlier
period.
2 Zonaras, copying from Dion Cassius, accuses the Romans of making war on the Sallentines because they wished to get possession of
Brundisium. VIII. 7.




ï~~412

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXVIII

father; and whether for attack or defence, the possession of Brundisium, the
favorite point of communication in later times with Greece and the East, appeared
therefore to the Romans very desirable. Accordingly, the Sallentines and Messapians were reduced to submission, and Brundisium was ceded to the Romans.
They did not send a colony thither till some years5 afterwards, but the land
must, in the mean while, have formed a part of their domain, and the port in all
probability was occupied by a Roman garrison.
In the midst of the Sallentine war, the consuls of the year 488 triumphed over
conquest of the sar- the Sarsinatians," a people of Umbria, and the countrymen of the
intian.    comic poet Plautus. Livy's epitome" speaks of the Umbrians
generally, and says that they, as well as the Sallentines, submitted to the Romans
at discretion.
One more conquest still remained to be achieved, a conquest called for by poWar,t thecolitical jealousy no less than by national ambition. The aristocracy
nas.w.. c.4s9. of Volsinii5 applied to Ronie for aid against the intolerable tyrA. C. 265.    anny of their former serfs or vassals, who were now in possession
of the government. As the necessity of keeping up a large navy in the Persian
invasions first led to the ascendency of the poorer classes at Athens, and as wars
with foreign states had favored the liberties of the Roman commons, so the long
wars in which Volsinii had been engaged with Rome had obliged the aristocracy
to arm and train their vassals, till they, feeling their importance and power, had
risen against their old lords, and had established their own complete ascendency.
But in proportion as they had been more degraded and oppressed than the Roman commons, so was their triumph far less happy. Slaves let loose knew not
how to become citizens; two only social relations had they ever known, those of
oppressor and oppressed; and having ceased to be the one, they became immediately the other. They retaliated on their former masters the worst atrocities
which they had themselves been made to suffer;289 and when they found that some
of the oppressed party had applied to Rome for aid, they put many of them to
death,0 as for an act of treason. This was more than sufficient to excite the Romans to interfere, and, as the present ruling party in Volsinii were regarded as
little better than revolted slaves, the majority of the Roman commons would be
ready to put them down no less than the senate. National ambition, no doubt,
made the enterprise doubly welcome; perhaps too the accusation of Metrodorus3'
was not without foundation, when he ascribed the war to a baser passion, and
said that the two thousand statues with which Volsinii was ornamented, tempted
the Romans to attack it. Q. Fabius Gurges, one of the consuls of the year 489,

S In the latter part of the first Punic war.
See Livy, Epitom. XIX. But Florus says [I.
20] that Brundisium, with its famous port, was
reduced by M. Atilius, who was one of the consuls of the year 487. And so also does Eutropius.
21 Fasti Capitolini.
27 Epitom. XV. " Umbri et Sallentini victi
in deditionem accepti sunt."
29 Zonaras, VIII. 7. Auct. de Viris Illustrib.
" Decius Mus." Florus, I. 21. Valerius Maximus, IX. 1, Extern. Â~ 2. Orosius, IV. 5. All
these writers call the revolution at Volsinii a
rising of slaves against their masters; just as
Herodotus represents a similar revolution at
Argos, after the old citizens had been greatly
weakened by their wars with Sparta. VI. 88.
The story told in the work "de Mirabil. Auscultationibus," 94, Ed. Bekker, wronglyascribed
to Aristotle, relates undoubtedly to Volsinii,
and shows the vague and exaggerated form in
which even contemporary events in distant
countries are related, when there is no real historian to sift them. According to this story,
"the city is very strong; for in the midst of it

there is a hill that runs up thirty stadia in
height; and beneath there is a forest of all sorts
of trees, and much water. So the people of the
city, fearing lest any of them should become a
tyrant, set up their freedmen to be their magistrates; and these freedmen rule over them,
and others of the same sort are appointed in
their place at the end of the year."
20 Valerius Maximus, IX. 1. The worst of
all the outrages there described was practised
in some instances by the feudal aristocracy in
modern Europe; and it is far more likely that
the Volsinian serfs retaliated it upon their masters than that they should have been the first
inventors of it.
10 Zonaras, VIII. 7.
21 Pliny, Hist. Natur. XXXIV. Â~ 84. Metrodorus of Scepsis lived in the seventh century
of Rome, and was intimate with Mithridates,
whose hatred against the Romans he shared to
such a degree, that he was called & pwoecpaiof.
IHIis charge, whether true or false, is at least consistent with those other representations which
speak of the growing wealth and increased love
of wealth among the Romans at this pericd.




ï~~CHAP. XXXVIII.]

SOVEREIGNTY OF ALL ITALY.

413

laid siege to Volsinii with a consular army;32 but having been mortally wounded
in one of the sallies of the besieged, he left the completion of his work to his
successors.33  In the following year Volsinii was taken; bloody executions took
place, and the remnant of the new Volsinian citizens, who were not put to death,
were given up as serfs once again to their former masters. But the old Volsinian aristocracy were not allowed to return to the city of their fathers. Volsinii was destroyed, its statues, no doubt, were carried to Rome, and its old citizens were settled in a new spot34 on the lower ground near the shores of the lake,
apparently on or near the site of the modern town of Bolsena.
Thus the whole extent of Italy from the Macra and the Rubicon to Rhegium
and Brundisium was become more or less subject to Rome. But TheRomaanssovereigns
it was not merely that the several Italian nations were to follow of altIay.
in war where Rome might choose to lead them; nor yet that they paid a certain
tribute to the sovereign state, such as Athens received from her subject allies.
The Roman dominion in Italy had wrested large tracts of land from the conquered nations in every part of the peninsula; forests, mines, and harbors had
become the property of the Roman people, from which a large revenue was derived; so that all classes of Roman citizens were enriched by their victories; the
rich acquired a great extent of land to hold in occupation; the poor obtained
grants of land in freehold by an agrarian law; while the great increase of revenue
required a greater number of persons to collect it, and thus from the qurestors to
the lowest collectors or clerks employed under them, all the officers of government became suddenly multiplied.
The changes, indeed, which were wrought in the course of ten years, from the
retreat of Pyrrhus to the conquest of Volsinii, must have affected Great changes, which
the whole life and character of the Roman people.     Even the tookinthe condition of
mere fragmentary notices, which are all that we possess of this the Roman..
period, record, first, the increase of the number of qurestors from four to eight:"
secondly, a distribution of land, in portions of seven jugera3t to each citizen, to
the Roman commons generally: thirdly, a distribution of money amongst the
citizens,"7 probably amongst those of the city tribes who did not wish to become
possessors of land; the money so distributed having arisen from the sale of conquered territory: fourthly, the first adoption of a silver coinage, copper having
been hitherto the only currency of the state:38 fifthly, the appointment of several
new magistrates or commissioners, such as the decemviri litibus judicandis,9 or

84 Zonaras, VIII. 7.
3s The author "de Viris Illustrib." ascribes
the conquest of Volsinii to Decius Mus, who
was consul in 475, and fought with Pyrrhus at
Asculum. But whether Decius was employed
as priaetor, or as dictator, we know not. The
same writer also says that Appius Claudius, the
consul of, the year 490, obtained the surname
of Caudex, after his conquests of the Volsinians;
but the Fasti Capitolini give the honor of the
conquest to his colleague, M. Fulvius Flaccus, who triumphed " de Vulsiniensibus, An.
cnxxclx. K. Nov."
4 Zonaras, VIII. 7.
3 Livy, Epitom. XV.
* Columella, Prefat.
3 Dionysius, XX. ad finem.
8 Pliny, Hist. Natur. XXXIII. Â~ 44. The silver coinage was first introduced in the year 485;
and the coins struck were denarii, quinarii, and
sestertii. It is still a great question in whose
hands the right of coining money was placed.
The devices on the consular denarii are so various, and refer so peculiarly to the house of
the individual who coined them, that Niebuhr
supposes them to have been really a private
coinage, like the tokens occasionally issued in
England, a coinage issued by private persons

for their own profit, but sanctioned by the state,
and controlled by the triumviri monetales.
Questors are known to have coined money
when employed under a proconsul as his paymaster, but these coins are equally without any
peculiar national device, and relate to something in the questor's own family or in the circumstances of his general. Thus on the gold
coins struck by P. Lentulus Spinther, when
he was qutestor to Cassius in Asia, we see the
device of a cap of liberty and a dagger, in manifest allusion to the assassination of Cesar. Yet
the two-horsed and four-horsed chariots which
appear so often on the denarii are noticed by
Pliny as a general device, from which the oldest silver coins received their name. It seems
probable that there was no fixed rule with respect to the right of coining; that sometimes
the state issued a coinage, that sometimes money was struck by particular magistrates for the
immediate use of their own department of the
public service; and that sometimes also it was
struck by individuals for their own profit, just
as a large part of our own circulation at this day
consists in the notes issued by private bankers.
3 " Pomponius de origine juris," 29. See
Niebuhr.   om. Gesch. III. p. 649.




ï~~414

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXVItL

the board of ten, who presided over the court of the centumviri or hundred
judges; the board of four,40 who had the care of the streets and roads; the board
of five, who acted for the magistrates during the night," the consuls' ordinary
responsibility ceasing with the going down of the sun; and the board of three,
who had the care of the coinage. All these things are recorded as having been
introduced for the first time about the period between the war with Pyrrhus and
the first war with Carthage, and they clearly show what manifold changes the
Roman people were then undergoing.
The conquest of Italy was, indeed, to Rome what the overthrow of the AtheEffects of these on nian empire was to Sparta: the larger scale of all public transacthe national runainers. tostevs  nlx      11it         tt,       "'o
Anecdotes   o ur.  tions, the vast influx of wealth into the state, and the means of
Fabricius   acquiring wealth unjustly which were put within the reach of
many private individuals, were a severe shock to the national character.  Many
other Romans, no doubt, besides P. Cornelius Rufinus, were as corrupt and tyrannical as Gylippus and Lysander; and it was this very corruption which made
men dwell so fondly on those who were untainted by it:" the virtue of Fabricius and Curius, like that of Callicratidas, shone the brighter, because the temptations which they resisted were so often yielded to by others. In the present
state of Italy any eminent Roman might seriously affect the condition of any of
the subject people either for good or for evil: hence the principal citizens of
Rome were earnestly courted with compliments, and often, no doubt, propitiated
with presents, and it was for refusing such presents when offered to them by the
Samnites, that Fabricius and Curius became so famous. All know how deputies
from Samnium came to Curius43 at his Sabine farm to offer him a present of gold.
They found him seated by the fireside, with a wooden platter before him, and
roasting turnips in the ashes.  "I count it my glory," he said, "not to possess
gold myself, but to have power over those who do." So, again, other Samnite
deputies came to bring a present44 of ten pounds of copper, five of silver, and five
slaves, to Fabricius as the patron of their nation. Fabricius drew his hands over
his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth, and then along his neck and down his body;
and said that whilst he was the master of his five senses and sound in body and
limb, he needed nothing more than he had already.   Thus, whether refusing to
have clients, or to accept from them their customary dues, Curius and Fabricius
lived in such poverty as to be unable to give a dowry to their daughters;45 and
in both cases the senate paid it for them. Men of this sort, so indifferent to
money, and at the same time not without a roughness of nature which would
delight in vexing the luxury and rapacity of others, were likely to struggle hard
against the prevailing spirit of covetousness and expense. When Fabricius was
censor in 479, he expelled P. Rufinus46 from the senate because he had returned
amongst his taxable possessions ten pounds weight of silver plate; for there is
often a jealousy against any new mode of.. displaying wealth, when the greatest
expenditure in old and accustomed ways excites no displeasure.    Silver plate
was a new luxury in the fifth century,of' Rome, and therefore attracted the
censor's notice; three hundred years later, the possession of silver plate to any
4o 041 Pomponius, Â~ 80, 31.           government of his province, the same spotless
42 Pope has said, that               integrity which he proved actually in sitting by
"1 Lucullus, when frugality could charm, his cottage fire, and refusing the humble presHad roasted turnips in the Sabine farm;"  entscer of the Samnites..  Cicero, de Senectut. 16. Valerius Maxim.
as if the virtue of Curius had belonged to his IV. 8, Â~ 5.
age and not to himself.: But this is the mistake  44 Julius Hyginus, apud Gellium, I. 14. Vaof a satirist and fatalist, 'whose tendency it lerius Maximus, IV. 3, Â~ 6.
always is to depreciate human virtue. Had Lu-  I borrow this from Niebuhr, who refers
(llus.:lived in Curius' day, he would have for the story to Apuleius.
shown in the possession of ten pounds of silver  40 Livy, Epitom. XIV. Niebuhr supposes
plate, the same spirit which, in his own days, that Fabricius may have suspected this plate to
was shown in the splendor of his feasts in the have been a part of the spoils won by Rufinus
Apollo: had Curius lived in the days of Cicero, at Croton, and have thought that he ought to
he would have displayed, like Cicero in the have accounted for it to the treasury.




ï~~CHAP. XXXVIII.]  FIRST EXHIBITION OF GLADIATORS.

45

amount was fully allowed,47 but gold plate was still unusual, and the senate, even
in the reign of Tiberius, denounced it as an unbecoming extravagance. But Fabricius, no doubt, disliked the large domain lands held in occupation by Rufinus
as much as his ten pounds of silver plate, thinking that great wealth in the hands
of private persons, however employed, was injurious to the commonwealth.
It must not be forgotten, amongst the other changes of this period, that the
consulship of Appius Claudius and M. Fulvius,48 the year which       t exhibition of gla
First exhibition of gin.
witnessed the final reduction of Volsinii, was marked by the first diator2 A...c.49.
exhibition of gladiators ever known at Rome.     Two sons of D.
Junius Brutus exhibited them, it is recorded, at the funeral of their father. The
principle of this, as a part of the funeral solemnity, was very ancient and very
universal;49 that the dead should not go on his dark journey alone, but that a
train of other departed souls, whether of enemies slain to avenge him, or of followers to do him honor, should accompany him to the unseen world.        But the
Romans, it is said,5s borrowed the practice of substituting a combat for a sacrifice, that the victims might die by each other's swords, immediately from the
Etruscans; and when we recollect that the capture of Volsinii took place in this
very year, we may conjecture that the gladiators of M. and D. Brutus were
Volsinian prisoners, perhaps slaves, who had been accustomed to fight before
under the service of their former masters. The spectacle, from the very beginning, excited the liveliest interest at Rome; but for many years it was exhibited
only at funerals, as an offering in honor of the dead; the still deeper wickedness
of making it a mere sport, and introducing the sufferings and death of human
beings as a luxury for the spectators in their seasons of the greatest enjoyment,
was reserved for a later period.
The ten years preceding the first Punic war were probably a time of the greatest physical prosperity which the mass of the Roman people ever Great prospety of the
knew.   Within twenty years two agrarian laws had been passed Roman people at thi.
on a most extensive scale; and the poorer citizens had received poriod.
besides what may be called a large dividend in money out of the lands which
the state had conquered. In addition to this, the farming of the state domains,"'
or of their produce, furnished those who had money with abundant opportunities of profitable adventure, while the accumulation of public business increased
the demand for clerks and collectors in every branch of the service of the revenue. And the power of obtaining like advantages in all future wars seemed
secured to the people by the Hortensian laws, which enabled them to pass an
agrarian law whenever they pleased, in spite of the opposition in the senate. No
wonder theni that war was at this time popular, and that the tribes, more than
once, resolved on taking up arms, when the senate would have preferred peace
from considerations of prudence, and, we may hope, of national faith and justice.
But our "pleasant vices" are ever made "instruments to scourge us:" and the
first Punic war, into which the Roman people forced the senate to enter, not only
in its own long course bore most heavily upon the poorer citizens, but from the
feelings of enmity which it excited in the breast of Hamilcar, led most surely to
'47 Tacitus, Annal. II. 88.            rydice at their funeral at JEge. Diyllus, apud
40 Valerius Maximus, II. 4, Â~ 7.       Atheneum, IV. p. 155. Diodorus, XIX. 52.
49 Every one remembers the slaughter of  6o Nicolaus Damascenus, apud Atheneum,
twelve Trojan prisoners over the funeral pile of IV. p. 158.
Patroclus. When the Scythian kings died,   6 See the well-known passage in Polybius,
some of all their servants were slain and were where he notices the extent of patronage posburied with them. (Herodotus, IV. 71.) In sessed by the senate. IIofav ylp ipy w 3vrv
Thrace single combats took place at the funerals rwv iEKcLopvdoV.Or 7r0) w v rTrwv s3l 77rdans 'IraA la
of the chiefs; and there also, as in India, the ei rasg inTrlKteVa Ka icaraKSi tafroV  0oeoyoaiva 7 r
best beloved of the wives of the deceased was obc a  fapcOpriaatro a5hiw, zroXav 1 Rrorapel,
killed and buried with her husband. (Herodo- Acpvwv, Krcvtw,, SrdAwv, X pag, aveAf 6v ba
tus, V. 5, 8.) In Spain, too, when Viriathus IrmrrwKv vr  7-i 'Pwptahov 6vvaerda, 7rdvra
was barnt on his funeral pile, there were single xpioeOa t aval 3aivct - irpoatprfnPa acc rot
'ombats fought around in honor of him. Ap- wbeOovu, ea or~edv, w  ro drre rc rdvras EvieearO
pian, de Rebus Hispan. 75. Cassander paid rail hal sal iraE iEpyaLf crat i U robrwv.-IV.
the same honor to Philip Arrhidms and Eu- 17.




ï~~416

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CAP. XXXVIIL

that fearful visitation of Hannibal's sixteen years' invasion of Italy, which destroyed forever, not indeed the pride of the Roman dominions, but the wellbeing of the Roman people.
But that calamitous period was only to come upon the children of the existing
Aductof Cur... generation, and in the mean time all was going on prosperously.
Ties used for roofing Another aqueduct was constructed by M'. Curius,5 when he was
the houses at Rome.  censor soon after the retreat of Pyrrhus, by which a supply of
water was conveyed to the northern parts of the city from the Anio above Tibur:
and tiles3 at this time began to supersede wood as the roofing material for the
common houses of Rome.
Their victories over Pyrrhus spread the fame of the Romans far and wide;
Embassy to Ptolemy and immediately after his return to Greece, when he was again beEmas  oPtolemy
Philadep.us, king of coming formidable by his victories over Antigonus in Macedonia,
Egypt.       Ptolemy Philadelphus,4 king of Egypt, sent an embassy to Rome
to conclude an alliance with the Romans. The senate, delighted at such a compliment from so great a king, sent in return ani embassy to Alexandria, consisting
of three of the most eminent citizens in the commonwealth, Q. Fabius Gurges,
who was then first senator (princeps senatus), Q. Ogulnius, who had gone to
Epidaurus to invite.zEsculapius to Rome, and Num. Fabius Pictor, the son of
that Fabius who had painted the frescoes in the temple of Deliverance from
Danger. The ambassadors found Alexandria at the height of its splendor, for
these were the most brilliant days of the Greek-Egyptian kingdom; and Ptolemy
Philadelphus,55 with a fleet of 1500 ships of war, and a revenue of nearly 15,000
talents,' reigned over the whole coast of the Mediterranean, from Cyrene to the
Nile, and from the Nile to the Triopian headland at the southwestern extremity
of Asia Minor, opposite to Rhodes; while to the south his power extended to
the heart of Ethiopia or Abyssinia, and along both shores of the Red Sea. In
his capital there met together the wisdom of Greece and of the east and of
Egypt itself: Theocritus, Callimachus, and the seven tragedians of the Pleias;56
the Jews who at this time began at Alexandria the translation of the Bible; and
Manetho, the famous historian of the ancient dynasties of Egypt. The Roman
ambassadors were honorably entertained and received valuable presents; which
on their return home they laid before the senate, but which the senate immediately gave back to them, with permission to do with them as they thought
proper.
In the year 488,57 the people of Apollonia, a Greek city on the coast of EpiOutrage to the ambas. rus, sent an embassy to Rome, with what object we know not, but
saosof Apoltoto. ~~0~-~cmli
The offenders eon  possibly to complain of some of the officers of the Roman governt he Aioffndersgiven up p sil
to the Apeoniloos.  ment. Two Romans of rank, one of them a senator of the house
of Fabius, insulted and beat the ambassadors, and were, in consequence of the
outrage, given up to the Apollonians; one of the qu estdrs also was sent to escort

S Frontinus, de Aquseductibus, 6. The aqueduct of Curius was known by the name of
"Anio vetus;" its whole length was forty-three
miles; but, like the older aqueduct of Appius
Claudius, it consisted mostly' of pipes under
ground, and was only conducted on an embankment above ground for a distance of something
less than a quarter of a mile.
63 See Cornelius Nepos quoted by Pliny, as
already noticed, Hist. Natur. XVI. Â~ 86.
6 Livy, Epitom. XIV. Zonaras, VIII. 6.
Dionysius, XX. 4. Valerius Maximus, IV. 8,
Â~ 9.
6 The extent of Ptolemy Philadelphus' dominion, and the flourishing condition of Egypt
during his reign, are described by Theocritus,
na eye-witness, in his 17th Idyll, and in that
remarkable inscription found at Adulis, on the
western shore of the Red Sea, by Cosmas Indi
copleustes, in the reign of Justin, the father of
Justinian. Cosmas copied the inscription into
his work, which is to be found in Montfaucon's
Collectio Nova, &c. Vol. II. p. 142. Some remarkable particulars as to the amount of Ptolemy's revenue are preserved by Jerome in his
Commentary on Daniel, XI. 5.
00 They were called the Pleias from their number, in allusion to the constellation. Different
lists of them are given (see Fynes Clinton, Fasti
Hellen. Vol. III. year B. c. 259), but none of
them are known to us by any existing works,
if, as Mr. Fox and Niebuhr seem most justly to
think, the Lycophron who wrote the Alexandra
is a very different person from the Lycophron
of the Pleias, and belongs to a later age. See
Niebuhr's Kleine Schrift. p. 488-450.
6 Zonaras, VIII. 7.   Livy, Epitom. XV.
Valer. Max. VI. 6, Â~ 5.




ï~~uCHAP. XXXVIII]  DEATHS OF CURIUS AND FABRICIUS.

417

the ambassadors and their prisoners to Brundisium, lest any attempt should be
made to rescue them. But the Apollonians, measuring rightly their own utter
inability to cope with so great a nation as the Romans, and judging that it would
be unwise58 to interpret too closely the sentence of the senate, restored both
offenders unhurt.
Our notices of the physical history of these times are very scanty. The winter of 484 was one of unusual severity;59 the Tiber was frozen over Physical history. Se.
to a great depth, the snow lay in the Forum for nearly six weeks, vere winter of 484.
the olives and fig-trees were generally killed, and many of the cattle perished
for want of pasture, as they were dependent, even in winter, on such food as
they could find in the fields. This great frost happened about one hundred and
thirty years after the frost of 355, and seems to have equalled it in severity.
Volcanic phenomena6 are recorded during the two following years, and in 488
we hear of a very destructive pestilence, which lasted for more than two years
more, and is described as exceedingly fatal;, but the language of Augustine is
indefinite, and that of Orosius clearly exaggerated, so that we can neither discover the nature and causes of the disease, nor estimate the amount of the mortality.
Ten years, as they bring forward into active life a new generation, so they
always sweep away some of the last survivors of former times,      newgenerationemand bring down to a later period the range of living memory. Ap- tg forward. Deathef
Pius Claudius and Valerius Corvus, who were both alive when cr         a
Pyrrhus was in Italy, died soon after his return to Epirus. L. Papirius Cursor,
if he were still living, had yet appeared for the last time in a public station;
neither he nor his colleague, Sp. Carvilius, are heard of again after their second
censorship in the year 482. M'. Curius had obtained the censorship in that
same year, three years after his victory at Beneventum; he employed the money arising from the spoils of his triumph in constructing, as we have seen, the
second oldest of the Roman aqueducts; and after his censorship he was named
by the senate onett of two commissioners for completing the work, but he died
within a few days after his appointment. Thus one of the most honest and energetic men known to us in the Roman history, a man whose name is associated so
closely with the uncorrupted period of the Roman character, was carried off
apparently before he had arrived at old age. When Fabricius died we know
not; but he was not heard of again after his censorship in 479, nor do we know
any further particulars of him than that he was buried, by a special dispensation,
within the city walls;63 a rare honor, which strongly marks the general sense
entertained of the purity of his virtue; "as if," says Niebuhr, "his bones could
be no defilement to the temples of the heavenly gods, nor his spirit disturb the
peace of the living."
So passes away what may be called the spring-time of the Roman people.
Wealth, and power, and dominion have brought on the ripened Conclusion.
summer, with more of vigor indeed, but less of freshness.    Beginning her career of conquest beyond the limits of Italy, Rome was now entering upon her appointed work, and that work was undoubtedly fraught with good.
The conqueror and the martyr are alike God's instruments; but it is the priv68 They may have remembered the wisdom  60 Orosius, IV. 4. The earthquake which
of the dEginetans in like circumstances, when happened in the Picentian war, just as the Rothe Spartan king, Leutychidas, was given up mans and Picentians were going to engage,
to them by his countrymen, as an atonement belongs to the volcanic phenomena of this pefor some wrong which he had done to them. riod.
A Spartan had warned them not to take the  61 Augustine, III. 17. Orosius, IV. 5.
Spartan government at its word, nor to believe  62 Frontinus, de Aqueduct, 6.
that they might really carry the king of Sparta  63 Cicero, de Legibus, II. 28. Thus Brasidas
away as their prisoner, and punish him at their was buried within the walls of Amphipolis, as
discretion. See Herodotus, VI. 85.       having been the deliverer of the city. Thucyd.
S Zonaras, VIII. 6. Augustine, de Civit. V. 11.
Dei, III. 17.




ï~~418

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXIX

ilege of his conscious and willing instruments to be doubly and merely blessed;
the benefits of their work to others are unalloyed by evil, while to themselves it
is the perfecting and not the corrupting of their moral being; when it is done,
they are not cast away as instruments spoiled and worthless, but partake of the
good which they have given, and enjoy forever the love of men, and the bless
ing of God.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CONSTITUTION AND POWER OF CARTHAGE.
IUoAsrthc4at & oKO6t Kai Kap pXoviow KaMro.--AISTOTLE, Politic. II.
THE name of Carthage has already occurred more than once in the course of
Internal condition of this history; and I have already noticed the extent of her doCarthage.     minion, and the inherent causes of its unsoundness, inasmuch as
the Carthaginians and their African subjects were separated from one another
by broad differences of race, language, and institutions; so that they could not
blend together into one nation. The isolation of Carthage from all the surrounding people offers a striking contrast to the position of Rome in Italy, where the
allies and the Latin name were bound to the Romans and to each other by manifold ties, and the communication of the Roman franchise, or at least the prospect
of obtaining it hereafter, was every year effacing the painful memory of the first
conquest, and effecting that consolidation of various elements into one great and
united people, in which alone conquest can find its justification. But as the
Carthaginians will now occupy no small share of our attention, from the importance and long duration of their contest with the Romans, so it becomes desirable
to look at them more closely, and see what was their internal state, and with
what excellences and defects in their national character and institutions they encountered the iron strength of Rome.
The constitution of Carthage was compared to that of Sparta, as containing in
it the elements of monarchy and of aristocracy, and of democracy.
I  government was
mixed, lot prodomi- But in such mixed governments, one element is always predominantly aristocratical. nant: first, in the natural course of things, the monarchical, next
the aristocratical, and, lastly, the democratical or popular. The predominance
of one element by no means implies, however, the total inactivity of the others;
and in their common, although not equal action, consists the excellence of such
constitutions; not simply that the working of the principal power is checked by
the direct legal rights of the other two, but much more because the nation retains
by their means those ideas and those points of character which they peculiarly
suggest and encourage, and is thus saved from that narrow-minded uniformity of
views and of tastes which the exclusive influence of any single element must
necessarily occasion. In Carthage there is reason to believe that the monarchical
part of the constitution had once the ascendency,' but during those times in
which she is best known to us, the aristocratical element was predominant; the
SAristotle says that Carthage had never suf- by an aristocracy. V. 12. It seems, then, that
fered in any serious degree either from faction this tyranny must be understood of the earlier
or from a tyrant. Politic. II. 11. Yet in an- times of the Carthaginian history, before that
other place he gives Carthage as an instance of constitution existed on which Aristotle coma country where a tyranny had been succeeded ments.




ï~~CHAP. XXXIX.]

THE COMMISSIONS OF FIVE.

419

full development of the democratical was prevented by the premature destruction of the whole nation.
The Carthaginian aristocracy was partly one of birth, but chiefly, as it should
seem, of wealth.   Indeed, the older form of a pure aristocracy of Thos esot r lages.
birth must necessarily be rare in a colony, where the original settlers must almost always be a mixed body, and yet in their new settlement find
themselves on an equality with each other. It appears, however, that nobility
of birth was acknowledged in Carthage, and that their two chief magistrates, or
judaes,2 suffetes, whom the Greeks called kings, were elected only from a certain
number of families. How many these were, and what was the origin of their
nobility, we are not informed. But wealth, contrary to the practice of the Roman government, was an indispensable qualification for all the highest offices. Nay,
we are told that the very suffetes and captains-general of the commonwealth
bought their high dignities:3 whether this is to be understood of paying money
to obtain votes, or, as is much more probable, that the fees or expenses of entering
on an office were purposely made very heavy, to render it inaccessible to any
but the rich.
The great council, d'yxX-t0;, was probably an assembly as numerous as the
Roman senate, and, like the senate, was a mixed body, containing The great council, and
members of different ages, who, in whatever manner appointed, the council of elders.
were a sort of representation of the general feelings of the aristocracy. But from
this great council there were chosen one hundred members,4 who formed what
was called the council of elders, and who in fact were the supreme authority in
the state. They were originally appointed as a check upon the power of the
captains-general, and were a court before which every general, on his return
from a foreign command, had to render an account of his conduct. But by degrees they became not only supreme criminal judges in all cases, bat also a supreme executive council, of which the two suffetes or kings were the presidents.
In this capacity they were legally, we may presume, no more than a managing
committee for the great council, so they became in ordinary eases its substitute,
and in all cases exercised such a control over it, that they are called a power for
governing the general council itself.5
The hundred, or the elders, were chosen for life from members of the great
council, but not by the votes of the great council at large. On the The commissions or
contrary, they were chosen by certain bodies which Aristotle calls boards of fie.
<rsv'yamgXa, or commissions of five, and which formed so many close corporations,
filling up their own vacancies. This is nearly all the information which we possess
on the subject; for Aristotle only adds, that these commissions had great and
various powers, and that their members remained longer in office than the ordinary magistrates, inasmuch as they exercised an authority both before and after
their.regular term of magistracy. The most probable conjecture is, that the
more important branches of the public administration were, as we should say,
put in commission, and vested in boards of five members; that thus the treasury
' Aristotle, Politic. II. 11. B Xrtov U ros 3a-  " Centum ex numero senatorum  judices
oeXig pIjre Kara ra alr3 vat yvo pr I rore ra rv- deliguntur," says Justin, giving an account of
xgv. It is obvious that "suffes," or " sufes," is the origin of this council of elders, XIX. 2. The
the same word with the Hebrew ~=1'6, which  council of elders, or ypouvata, is distinguished
expressly from the larger council, or senate,
was the title of those magistrates whom we call ovyKdreros. See Polybius, X.18, and XXXVI. 2.
the judges. Now as the judges in the Scripture For the whole subject of the Carthaginian conhistory are distinguished from the kings, and stitution I have been largely indebted to IHeeit was a great change when the Israelites, tired ren's Historical Researches on the African Naof their judges, or suffetes, desired to have a tions, Vol. I. I have also derived some assistking; so it is probable that the suffetes at ance from Kluge's Commentary on Aristotle's
Carthage also were so named to show that they account of the Carthaginian constitution, pubwere not kings, and that the Greek writers, in lished in 1824.
alling them f3actXeks, have used a term likely to  a Livy, XXX. 16.  " Sanetius consilium,
mislead.
Polybius, VI. 56. Aristotle's account im- maximaque ad ipsum senatum regendum vis5.
nlin th oa nmc d~ino'




ï~~120

IHISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXIX

would be intrusted to one commission of five, the care of public manners and
morals, the censor's office at Rome, would be given to another commission; the
police, perhaps, to another; the navy to another; and so on.      Nothing would
hinder these commissioners from being members of the great council, and nothing
would hinder them, therefore, from electing themselves to fill up vacancies in
the council of elders; in fact, we are expressly told' that the treasurer's or qumeestor's office led regularly to a seat amongst the hundred; and thus the same men
being often members at one and the same time of one or perhaps more of these
administrative commissions, and of the great council, and also of the council of
elders, we can understand what Aristotle means when he says that it was a
favorite practice with the Carthaginians to invest the same person with several
offices together.
All this was sufficiently aristocratical, or rather in the spirit of that worst form
The aritocratical clubsof aristocracy which the Greeks called oligarchy.  And what
Thearistocraticalclubs. was thus ordered by law, was to be maintained by feeling; the
members of the aristocracy had their clubs,' where they habitually met at a common mess or public table, with the very object of binding them more closely to
each other, and imbuing them entirely with the spirit of their. order.
Under such a constitution the power of the suffetes had been reduced from its
iminiitionof the pow- originally almost kingly prerogatives to the state of the doge
eroft ohe suffete..  under the late constitution of Venice.  In earlier times they had
been invested with the two great characters of ancient royalty, those of general
and of priest;' but now the first of these was commonly taken from him, and the
office of general-in-chief is spoken of by Aristotle as distinct; nor was it even
left in the suffetes' appointment. Still the two kings, as the Greek writers call
them, were recognized as an essential branch of the government, and if they differed upon any proposed measure from the council of elders, then the question
was referred to the assembly of the people.' It was thus, no doubt, that an
opening was afforded for weakening the power of the aristocracy; for either of
the suffetes was thus enabled to introduce the decision of the popular branch on
points of government; and it is of the essence of a popular assembly, if called
into activity, to become predominant: it may exist and yet be powerless, but
only so long as few points are in practice submitted to its decision.
But so long as the suffetes and council were agreed, the power of the CarJudicial power. Court thaginian people was exceedingly small. Nothing, it seems, could
ofthehundredandfour. originate with the popular assembly; so that the exercise of its
functions did not depend on its own will, but on the accidental disagreement of
the other branches of the legislature. And as the mass of the people had so
small a share practically in the legislation or in the administration of affairs, so
they were destitute of judicial power: there were no juries as in England, nor
any large popular courts where hundreds or even thousands of the poorest citizens sat in judgment as at Athens. All causes, civil and criminal, were tried by
certain magistrates;1Q the highest matters, as we have seen, by the council of
Livy, XXXIII. 46.-What is here said of  8 At least Hamilear, who commanded the
the multiplication of offices in the hands of the Carthaginians at the battle of Himera, and who
same persons at Carthage, was also the case at was one of the suffetes, is described by HeroVenice. Every member of the supreme criminal dotus as sacrificing during the battle, and pourtribunal of forty had a seat ex-officio in the sen- ing libations with his own hand on the victims.
ate; and the three presidents of the Forty sat VII. 167. And although the expression in
also in the council of the doge. " L'autorit6 Herodotus is N iro, and not cOvev, yet the same
dut lgislateur," says IDaru, "celle du juge, expression is applied to the prophet Tisamenus,
'influence de l'administration et le pouvoir who was with the Greek army at Platea; and,
discretionnaire de la police, se trouvalent r6unis unless Hamilcar had been personally engaged
dans les memes mains."-Histoire de Venise, in the sacrifice, we can scarcely suppose that he
Livre XXXIX. Vol. VI. p. 68, and 146.    would have remained in the camp while it was
' Tel avalra rV Iraspeiv. Aristotle, Politic. going forward, instead of being present with
II. 11. It may be mentioned, as a mark of the his soldiers in the action.
aristocratical spirit of the Carthaginian govern-  9 Aristotle, Politic. II. 11.
ment, that the senate and people had different  10 'ApcTroKp TarLKv, r r"  Ztxai Kr  v Apxdso
baths.-Valer. Max. IX. 5. Ext. 4. e~ a,,ie,rdeaf, acul ph.dXas,,.r' ei,  aOdirp ~w




ï~~CHAP. XXXIX.]

SYSTEM OF COLONIZATION.

421

elders; but every magistracy seems to have had a judicial power attached to it,
and only one court had a popular constitution. This was the court of the hundred and four," the members of which were elected by the people at large; but
public opinion required that they should be men of irreproachable characters;
and therefore the election was conducted with care, and no one without merit
was likely to be appointed. This court probably exercised jurisdiction especially
in civil and mercantile causes; such as would be exceedingly numerous in so
great a commercial country as Carthage.
Thus excluded in the ordinary course of things from the government, the legislature, and the courts of justice, the Carthaginian commons were Regular, system of col.
kept for centuries in a state of contented acquiescence with their oization.
country's constitution, because provision was happily and wisely made for their
physical wants. Colonization, as a provision for the poorer citizens, was an
habitual resource of the Carthaginian government. And not only did their numerous settlements along the coast of Africa enable them to make grants of land
to whole bodies of their people, but individuals'2 were employed in various offices
under the government, as clerks, or as custom-house officers, where opportunities of acquiring money would not be wanting. With such means of relief,
largely offered by fortune and wisely used, the Carthaginian people were
saved from that worst cause of revolutions, general distress; and the mass of
mankind are so constituted, that so long as their physical wants are satisfied, the
cravings of their intellectual and moral nature are rarely vehement.
Every one who is accustomed to make history a reality must feel how unsatisfactory are these accounts of mere institutions, which, at the best, Meagrenes.. of our ac-.
counsof crhgfo
can offer us only a plan, and not a living picture. Was the Cartha- the total cwant ofrall
ginian aristocracy, with its merchant-nobles, its jealous tribunals, carthaginianuliterature.
its power abroad and its weakness at home, an older sister of that Venetian republic, whose fall, less shameful than the long stagnation of its half existence,
Nemesis has in our own days rejoiced in?  Or did the common voice in France
speak truly, when it called England the modemrn Carthage? Or is Holland the
truer parallel; and do the contests of the house of Nassau with the Dutch
aristocracy represent the ambition of the house of Barca, and the triumph of the
popular party over the old aristocratical constitution?  We cannot answer these
questions certainly, because Carthage on the stage of history is to us a dumb
actor; no poet, orator, historian, or philosopher, has esciped the wreck of time,
to show us how men thought and felt at Carthage. There were Carthaginian

Aavedal"ovi. Aristot. Politic. II. 11. IIda &pat
rLve Kpiv'ouSL ra5 Jiat, III. 1. For the statement
in the text these passages are a sufficient warrant; but the first offers, as is well known,
much difficulty in itself; and Kluge's explanation is not satisfactory. In the latter passage
Carthage and Lacednemon are said to resemble
each other in the aristocratical principle of
vesting the judicial power in magistrates, and
not in juries taken from the people at large.
This is perfectly clear; but one does not see
why it should be more aristocratical to give
all these magistrates a universal jurisdiction,
rather than, as at Sparta, to assign civil causes
to one court, and criminal to another. It is
strange, too, that in one of these passages Sparta
and Carthage should be said to manage their
courts of justice on the same principle; that
is, on one of an antipopular character, rav abriav
lF rp6rov cai rqp Kapyxleva, if in the other passage they are meant to be contrasted with one
mother. Is it not possible therefore to refer
the words caOdrp iv AaKc3aipov to the whole of
the clause preceding it, rather than to the
words Kat     aX Xag  r' iAAev, and to underatand these last words not of the Lacedoemonian

practice of submitting different causes to different magistrates, but of a more democratical system by which not all causes were tried by magistrates, as at Carthage, but some by magistrates,
and others by juries; " some by one authority,
and others by another?"
11 The number of this court is supposed by
Niebuhr (Vol. I. note 851) to have reference to
the number of weeks in the solar year, as if
there were two judges for each week. The
numbers were elected, says Aristotle, ok o'e rmv
rUxdurIJrt t ' &prvriv n. This can only mean that
public opinion required for the office so high a
qualification in point of character, that the appointment was in the truest sense of the word
aristocratical; whereas at Sparta, a lower standard being fixed for the characters of the Ephori,
persons of very ordinary qualifications were
often chosen, if party feelings recommended
them.
12 Aristot. Politic. VI. 5. 'Ad rtvas iKtrijtrov
re; ro thiov rpos rani repeoucobac roto'tv ofy rbrdponv.
Kluge understands this passage as I have done;
Heeren objects to this interpretation, and explains it of colonies sent out in the mass.




ï~~422

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XXXII.

writers, we know. Sallust had heard translations of passages in their historical
records';!3 and the Roman senate, when Carthage was destroyed, ordered Mago's
work on agriculture to be translated into Latin."4 Nor were geographical accounts
of their voyages of discovery wanting; imperfect translations of, or rather extracts
from, two of which into Greek"5 and Latin, have descended to our times. But
of poets, orators, and philosophers we hear nothing; nor probably were the
writers who were translated to Sallust deserving of the name of historians; at
least all that he quotes from them relates to times beyond real historical memory,
as if they had but recorded floating popular traditions, without attempting critical or contemporary history. It was a Greek who gave what may be looked
upon as a Carthaginian account"6 of the first Punic war; and it was to two
Greeks" that Hannibal committed the task of recording his own immortal expedition to Italy.  Their language, indeed, shut the Carthaginians out from    the
prevailing civilization of the ancient world-: it was easy for a Roman to learn
Greek, which was but a sister language to his own; but neither Greek nor Latin
have any near resemblance to Phoenician; nor were there any Carthaginian
names or stories which poets and artists had made famous amongst all civilized
nations like those of Thebes and Troy. Thus, as I said before, Carthage, not
having spoken of what was in her heart, it has passed along with herself into
destruction; and we can now only know something of what she did, without understanding what she was.
Polybius" has said that during the wars with the Romans, the Carthaginian
Growth of the popular constitution became more democratical, and he ascribes the vicIPartr"eadedbs amC: tory of the Romans in some measure to the superior wisdom of
iy.            their aristocratical government, and the instability of popular counsels in Carthage. It is, indeed, evident, that the family of Barca rested on popular support, and were opposed by the party of the aristocracy; and that they
could maintain their power so long in spite of such an opposition, shows, undoubtedly, that the popular part of the constitution must have gained far more
strength than it possessed in the days of Aristotle. Hamilcar and his family
seem to have stood in the position of Pericles at Athens; both have often been
taxed with having injured irreparably the constitution of their two countries; and
both, perhaps, had the natural weakness of great men, that feeling themselves
to be better than any institutions, they removed too boldly things which to them
were hindrances, but to the mediocrity of ordinary men are supports or useful
guides; so that when they died, and no single men arose able to fill their place,
what they had undone found nothing to succeed to it, and then the overthrow
of the older system   appeared an irreparable mischief.     But the question is
amongst the most difficult in political science; Venice shows that no democracy,
no tyranny, can be so vile as the dregs of an aristocracy suffered to run out its
full course; and with respect to the conduct of a war, the Roman senate is no fair
specimen of aristocracies in general; the affairs of Athens and Carthage were
SS'allust, Bell. Jugurth. 20.          means certain that all of what is there given is
14 Pliny, Histor. Natur. XVIII. Â~ 22. It ap- genuine Carthaginian. Was Plautus likely to
pears from this passage that on the destruction have learnt the language, and for what object
of Carthage the Carthaginian libraries were would pure Carthaginian have been introduced,
given by the senate to "the princes of Africa," when apparently the only purpose answered by
Sregulis Africae;" that is chiefly, no doubt, to Hanno's speaking in a foreign language is to
Masinissa. And thus the Carthaginian books cause a laugh at Milphio's burlesque interpretafrom which Sallust quotes were said, hlie tells tion of it?
us, to have belonged to king Hiempsal, Masin-  1 Such as a Greek translation of a voyage of
issa's grandson. And further, Mago's workwas HIanno, published by Hudson in his Geographi
committed for translation to persons who under- Minores; and Festus Avienus' Latin version of
stood Carthaginian, of whom the manwho knew  certain parts of the voyage of HIimilcon, which
it best was a member of the Junian family, D. Heeren has given in the Appendix to his work
Silanus. Still a knowledge of Carthaginian on Carthage.
must have been a rare accomplishment; which  16 Philinus of Agrigentum.
makes us wonder at the introduction of speeches  17 Sosilus of Lacedmemon, and Silanus or Siin that language upon the Roman stage, as in lenus. Vid. Cornel. Nepot. in Hannibal, 13.
the P enulus of Plautus. It seems to me by no  " VI. 51.




ï~~CHAP. XXXIX.]

WEAKNESS OF THE CARTHAGINIANS.

423

never conducted so ably as when the popular party was most predominant; nor
have any governments ever shown in war greater feebleness and vacillation and
ignorance than those of Sparta, and, but too often, of England.
A great commercial state, where wealth was largely gained and highly valued,
was always in danger, according to the opinion of the ancient
Enterprising spirt C1
philosophers, of losing its spirit of enterprise. But in this Car- the rthaginian gv.
thage resembled the government of British India; necessity at first
made her merchants soldiers; and when she became powerful, then the mere
impulse of a great dominion kept up hnr energy; she had much to maintain, and
what she already possessed gave her the power, and with it the temptation, of
acquiring more. Besides, it is a very important point in the state of society in
the ancient world, that the business of a soldier was no isolated profession, but
mixed up essentially with the ordinary life of every citizen. Hence those who
guided the counsels of a state were ready also to conduct its armies; and military glory was a natural object of ambition to many enterprising minds which,
in modern Europe, could only hope for distinction in the cabinet or in parliament. The great families of Carthage, holding amongst them a monopoly of all
the highest offices, might safely calculate on obtaining for all their members
some opportunity of distinguishing themselves: if the father fell in the service
of his country, his son not unfrequently became his successor, and the glory
of finishing what he had begun was not left to a stranger. 'Thus the house
of Mago for three generations conducted the Carthaginian invasions of Sicily: and thus Hamilcar Barca, according to his own expression," reared his
three sons, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago, as lion's whelps to prey upon the
Romans.
History can produce no greater statesmen and generals than some of the
members of the Carthaginian aristocracy. But the Carthaginian Inferiority of the Car.
people were wholly unfit to contend with the people of Rome. taginianpeopl  o.diers. Want of fortresses
No military excellence in arms or tactic is ever ascribed to them; in the Carthaginian ter.
nor does it appear that they were regularly trained to war, like ritory.
the citizens of Rome and Italy. The Carthaginian armies were composed of
Africans and Numidians, of Gauls and Spaniards, but we scarcely hear of any
Carthaginian citizens except as generals or officers. With this deficiency in native soldiers, there was also a remarkable want of fortresses; a point of no small
importance at all periods, but especially so in ancient warfare. The walls exist
in Italy to this day of many towns whose very names have perished; but we
know that, small as they were, they could have delayed the progress of an invader; and how inestimable were the services rendered to the Romans in their
greatest danger by the fortifications of Nola and Casilinum! But in the Carthaginian territory an invader found nothing but a rich and defenceless spoil.
Agathocles conquered 200 townsÂ~ with scarcely any opposition; and Hannibal
himself, after one defeat in the field, had no resource but submission to the conqueror. Had a French army ever effected a landing in England during the last war,
the same want of fortresses would have enabled the enemy to overrun the whole
country; and have taught us by fatal experience to appreciate in this respect
the improvidence of Carthage.
Thus, with abler leaders and a richer treasury, but with a weaker people, an
unguarded country, and with subjects far less united and attached Carthage was unequal
to her government, Carthage was really unequal to the contest to ome.
with Rome. And while observing this inequality in the course of our story, we
shall have more reason to admire that extraordinary energy and genius of Hamilcar Barca and his family, which so long struggled against it, and even in spite of
nature, almost made the weaker party victorious.

Valerius Maximus, IX. 3.

20 Diodorus, XX. 17.




ï~~CHAPTER XL.
FIRST PUNIC WAR-THE ROMANS INVADE SICILY-SUBMISSION                OF HIIEROTIE ROMANS CREATE A NAVY-NAVAL VICTORIES OF MYLE AND ECNOMUS-EXPEDITION OF M. REGULUS TO AFRICA; HIS SUCCESSES, HIS ARROGANCE IN VICTORY, HIS DEFEAT AND CAPTIVITY-WAR IN SICILY-SIEGE OF
LILYB1EUM AND NAVAL ACTIONS CONNECTED WITH IT-HAMILCAR BARCA AT
EIRCTE AND ERYX-NAVAL BATTLE OF THE.EGATES-PEACE CONCLUDEDA. U. C. 490 TO 5183-A. C. 264 TO 241.
Meher4oopcv Kai 1p f s(3iv reiov xprv ria vavr'Ocd, Kai dray rlv s'rwriryv iS rd ov Karaar4W t v,
7 ye stvxfa a rwot V r6spedysa'o 8 ydp tp'is op yv beos ya.86v, rALdvoL oI av yvoLTro Ldaxil
5 6' FKEVOL 7rO7i'at, rpoiixovU, Ka GaLpTpOVe?i1  7v  i jfa i pS.-THUCYD. 1. 121.
THE first Punic war lasted, without intermission, for more than two-and-twent)
A. U. C. 40. A. C. years,' a longer space of time than thewhole period occupied by
26e. Introduction to the wars of the French revolution, if we omit to reckon the ninethe history of the Sirnt
Puni war.      teen months of the peace or rather truce of Amiens.      And we
have now, for the first time, the guidance of a careful and well-informed historian, who, having been born little more thirty years after the end of the war,2
had studied the written accounts given of its events by each of the contending parties, had learned something, no doubt, concerning it, from the mouths
both of Romans and Carthaginians, and who judged what he had heard and read
with understanding, and for the most part impartially. The actions, then, of this
war may be known, and some of them deserve to be described particularly; nor
does it indeed seem possible to communicate any interest to history, if it must
only record results and not paint actions. But in military matters, especially,
much that may and ought to be told at length by a contemporary historian,
ought not to be repeated by one who writes after an interval of many centuries:
and therefore I must, of necessity, pass over slightly many battles and sieges, in
order to relate others in full detail, and yet avoid the fault of too great prolixity..
It was the eleventh year after the defeat of Pyrrhus at Beneventum, and ApThe Mamertines of pius Claudius Caudex and M. Fulvius Flaccus were consuls, when
eand  py toRome a deputation' arrived at Rome from the Mamertines of Messana,
for tid against the Carthaginians and Hiero. praying that the Romans, the sovereigns of Italy, would not suffer an Italian people to be destroyed by Greeks and Carthaginians.   Hiero, king
of Syracuse, was their open enemy; the Carthaginians, under pretence of saving
them from his vengeance, were trying to get possession of their citadel; but the
Mamertines, true to their Italian blood, sought to put themselves under the protection of their own countrymen, and it greatly concerned the Romans not to
allow the Carthaginians to become masters of Messana, and to gain a station for
their fleets within thirty stadia of the coast of Italy.
Six years had not elapsed since the Romans had extirpated the brethren and
1 From the middle, perhaps, of the year 490 be deducted, which extends from October, 1801,
to the middle of the year 513; nearly twenty- to May, 1808.
three years, if we reckon from the arrival of the  2 The exact year of Polybius' birth is uncerfirst Mamertine embassy at Rome, to the con- tain. He was under 30 in 573, but as he was
clusion of the definitive treaty. The whole pe- appointed ambassador to Egypt in that year, he
riod of the revolution wars, from April, 1792, to could not have been many years younger. See
July, 1815, is but a very little longer, and it be- Fynes Clinton, Fasti Hellen. Vol. III. p. 75.
comes very much shorter if the interval of peace  3Polybius, I. 10. Zonaras, VII. 8.




ï~~CHAP. XL.]

C CLAUDIUS CROSSES TO MESSANA.

425

imitators of the Mamertines, who had done to Rhegium what the The ehate heettatesto
Mamertines had done to Messana; and Hiero, king of Syracuse, granti.
had zealously aided them in the work, and, as it appears,4 was actually at this
time their ally. The Mamertines were a horde of adventurers and plunderers,
who were the common enemies of mankind, and whose case the Romans had prejudged already by their exemplary punishment of the very same conduct in the
Campanians of Rhegium, while Hiero and the Carthaginians were the friends and
allies of Rome. The senate, therefore, we are assured,5 after long debates, could
not resolve to interfere in such a quarrel.
But the consuls, who, if true to the hereditary character of their families,
were both of them ambitious men and unscrupulous, brought the      eope in thei
But the people in theiz
petition of the Mamertines before the assembly of the people. The tribes resolve to assist
ready topics of aiding the Italian people against foreigners, and of them.
restraining the power of Carthage, whose establishments in Corsica, Sardinia,
and the Liparaean islands, were already drawn, like a chain, round the Roman
dominion, were, no doubt, urged plausibly; it might have been said too that the
Carthaginians had already undertaken to protect the Mamertines, so that they
could not reproach the Romans for upholding the very same cause. Besides,
the Roman people had a fresh remembrance of the assignations of land, the rich
spoil, and lucrative employments which had followed from their late conquests
in Italy; the fertility of Sicily was proverbial; and the well-known riches of
Carthage made a war with her as tempting a prospect to the Romans as a war
with Spain has been ere now to Englishmen. So the Roman people resolved to
protect the Mamertine buccaneers, and to receive them as their friends and allies.
The vote of the comitia was, by the actual constitution of Rome, paramount
to every other authority except the negative of the tribunes; and C.Claudius erossesove
as the tribunes did not interpose, the hesitation of the senate to Messina..dpr.m.
ises to the Mamertines
availed nothing. Accordingly the senate now resolved to assist the aid ofr ome.
the Mamertines; and Appius Claudius was ordered to carry the resolution into
effect. But before he could be ready to act with a consular army, C. Claudius,
with a small force, was sent to the spot with orders to communicate as quickly
as possible with the Mamertines.  In a small boatt he crossed the strait to
Messana, and was introduced before the Mamertine assembly. With the language
so invariably repeated afterwards whenever a Roman army appeared in a foreign
country, C. Claudius assured the Mamertines that he was come to give them
their freedom, and he called on the Carthaginians either to evacuate the city, for
since the Mamertine embassy to Rome they had been put in possession of the
citadel by their partisans in Messana, or to explain the grounds on which they
occupied it. His address received no answer; upon which he said, "This silence
proves that the Mamertine people are not their own masters, and that the Carthaginians have no just defence of their conduct to offer. For the sake of our
common Italian blood, and because our aid has been implored, we will do the
Mamertines justice."
But the strait of Messana, guarded by a Carthaginian fleet, was a barrier not
easy to surmount. The Romans, since their conquest of Tarentun The Roman fleet, in
and their possession of all the coasts of Italy, seem to have given strait is repulsedr hb
up their navy altogether, and we hear at this time of no duumviri the Carthagionians.
or naval commanders as regular officers of the commonwealth. From the Greek
cities in their alliance, Neapolis,1 Velia, and Tarentum, they obtained a few triremes and penteconters; but they had not a single quinquereme, the class of
ships which may be called the line-of-battle-ships of that period. Their attempt
to cross to Sicily was therefore easily baffled, and some of their triremes,' with
4 Zonaras, VIII. 8. Dion Cassius, Fragm. ' Polybius, I. 20.
Vatican. LVIII.8 Dion Cassius, Fragm. Vatic. LIX. Zonaras,
a Polybius, I. 11.                   VIII. 8.
6 Zonaras, VIII. 8. Dion Cassius, Fragm. Vatican. LVIII.




ï~~126

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XL

the soldiers whom they were transporting, fell into the hands of the Cartha.
ginians.
Hanno, the Carthaginian governor of Messana, sent back the ships and the
Claudius again crosses prisoners to the Romans, calling upon them not to break the peace
oa I...na and invites with Carthage, nor to venture again on the hopeless attempt of
Carthaginian gov-.rnor to a conference. crossing the strait in defiance of his naval superiority.9  C. Claudius rejected his overtures, and repeated his determination to deliver Messana.
Hanno exclaimed, that since they were so arrogant, he would not sufier the Romans to meddle with the sea so much as to wash their hands in it. Yet his vigilance did not justify this language, for Claudius with a few men effected his passage, apparently in a single ship, and finding the Mamertines assembled at the
harbor to receive him, he again proceeded to address them, professed his wish
to leave their choice of protectors to their own free decision, and urged that
Hanno should be invited to come down from the citadel, that the Roman and
Carthaginian commanders might each plead the claim of his own country to be
received as the ally and defender of Messana.
With this proposal Hanno0 was induced to comply, as overscrupulous, it
The governor itaseems, to remove every ground of suspicion against the good faith
ilerously ezed,a of Carthage as Claudius was unscrupulous in serving the ambition
surrenders the citadel
to purhao eh isf..of Rome.  When the Carthaginian governor appeared, the discusdom.           sion began; neither party would yield, and at last Claudius ordered his soldiers to seize Hanno and detain him as a prisqner, The Mamertines
applauded the act, and Hanno, to procure his liberty, engaged to withdraw his
garrison from the citadel, and to leave Messana in the hands of the Romans.
The Carthaginian council of elders," always severe in its judgments upon milisoona isbeairgedby tary commanders, ordered Hanno forth to be crucified; and disthe joint force of car- patched another officer of the same name with a fleet and army
thage and of Syraa.. to Sicily.  Hiero, provoked by the treachery of the Romans, concluded an alliance with Carthage against them, and the two allied powers jointly
blockaded Messana. Hiero lay encamped on the south side of the town, Hanno
stationed himself on the north, and his fleet lay close by, at the headland of Pelorus, where the strait is narrowest, to prevent the Romans from reinforcing their
garrison.
Things were in this state2 when Appius Claudius, with his consular army arAppius Claudius rosses rived at Rhegium. After some fruitless attempts at negotiation,
ti traitayit defa n he prepared to force his passage.  We want here a consistent
solar aromy, and defeats  ~hsW
the syracusans.  account of the details; but negligence there must have been on
the part of the Carthaginians," to allow an army of twenty thousand men to be
embarked, conveyed over the strait, and landed on the coast of Sicily, without
loss or serious interruption. The landing was effected at night, and on the south
of Messana, near the camp of the Syracusans. Appius immediately led his sol
diers to attack Hiero, who, confounded at the appearance of the Romans, and
believing that the Carthaginians must have betrayed the passage, still marched
out to meet the enemy. The.Syracusan cavalry supported its old renown, and
obtained some advantage, but the infantry were never much esteemed, and on
this occasion they were, probably, inferior in numbers. Hiero was defeated and
driven to his camp, and the very next night, suspecting his allies, and perceiving
s Zonaras, VIII. 9. Dion Cassius, Fragm.  aaXir ara. It is not easy to ascertain the exVatic. LIX.                             act meaning of Zonaras' Greek, but I believe
io Zonaras, VIII. 9. Dion Cassius, Fragm. that Kara "rp6daov iuproplta does not mean "unVatic. LX.                              der pretence of trafficking," but whten "they
SZonaras, VIII. 9. Polybius, I. 11. Dio- had an occasion of trafficking."  Compare in
dorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIII. 2.       Thucydides, VII. 18, ir' abroloNlat rrpaocda.
12 Polybius, I. 11. Diodorus, Fragm. Hoe- It would seem then that the Carthaginian sailschel. XXIII. 2. 4. Zonaras, VIII. 9.   ors were trafficking in the port of Messana when
3, Zonaras says of Appius,t fpe lp  vxvok they ought to have been at sea, watching the
abri~v oMaxX rar wpornoepao  Eroepiaag Xsn- movements of the Romans.
nolrras, isterdrnrtufe u&r ba tra 8AOf rev rnpO9ei




ï~~CHAr. XL.]

SECOND CAMPAIGN IN SICILY.

427

that he had ventured on an ill-advised contest, he raised the siege and retreated to
Syracuse.
Thus delivered from one enemy, Appius next attacked the Carthaginians.4
Their position was strong, and he was repulsed; but this success He defeats the Cartha~He defeats thle Cartha.
tempted them to meet him on equal ground, and they were then giniansra issthesiege
of Messana, an d pin'sles
defeated with loss.   Messana was now completely relieved; the Hiero under the walls
Carthaginian army retreated, and was divided into detachments to of Syracuse.
garrison the towns of the Carthaginian part of the island.   Appius overran the
open country in every direction, and the soldiers, no doubt, congratulated themselves on their decision in the comitia at Rome, which, in so short a time, had
enriched them with the plunder of Sicily.    But an attempt to take Egesta was
repulsed with considerable slaughter, and when Appius advanced even to the
very walls of Syracuse, and pretended to besiege the city, he found that he could
not always be successful; his men suffered from the summer and autumn fevers
of the marsh plain of the Anapus, and he retreated to Messana, with the Syracusan army pressing upon his rear. The Syracusans, however, long accustomed
to regard the Carthaginians as their worst enemies, were unwilling to support the
evils of war in their cause; the Syracusan advanced posts held frequent communications with the Romans, and although Hiero could not yet consent to make
peace with the protectors of the Mamertines, yet the manifest disposition of his
subjects was not to be resisted, and the Romans reached Messana in safety,
Appius left a garrison there, and returned with the rest of his army to Rome;
the strait was now clear of the enemy's ships, for in ancient warfare a fleet was
dependent upon land co-operation,' and could not act without great difficulty
upon a coast which was wholly in the possession of an enemy.
When Appius returned to Rome, he found that the war with Volsinii was at
an end, for his colleague, M. Fulvius Flaccus, triumphed for his
Second campaigna in
victories over the Volsinians on the first of November.'6     The Sicily Hier makes
peace with Rome.
whole force of Rome was therefore now at liberty, and as the Car- A. u c. 41. a.C.
263.
thaginians seem to have despaired of defending the straits of Mes-63.
sana, two consular armies,17 amounting to about 35,000 men, crossed over into
Sicily in the spring of 491. All opposition was overborne, and Hiero, after having lost sixty-seven towns," was glad to obtain peace on condition of restoring
all the Roman prisoners without ransom, of paying a large sum of money, and of
becoming the ally of the Roman people. He had the wisdom to maintain this
alliance unbroken to the hour of his death, having found that the.. friendship of
Rome would secure him from all other enemies, whereas the allies of Carthage
were exposed to suffer from her tyranny, but could not depend on her protection. Hiero retained nearly the same extent of territory which had belonged to
Syracuse in old times, before the tyranny of the first Dionysius; but all the rest
of his dominion was ceded to the Romans.
Having now only one enemy to deal with,"9 and having the whole power of
Syracuse transferred from the Carthaginian scale to their own, the Roman generals went on prosperously.  Many towns were taken from the Carthaginians, and.,unaras, VIII. 9. Polybius, I. 12. Dio- land forces solely, after they had effected their
dorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIII. 4.        landing in safety.
' The failure of Pompey's fleet in either pre-  1 Fasti Capitolini.
venting Caesar from crossing the Ionian sea  7 Polybius, I. 16.
from Brundusium, or in effectually cutting off  " Diodorus, Fragm. Hoesohel. XXIII. 5. The
his communications with Italy afterwards, is terms of the peace with Hiero are variously reone of the most striking instances of the defects ported. Diodorus says that he obtained a peace
of the ancient naval service. But with respect for fifteen years on giving up his Roman pristo the invasion of Sicily from Italy, we mustre- oners without ransom, and on paying 150,000
member that not even the British naval force, drachmae; Polybius makes the sum 100 talents,
while every point in Sicily was in our posses- and says nothing of any term when the peace
sion, could prevent the French from throwing was to expire; Zonaras names no specific sum,
across a division of about 3000 men, in Septem- and Orosius and Eutropius set it at 200 talents:
ber, 1810, whose defeat was effected by our  19 Polybius, I. 17-20.




ï~~428

HISTORY OF ROME.

LCHA. XL

Third and fourth cam. in the following year; 492, AgrigentumÂ~ was reduced after a long
pae ga. Siegeof Agi- and obstinate siege, and all the inhabitants sold for slaves. The
gentum. The Reomonssig,                   teolTh
eoA.  tbuil   49-. A..et consuls of the year 493 were no less successful, but the Cartha262, 261.     ginians had at last begun to exert their naval power effectually;
many towns on the Sicilian coasts" which had yielded to the Roman armies were
recovered by the Carthaginian fleets; the coasts of Italy were often ravaged, so
that the Romans found it necessary to encounter their enemy on his own element:
they resolved to dispute with the Carthaginians their dominion of the sea.
Immediately at the close of the year 493, they began to fell their timber. But
no Italian shipwright knew how to build the line-of-battle ships of
They find a model for
their sisand  tai that period, called quinqueremes, and their build was so different
hi......   from that of the triremes, that the one would not serve as a model
for the other. Shipwrights might have been procured from the king of Egypt,
but to send thither would have caused too great a delay. It happened that a
Carthaginian quinauereme"2 had run ashore on the Bruttian coast when Appius
Claudius was first crossing over to Sicily, and it was noted as a curious circumstance that the Roman soldiers had taken a ship of war. This quinquereme,
which had probably been sent to Rome as a trophy, was now made the shipwright's model, and a hundred ships were built after her pattern, and launched
in two months after the first felling of the timber.23 The seamen, partly Roman
proletarians, or citizens of the poorest class, partly Etruscans, or Greeks from the
maritime states of Italy, were all unaccustomed to row in quinqueremes, and the
Romans had, perhaps, never handled an oar of any sort. While the ships were
building, therefore, to lose no time, the future crew of each quinquereme4 were
arranged upon benches ashore, in the same order, that to us undiscoverable
problem, in which they were hereafter to sit on board; the keleustes, whose
voice or call regulated the stroke in the ancient galleys, stood in the midst of
them, and at his signal they went through their movements, and learned to keep
time together, as if they had been actually afloat. With such ships and such
crews the Romans put to sea early in the spring, to seek an engagement with
the fleet of the first naval power in the world.
An English reader is tempted here either to suspect extreme exaggeration in
Defeats in the anoient the accounts of the Roman inexperience in naval matters, or to
naval service.  entertain great contempt for the fleets and sailors of the ancient
world altogether. There are no braver men than the Austrians, but there would
be something ludicrous in the idea of an Austrian fleet, manned chiefly by peasants from the inland provinces of the empire, and commanded by officers of the
land service, venturing a general action with an English or American squadron.
But tine accounts of these events are trustworthy; and had the Romans encountered the Athenian navy in the days of its greatness instead of the Carthaginian,
the result, in the first years of the war at least, would probably have been different. However, there is no doubt that the naval service of the ancient nations
was out of all proportion inferior to their land service; the seamen were altogether an inferior class, and the many improvements which had been made in
the military art on shore seemed never to have reached naval warfare. Ships
worked with oars were still exclusively used as ships of war; and although the
use of engines, well deserving the name of artillery, was familiar in sieges, yet it
had never been adopted in sea-fights,25 and the old method of attempting to sink
20 Polybius, I. 18, 19. Orosius, IV. 7. Zo- locked up in the ice, and the French cavalry
naras, VIII. 10.                       took them without any resistance.
21 Polybius, I. 20.                    2 Pliny, Histor. Natur. XVI. Â~ 192. Florus,
22 Polybius, I. 20. Auctor de Viris Illustrib. II. 2.
in Appio Claud. Caudic. "quinqueremem hos-  ' Polybius, I. 21.
tium copiis pedestribus cepit." So in the inva-  Vegetius, writing in the fourth century
sion of Holland in 1795, the French triumphed after the Christian era, speaks of the use of argreatly in the capture of some Dutch ships of tillery in sea-fights as a thing of common p racwar by a party of their cavalry: the ships were tice; but I do not recollect any mention of it as
early as the Punic wars.




ï~~CHAP. XL.]

INGENUITY OF THE ROMANS.

429

or disable an enemy's vessel by piercing her just below the water with the brazen
beak affixed to every ship's bows, was still universally practised. The system of
fighting, therefore, necessarily brought the ships close to one another; and if the
fighting men on one side were clearly superior to those on the other, boarding,
if it could be effected, would insure victory. The fighting men in the ancient
ships, as is well known, were quite distinct from their rowers or seamen, and their
proportion to these varied, as boarding was more or less preferred to manceuvring. In the Ionian revolt, about 500 B. c., we find forty soldiers26 employed on
each of the China ships out of a crew of 200; the Corinthians and Corcyrmans,
about seventy years afterwards, had nearly as many,7 but the Athenians, in the
most flourishing state of their navy, had commonly no more than ten. In the
quinqueremes now used, we find the Romans employing on one occasion 300
seamen and 120 soldiers; this, however, was perhaps something above their usual
proportion; but there can be no doubt that the soldiers on board of each ship
were numerous, and if they could board the enemy their victory over what Niebuhr justly calls the mere rabble of an African crew was perfectly certain.
The object of the Romans was therefore to enable their men, in every case, to
decide the battle by boarding. For this purpose they contrived Machine invented by
in each ship what may be called a long drawbridge, thirty-six feet the mto sboa  thena e
long, by four wide, with a low parapet on each side of it. This  -
bridge was attached by a hole at one end of it to a mast twenty-four feet high,
erected on the ship's prow, and the hole was large and oblong, so that the bridge
not only played freely all around the mast, but could be drawn up so as to lie
close and almost parallel to it, the end of it being hoisted by a rope passing
through a block at the mast-head, just as our cutters' booms are hoisted by what
is called the topping lift. The bridge was attached to the mast at the height of
about twelve feet from the deck, and it had a continuation of itself reaching down
to the deck, moving, I suppose, on hinges," and serving as a ladder by which it
might be ascended. Playing freely round the mast, and steered by the rope
above-mentioned, the bridge was let fall upon an enemy's ship, on whatever
quarter she approached; and as a ship's beak was commonly her only weapon,
an enemy ventured without fear close to her broadside or her stem, as if she
were there defenceless. When the bridge fell, a strong iron spike, fixed at the
bottom of it, was driven home by the mere weight of the fall into the deck of the
enemy's ship, and held it fast; and then the soldiers, in two files, rushed along
it by an inclined plane down upon the deck of the enemy, their large shields and

26 Herodotus, VI. 15.
2 Thucydides, I. 49. He says that the ships
had many heavy-armed soldiers on board, and
many archers and dartmen, after the ancient
fashion. That the number of fighting men on
board the Athenian ships in the most flourishing state of their navy was no more than ten,
appears from a comparison of several passages
in Thucydides, II. 92, 102. III. 95, and IV. 76,
101.
28 This is the difficult part of Polybius' description, I. 22, which he by no means makes
very intelligible. "The ladder, or bridge, was
put round the mast after the first twelve feet of
its own length:" the object being apparently to
attach it to the mast at such a height above the
deck, as to make it form an inclined plane down
to the deck of the enemy. But unless the lower
end of the ladder had been fixed to the deck,
the men could not have ascended by it; and
had it been all one piece with the upper part,
the moment the bridge was lowered to fall on
the enemy's deck, the lower part must immediately have gone up into the air. And, of
course, it is absurd to suppose that the men
could have gone upon the bridge before it was

fixed on the enemy's ship, I can only suppose,
then, that what Polybius Wlls "the first twelve
feet of the ladder" served as a permanent ascent
from the deck to the end of the bridge, where
it went round the mast, and that it was so far
distinct from the bridge, that it remained in its
own place when the bridge was lowered, although, when the bridge was hoisted up to lie
close to the mast, both it and the bridge seemed
to be a continuation of each other.
Folard's engraving and description of this
machine are altogether erroneous: but he mentions a story which well illustrates the object
of attaching the bridge to the mast at a height
of twelve feet above the deck. "The Maltese
seamen," he says, " have been known to mount
on the main-yard preparatory to boarding, and
when the ship runs on board of the enemy, one
yard-arm is lowered, and the men are thus
dropped one after another on the enemy's
deck." I will not answer for the truth of the
story, but it evidently contains the same notion
of boarding by an inclined plane, which appears
to have suggested to the Romans the arrangement of their bridge.




ï~~430

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CMhr. XL

the parapet of the bridge together completely sheltering their flanks from the
enemy's missiles, while the two file leaders held their shields in front of them,
and so covered the bridge lengthways. So with these bridges drawn up to their
masts, and exhibiting a strange appearance, as the regular masts were always
lowered previously to going into action, the Roman fleet put to sea in quest of
their enemy.
It was commanded by one of the consuls, On. Cornelius Scipio," but as he
C. Duilius commands allowed himself to be taken with seventeen ships, in an ill-advised
tie Ron...fleet. sea- attempt on the Liparman islands, his colleague, C. Duilius, the defight of Myl.  scendant probably of that upright and moderate tribune who took
so great a part in the overthrow of the decemvirs' tyranny, was sent for from his
army to conduct the fleet. He found the Carthaginian fleet under the command
of Hannibal, the same officer who had defended Agrigentum in the late siege,
ravaging the coast of Mylm, the modern Melazzo, on the north coast of Sicily,
not far from the strait of Messana. The Carthaginians advanced in the full confidence of victory, and though surprised at the masts and tackle on the I.rows of
the Roman ships, they yet commenced the action boldly. But the thirty ships
which formed their advanced squadron, including that of Hannibal himself, were
immediately grappled by the Roman bridges, boarded and taken. Hannibal escaped in his boat to his main battle, which was rapidly advancing; but the disaster of their first division startled them, and when they found, that even if they
approached the Roman ships on their broadside or on their stern, still these
formidable bridges were wheeled round and lowered upon them, they were seized
with a panic and fled. Their whole loss, including that of the advanced squadron,30 amounted to about fifty ships sunk or taken, and in men to three thousand
killed and seven thousand prisoners.
The direct consequence of this victory was the raising of the siege of Egesta,8'
Results of the battle, which the Carthaginians had well-nigh reduced to extremity, and
and honors allowed ntheoo     Mcl
Duiliush n TheDuilia the taking of Macella by assault.  But its moral results were far
column,        greater, inasmuch as the Romans were now confident of success
)y sea as well as on shore, and formed designs of wresting from the Carthaginians all their island possessions, Sardinia and Corsica no less than Sicily. Duilius,
as was to be expected, obtained a triumph, and he was allowed2 for the rest of
his life to be escorted home with torches borne before him, and music playing
whenever he went out to supper, an honor which he enjoyed for many years afterwards. A pillar also was set up in the Forum to commemorate his victory, with an
inscription recording the amount of the spoil which he had taken; and an ancient
copy of this inscription,3" retaining the old forms of the words, is still preserved,
though in part illegible.
The events of the three next years may be passed over briefly. Towns were
Indecisive warin Sicily. taken and retaken in Sicily, much plunder was gained, enormous
Coraicn endedrinia.t havoc made, and many brave actions34 performed, but with no
conspiracy at Rome.  decisive result.  Hamilcar, one of the Carthaginian generals, de2 Polybius, I. 21.     s Polybius, I. 28. temple had been begun by him, and was only
31 Polybius, I. 24.                      completed by his successor.
32 Cicero, de Senectute, 13. It appears that.  Such as that noble act of a military tribune
this continuation of his triumph during his in the army of the consul A. Atilius Calatinus,
whole life was his own act, and that it was in the year 496, who sacrificed himself and a
thcnght right and proper, as he had done such cohort of 400 men to cover the retreat of the
good service; " que sibi nullo exemplo privatus army out of a dangerous defile in which they
sumpserat: tantum licentim dabat gloria." This had been surprised by the enemy. Cato comno doubt is more correct than those other state- plained of the injustice of fortune which had
ments which represent it as an honor specially given so scanty a share of fame to this tribune,
conferred upon him by the senate or people.  while Leonidas for an act of no greater heroism
3 A temple of Janus, built by C. Duilius at had acquired such undying glory. In fact, the
this time, was restored in the early part of the tribune's very name is uncertain, for we find
reign of the Emperor Tiberius. (Tacitus, An- the action ascribed to three different persons.
nal. II. 49.) It is possible that the column and See A. Gellius, III. 7, who quotes at length the
its inscription may have been restored in the passage of the Origines in which Cato describes
reign of Augustus; for the restoration of the the action.




ï~~ChAP. XL.]

ROMAN EXPEDITION TO AFRICA.

431

stroyed the town of Eryx and removed its inhabitants to Drepanum, a place on
the sea-side close beneath the mountain where they had lived before, and provided with an excellent harbor.35  It was not far from Lilybreum, and these two
posts both being strongly fortified were intended to be the strongholds of the
Carthaginian power in Sicily.  On the other hand, the Romans invaded Sardinia
and Corsica6 and carried off great numbers of prisoners. But as they extended
their naval operations they unavoidably became acquainted with the violence of
the Mediterranean storms; and the terrors of the sea were very dreadful to the
inland people of Italy, who were forced to furnish seamen to man the Roman
fleets, a service utterly foreign to the habits of their lives. Thus in the year 49531
some Samnites, who were waiting in Rome till the fleet should be ready for sea,
entered into a conspiracy with some slaves who had been lately carried off as captives from Sardinia and Corsica, to make themselves masters of the city. The
seamen, however, of the ancient world were always chosen from the poorest
classes of freemen, and their making common cause with the slaves showed at
once that their attempt had nothing of the character of a national revolt. In
fact, their own Samnite commander informed the Roman government of their
conspiracy, which was thus prevented and punished. The higher classes in the
allied states, who served as soldiers, liked the war probably as much as the Romans did; and with one doubtful exception,6 we read of no symptoms of disaffection to Rome during the whole course of the war.
Besides their expeditions to Sardinia and Corsica, and their naval co-operation
with the consular armies engaged in Sicily, the Romans gained an naval action off t.he
advantage over the Carthaginian fleet in the year 497, off the Li- Liparanisand s.
parman islands,3" for which the Consul C. Atilius obtained, like Duilius, a naval
triumph.
This success, although in itself very indecisive, yet encouraged the Romans
to attempt operations on a far grander scale, and to carry the war Great armament of the
into Africa. Great efforts were made during the winter, and a Roman..
a fleet of 330 ships was prepared,40 manned by nearly 300,000 seamen, exclusive of soldiers or fighting men. This vast number could scarcely A.. A.c.
have been furnished either by Rome itself or its Italian allies; but Theypreparoe to invade
the thousands of captives carried off from Corsica and Sardinia,Afc.
or from the cities of Sicily, no doubt were largely employed as galley-slaves;
and if they worked in chains, as is most probable, the free rowers who were in
the ships with them would be a sufficient guard to deter them from mutiny. The
two consuls for the ensuing year were L. Manlius Vulso and Q. Cmdicius; but
Q. Cmdi:ius died soon after he came into office, and was succeeded M. Atilius
Regulus. The two consular armies had apparently wintered in Sicily; for the
fleet sailed through the strait of Messana, doubled Cape Pachynus,4' and took
the legions on board at Ecnomus, a small place on the southern coast, between

1 Diodorus, Fragm. HIoeschel. XXIII. Zonaras, VII. 11.
2a Zonaras, VIII. 11. Polybius, I. 24. The
Fasti Capitolini record L. Scipio's triumph over
the Sardinians and Corsicans in the year 494,
that is, according to the common reckoning,
495; and they record also a triumph of C. Sulpicius over the Sardinians in the year following. The Lucius Scipio who triumphed over
the Corsicans was the son of L. Scipio who was
defeated by the Gauls in the third Samnite war.
His epitaph has been preserved, as well as his
father's, and it tells of him, how "he won Corsica and the city of Aleria." Aleria is the Alalia of Herodotus, an old Greek colony founded
by the Phocmans when they fled from the generals of Cyrus.
' Zonaras, VIII.11. Scipio onhisreturnfrom
Corsica in 495 had encountered a violent storm,
uand built a temple to the powers of the weather

in gratitude for his escape from destruction.
This is noticed in his epitaph, Dedit tempestatibus rde merito," and also by Ovid in his
Fasti.
' Polybius says that in 495 or 496, the allies
quarrelled with the Romans in Sicily, complaining that their services in the field were not sufficiently acknowledged, and that they consequently encamped apart from the Romans, and
were attacked in their separate position by the
Carthaginian general, and cut to pieces, I. 24.
But it does not appear that these were the Italian allies of Rome, and it is possible that they
may have been the Mamertines.
3 Polybius, I. 25. Fasti Capitolini. Zonaras,
VIII. 12.
s Polybius, I. 25. Each Roman ship had on
board 300 rowers and 120 fighting men.
4' Polybius, I. 25.




ï~~432

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XI

Gela and Agrigentum. Forty thousand men were here embarked, and the Carthaginians, who had assembled a still larger fleet of three hundred and fifty ships,
had already crossed over to Lilybmeum, and from thence, advancing eastward
along the Sicilian coast, were arrived at Heraclea Minoa, and were ready to give
the Romans battle. Both consuls were on board the Roman fleet; the Carthaginians were commanded by Hanno, who had been defeated at Agrigentum
during the siege of that town, and by Hamilcar, who had so lately founded
Drepanum.
The Roman fleet at Ecnomus contained 140,000 men, while less than 20,000
Battle of Ecnomus. De- British seamen were engaged at Trafalgar.  Yet it is not only in
infleet off hth oi our generation, when Trafalgar and its consequences are fresh in
coast of Sicily.  our memory, that its fame will surpass a hundred-fold the fame
of the battle of Ecnomus. For the twenty-seven ships which Nelson commanded at Trafalgar, by crushing the naval force of France, changed the destiny
of all Europe; whilst the three hundred and thirty ships which fought at Ecnomus produced only a brief result, which within five years was no more perceivable. A fleet that could be built in a few months was no irreparable loss if
destroyed; and the poor slaves who worked at the oar might be replaced by the
plunder of the next campaign. The battle of Ecnomus was obstinately contested,
but at last the Romans were completely victorious.       They lost twenty-four
ships,4" in which not more than 2880 soldiers could have perished, if we suppose,
what rarely happened, that not a man was picked up by the other ships; but
they destroyed thirty of the enemy's fleet, and took sixty-four with all their
crews. The Carthaginians with the rest of their ships made all speed to reach
Carthage, that they might be still in time to defend their country against the expected invasion.
The way to Africa was now open, and the consuls,' after having victualled their
The consos cross over ships with more than their usual supplies, as they knew not what
to Africa, ccpy y'. port would next receive them, prepared to leave the coast of Sicily
and begin to lay       nxt          t    etete                     o
waste the country.  and to cross the open sea to an unknown world.  The soldiers
and even one of the military tribunes murmured;44 they had been kept from
home during one whole winter, and now they were to be carried to a strange
country, into the very stronghold of their enemy's power, to a land of scorching
heat, and infested with noisome beasts and monstrous serpents,45 such as all stories
of Africa had told them of. Regulus, it is said, threatened the tribune with
death, and forced the men on board. The fleet did not keep together, and thirty
ships reached the African shore unsupported,46 and might have been destroyed
before the arrival of the rest; had not the Carthaginians in their confusion neglected their opportunity. When the whole fleet was reassembled under the
headland of Hermes, Cape Bon, they stood to the southward along the coast,
and disembarked the legions near the place called Aspis or Clypea,4' in English,
shield-a fortress built by Agathocles about fifty years before, and deriving its
name from its walls forming a circle upon the top of a conical hill. They immediately drew their ships up on the beach, after the ancient manner, and secured
them with a ditch and rampart; and having taken Clypea, and dispatched mes42 Polybius, I. 27, 28.                creatures besides." IV. 191. This description
4a Polybius, I. 29.                   is very remarkable, following, as it does, a de44 Florus, II. 2.                     tailed and most exact account not only of all the
45 " Libya to the west of the lake Tritonis," African tribes on the coast from Egypt to the
that is, the present pashalik of Tunis, the an- lesser Syrtis, but also of those in the interior.
cient territory of Carthage, " is very hilly," But the Carthaginian territory was rendered so
says Herodotus, "and overgrown with woods, inaccessible to foreigners, that all sorts of exagand full of wild beasts. For here are the mon- gerations and fables were circulated respecting
strous serpents, and the lions,and the elephants, it. Herodotus seems to have known nothing
and the bears, and the asps, and the asses with of its fertility, but only of its.woods and its wild
horns, and the dog-heads, and the creatures beasts, the terrors of which the Carthaginians
with no heads, whose eyes are in their breasts, no doubt purposely magnified.
at least as the Libyans say, and the wild men  46 Diodorus, Fragm. Vatican. XXIII. 8.
and the wild women, and a great many other  4 Polybius, 1. 29. Strabo, XVII. p. 884.




ï~~CAr. XL.]

DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY.

433

sengers to Rome with the news of their success, and to ask for further instructions, they began to march into the country; and the ravages of forty thousand
men were spread far and wide over that district which, for its richness and flourishing condition, was unmatched probably in the world.
From Cape Bon, the Hermean headland, the African coast runs nearly north
and south for as much as three degrees of latitude as far as the Description of the conbottom  of the lesser Syrtis.  This was the most highly prized try south of Carthage.
One  consul  returns
country of the Carthaginian dominion, filled with their, towns, and home.,Reguuis lft
covered with the villas of their wealthier citizens.  In their old inAfrca.
commercial treaties48 with Rome no Roman vessel was allowed to approach this
coast; they wished to keep it hidden from every foreigner, that its surpassing
richness might not tempt the spoiler. Here grew those figs which Cato the
censor showed in the Roman senate, to prove how the fruits of Italy were outdone by those of Africa; and here grew those enormous harvests of corn which
in later times49 constantly fed the people of Rome. But now the aspect of the
country resembled the approach to Genoa, or the neighborhood of Geneva, or
even the most ornamented parts of the valley of the Thames above London.
Everywhere were to be seen single houses5t standing in the midst of vineyards,
and olive-grounds, and pastures; for as in Judea in its golden days, every drop
of rain was carefully preserved in tanks or cisterns on the high grounds, and a
plentiful irrigation spread life and freshness on every side, even under the burning sun of Africa. On such a land the hungry soldiers of the Roman army were
now let loose without restraint. Villas were ransacked and burnt, cattle and
horses were driven off in vast numbers, and twenty thousand persons,. many of
them doubtless of the highest condition, and bred up in all the enjoyments of
domestic peace and affluence, were carried away as slaves. This havoc continued
for several weeks, till the messengers sent from Rome returned with the senate's
orders. One of the consuls,5' with one consular army and forty ships, was to
remain in Africa; the other was to return home with the second consular army,
the fleet, and the plunder. L. Manlius accordingly embarked, and arrived safely
at Rome with his division of the army, and with the spoil. M. Regulus, With
15,000 foot and 500 horse, was left in Africa.
The defenceless state of the country, and the apparent helplessness of the Carthaginian government, seem to have encouraged the Roman sen- He defeats the Cartha.
ate to hope that a single consular army might at any rate be able ginian, and fixes his
to maintain its ground and harass the enemy, even if it could nothed-qat.tT.
force them   o submission.  And the example of Agathocles, who, during four
years, had set the power of Carthage at defiance, no doubt increased their confidence. The incapacity of the Carthaginian government and generals was enough
indeed to embolden the Romans. Their army, strong in cavalry and elephants,
kept on the hills55 where neither could act, and were attacked and defeated, and
their camp taken by the Romans. Regulus then overran the whole country
without opposition; the Romans53 boasted that he took and plundered more than
three hundred walled villages or towns, but none of these deserved the name of
a fortified place; and even Tunes54 itself, within twenty miles of Carthage, fell
into their hands with little resistance. Here Regulus established his headquarters, and here he seems to have remained through the winter.55
48 See Polybius, III. 22, 23.         times, but still the soil is described as extreme49 Horace's expressions are well known, ly fertile. Sir G. Temple counted ninety-seven
" Frumenti quantum metit Africa," " quicquid shoots or stalks on a single plant of barley,
de Libycis verritur areis," &c. See also Taci- which was by no means one of the largest in
tus, Annal. XII. 43.                    the field; he was assured that plants were often
w See the description of this country as it seen with three hundred. Excursions in the
appeared to the soldiers of Agathocles. Diodo- Mediterranean, Vol. II. p. 108.
rus, XX. 8. The irrigation is especially no-  5' Polybius, I. 29.  52 Polybius, I. 80.
ticed, 7roXXv { drov atwxercevpivv sai rdera rtrov  5 Florus, II. 2.
Apsav6vrwv. It is the neglect of this which has so  5 Polybius, I. 30.
reduced the productiveness of Africa in modern  5 Zonaras, VIII. 13.
28




ï~~434

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XL

Meanwhile, to increase the distress of the Carthaginians, the Numidians,6 or
A. U. C. 498, 499. A. c. the roving tribes of the interior, then as now always ready to attack
256, 251. The umi- and plunder the civilized settlers of the sea-coast joined the Roian tribes joined him.a pls
Distrea of Carthage. mans, and, like the Cossacks, being most expert in such desultory
and plundering warfare, they outdid the Romans in their devastations.     From
all quarters fugitives from the country crowded into Carthage, and it was feared
that the city was unable to feed so great a multitude as were now confined within its walls.  Alarm and distress prevailed, and the council of elders sent three
of its own members to the Roman consul to sue for peace.
Regulus, like Fabricius and Curius, was in his own country a poor man; it is
Regulus imposes intol- a well-known story" that he complained of the loss which his small
Sterms on th portion of land must sustain from his absence, and that the senate
Carthaginians  who
come t.e for peace. promised to maintain his wife and children till his return. Such
a man's head could not but be turned by his present position, when the plunder
of Africa had given him the power of acquiring riches beyond all his conceptions, and when the noblest citizens of the wealthiest state in the world came as
suppliants to his head-quarters. He treated them with the insolence shown by
some of the French generals during the revolution to the ambassadors of the
old sovereigns of Europe. Carthage55 must evacuate Sicily and Sardinia, ransom
all her own prisoners, and give up without ransom all those whom she had taken
from the Romans; must make good all the expenses of the war, and pay a yearly
contribution besides; above all, she must follow wherever the Romans should
lead, and make neither alliance nor war without their consent; she must not send
to sea more than a single ship of war on her own account, but if the Romans
required her aid she must send them a fleet of fifty ships. The Carthaginian
ambassadors protested against terms so extravagant.    "Men who are good for
any thing," replied Regulus, " should either conquer or submit to their betters."59
And with threatening and insolent expressions to the ambassadors personally, he
ordered them to begone with all speed from the Roman camp.
The council of the elders called together the great council on this emergency; 60
terms are rejected. and the whole body of the aristocracy of Carthage with one voice
Hite  e. rejected conditions so intolerable. But great was the danger, and
great the general alarm. The gods were to be propitiated by no common sacrifices, and those horrid offerings to Moloch, which had been made when Agathoeles was threatening Carthage with ruin, were now again repeated. The figure
of the god stood with outstretched arms to receive his victims; young children
of the noblest families were placed in the hands of the image, and from thence
rolled off into a furnace which burnt before him.     Nor were there wanting
those who with something of a better spirit threw themselves into the fire, willing to pay with their own lives the atonement for their country.
In the midst of this distress, an officer returned" who had been sent to Greece
to engage Greek soldiers of fortune in the Carthaginian service.
Xanthippus, a Spartan
sodi.,rives..at Among others he brought with him a Spartan named Xanthippus,
Carthage, and  directs
the operations of ie a man who had been trained in his country's discipline, and had
carthaginian.  added to it much of actual military experience.  He might have
's Polybius, I. 31. Diodorus, Fragm. Vat- of the human sacrifices offered in such emergenican. XXIII. 4,                         cies, see Diodorus, XX. 14.
5- Auctor de Viris Illustrib. in Regul. Valer.  81 Polybius, I. 32. Some years afterwards,
Maxim. IV. 4, Â~ 6.                      when Ptolemy Energetes overran the whole
1 Dion Cassius, Fragm. Ursin. CXLVIII. kingdom of Seleucus Callinicus, he committed
Regulus was so elated by his successes, that he his conquests beyond the Euphrates to the care
wrote home to the senate to say that "he had of "Xantippus, one of his two generals-in-chief."
sealed up the gates of Carthage by the terror of Jerome, in Daniel, XI. 9. Could this Xantippus
his arms." Zonaras, VIII. 13.           or Xanthippus be the conqueror of Regulus,
4 Diodorus. Fragm. Vatican. XXIII. 4.  whose glory in Africa recommended him to the
0 Polybius, I. 31. Diodorus, Fragmin. Vati- notice of the king of Egypt after his return
cs, XXIIL 4. And for a particular description from Carthage, so that he became a general in
the Egyptian armies?.




ï~~CHAr. XL.]

TOTAL DEFEAT OF THE ROMANS.

435

fought with Aerotatus against Pyrrhus in that gallant defence of Sparta; and in
all likelihood he had followed king Areus2 to Athens to save the city from the dominion of Antigonus, when Sparta and Athens fought for the last time side by side
in defence of the independence of Greece. Xanthippus3 condemned the conduct
of the Carthaginian generals in the strongest terms; his reputation gave weight
to his words; the government sent for him, and he so justified his tpinion and
explained so clearly the causes of their defeats, that they intrusted him with the
direction of their forces. Hope was already rekindled; but when he reviewed
the soldiers without the walls, and made them go through the movements which
were best fitted to meet the peculiar tactic of the Romans, loud shouts burst
from the ranks, and there was a universal cry to be led out to battle. The
generals of the commonwealth did not hesitate to comply, and although they had
no more than 12,000 foot, yet relying on their cavalry, four thousand in number,
and on their elephants, amounting to no fewer than a hundred, they boldly
marched out, and no longer keeping the high grounds, encamped in the open
plain, and thus checked at once the devastation of the country.
Regulus was obliged to risk a battle,4 for as soon as he ceased to be master of
the field, his men would be destitute of provisions. He encamped Heieot~ares togivebatwithin little more than a mile of the enemy, and the sight of the tie tot e Romans.
Roman legions, so long victorious, made the resolution of the Carthaginian generals waver. But the soldiers were clamorous for battle, and Xanthippus urged
the generals not to lose the precious opportunity. They yielded, and requested
him to form the army on his own plan. Accordingly, he placed his cavalry on
the flanks, together with some of the light-armed mercenaries, slingers perhaps
from the Balearian islands, and archers from Crete. The heavy-armed mercenaries, we know not of what nation, whether Gauls, or Spaniards, or Greeks, or
a mixed band of all, were on the right in the line of battle; the Africans, with
some Carthaginian citizens, were on the left and centre; the whole line being
covered by the elephants, which formed a single rank at some distance in advance.
The Romans were in their usual order, their cavalry on the wings, and their
velites or light-armed troops in advance of the heavy-armed soldiers; but their
line was formed of a greater depth than usual, to resist the elephants' charge.
When the signal was given, the Carthaginian cavalry and elephants immediately advanced, and the Romans, clashing their pila against the
bAnd                totally  defeats
iron rims of their shields and cheering loudly, rushed on to meet them. Reglus is tathem. The left wing, passing by the right of the line of elephants, ken prisoner.
attacked the Carthaginian mercenaries and routed them; Xanthippus rode up to
rally them,5 threw himself from his horse, and fought amongst them as a common soldicr. Meantime his cavalry had swept the Roman and Italian horse from
the field, and then charged the legions on the rear; while the elephants, driving
the velites before them into the intervals of the maniples, broke into the Roman
main battle, and with irresistible weight and strength and fury trampled under
foot and beat down and dispersed the bravest. If any forced their way forwards
through the elephants' line, they were received by the Carthaginian infantry,
who, being fresh and in unbroken order, presently cut them to pieces. Two
thousand men of the left of the Roman army escaped after they had driven the
mercenaries to their camp, and found that all was lost behind them. Regulus
himself, with 500 more, fled also from the rout, but was pursued, overtaken, and
made prisoner. The rest of the Roman army was destroyed to a man on the
field of battle.
The few fugitives from the left wing made their escape to Clypea; Tunes, it seems,
was lost immediately, and, except Clypea, the Romans did not retain a foot of ground in Africa. We have no Carthaginian histo-  jiigatcathag
a See Justin, XXVI. 2. Pausanias, III. 6,  I Polybins, I. 833.
S8.                                    65 Diocdorus, Fragm. Vatic. XXIII. 5.
68 Polybius, I. 32.




ï~~436

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHA. XL

rian to describe the triumphant return of the victorious army to Carthage; how
the Roman prisoners and Regulus, lately so insolent, were led through the streets
bound and half naked; how the bands of noble citizens met at their public tables,
sworn companions and brethren to each other in peace and war, and remembered
with joyful tears their comrades who had fallen; how the whole city was full of
festivity,68 and every temple was crowded by wives and mothers offering their
thanksgivings for this great deliverance. The feasting, after the Carthaginian
manner, continued deep into the night; but other sounds and other fires than
those of revelry and rejoicing were to be seen and heard amid the darkness; the
fires of Moloch again were blazing, and some of the bravest of the prisoners were
burnt alive as a thank-offering.
Xanthippus, crowned with glory," and no doubt richly rewarded, returned to
A. UGreece soon after his victory, before admiration and gratitude had
A.U. C. 499. A. c.Cyewabeigdbuth                                             o
255. The R..an. send time to be changed to envy.  Clypea was besieged, but the Roa fleet to bring off the
remains of their army man garrison held out desperately, and the senate no sooner learned
from Africa.   the disaster of their army, than they sent a fleet to bring off the
survivors. The Carthaginians, dreading a second invasion, raised a fleet to meet
the enemy at sea, but the number of their ships was greatly inferior, and they
were completely defeated. The Romans, however, had no intention of landing
again in Africa; so total a destruction of their whole army impressed them with
a dread of the enemy's elephants, which they could not for a long time shake
off: they contented themselves with taking on board the garrison of Clypea, and
sailed back to Sicily.
The Romans had now for five years sent fleets to sea, and had as yet had lithe fleet is wrecedntle experience of its terrors.  This increased their natural confiits return off the sith dence, and they thought that Romans" might sail at any season,
coast of Italy.  and that it was only cowardice which was restrained by pretended
signs of bad weather.   So, in the month of July, in spite of the warnings of their
pilots, they persisted in coasting homewards along the southern coasts of Sicily,
at the very time when violent gales from the south and southwest make that coast
especially perilous. The fleet was off Camarina when the storm came on, and
taught the Romans that fair-weather seamen may mistake ignorant presumption for
courage. Above 260 ships were wrecked, which must have had on board 78,000
seamen, without counting the soldiers, who were probably at least as many as
25,000, and the whole coast from Camarina to Paclhynus was covered with wrecks
and bodies. The men69 who escaped to shore -were most kindly relieved by
Hiero, who fed and clothed them, and conveyed them to Messana.
This great disaster encouraged the Carthaginians to redouble their efforts in
War in Sicily. AgriSicily.  Carthalo, an able and active officer,Â~ immediately recovgent m rrcovered by ered Agrigentum, and Hasdrubal was sent over with 140 elephants,
the Carthaginians. The
homan ta.anr. to take the chief command of all the Carthaginian forces in the
m'             island.  But the Romans, with indomitable spirit, fitted out a new
fleet of 220 ships in the space of three months; and the consuls of the following
6 Polybius, I. 3688. For the description of the were consuls when they were sent out to bring
Carthaginian human sacrifices after a victory, off the garrison of Clypea, and we can hardly
see Diodorus, XX. 65.                    extend the operations of Regulus in Africa to a
67 Polybius, I. 86. Niebuhr supposes that period of a year and a half.
Regulus was defeated towards the end of the  68 Polybius, I. 87.
consular year 499, so that the sea-fight off Cly-  6 Diodorus, Frag, m. Hoeschel. XXIII. 14.
pea took place early in the consulship of Cn. The language of these fragments must surely
Cornelius and A. Atilius, that is, in the consular be very modern, for in this passage the writer
year 500. He thinks that Ser. Fulvius and M. says that along the whole coast, rd ocesara Kal
iEmilius were already proconsuls when they r  iaoya rca ria vavdyta exsrIro  e eilOya must
obtained their victory, because it appears from here mean "the horses," which is the common
the Fasti Capitolini that they were proconsuls meaning of the word in modern Greek, but no
when they obtained their triumph. But it is writer of the Augustan age would have so used
siore probable that they were both employed it.
as proconsuls in Sicily for a whole year after  7o Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIII. 14
their consulship, and thus that their triumph Polybius, I. 88.
was delayed. Zonaras says expressly that they




ï~~Oe. XL.]

THE ROMAN FLEETS WRECKED.

437

year, A. Atilius and On. Cornelius, crossing over to Messana, and A. U. C. 493. A. C.
there being joined by the remnant of the other fleet which had 261".
escaped the storm, sailed along the northern coast of Sicily, took Cephalcedium,
and although obliged by Carthalo -to raise the siege of Drepanum, yet they besieged and took the important town of Panormus, obtained a sum of nearly 470
talents from those of the inhabitants who could afford to pay the stipulated ransom, and sold 13,000 of the poorer class as slaves. A garrison was left in Panormus, and several other smaller places revolted also to the Romans.
For this service On. Cornelius justly obtained a triumph.7' But we are surprised to find the same honor bestowed on one of his successors,A.. 501..C.54.
C. Sempronius Bhesus. For Sempronius and his colleague, On. Another Roman fleet is
wrecked between Pa.
Servilius Cmpio,7 having carried their fleet over to the coast of ormus a nd the cast of
Africa, made some descents and plundered the country near the Italy.
sea, but were able to effect nothing of importance; and after having been obliged
to throw all their plunder overboard to enable their ships to float over the shallows of the Lesser Syrtis, they were finally, when sailing across from Panormus
to the Lucanian coast, overtaken by another storm, which wrecked more than
150 of their ships. Upon this the Romans resolved to attempt the sea no more,
and to keep only a fleet of sixty ships, to supply their armies with provisions, and
to protect the coasts of Italy.
The two following years were full of discouragement to the Romans. Their
armies remained in Sicily, but did little to advance the conquest A. U. C. 502. A. C.
of the island; because the terror of the elephants was so great Ac. 21. T.he  om.a
ardsaemies in Sicily resc
that their generals were afraid to risk a general action.  Such a arie Sic o in
state of things is very injurious to the discipline of an army, and line.
we find that the service was so unpopular that 400 of the Roman horsemen,"
all of them men of birth and fortune, refused to obey the consul, C. Aurelius
Cotta, when he ordered them to work at some fortifications, and were by him
reported to the censors, who degraded them all from their rank, and deprived
them of their franchise of voting. And on other occasions Cotta ordered two of
his officers to be scourged publicly by his lietors for misconduct;74 one of them a
kinsman of his own, and the other a military tribune, and a patrician of the noble
name and house of the VTalerii. Yet with the aid of some ships which he procured from Hiero, he attacked and reduced the island of Lipara, the largest of
the Liparmeans;5 and for this and the capture of Therma, which had risen up
on the site of the ancient Himera, he obtained after all a triumph.
In the spring of the third year, when C. Atilius Regulus and L. Manlius Vulso
were chosen each for the second time consuls, the Romans resolved A. U. C. 504. A. C.
somewhat to extend their naval operations, and to build fifty new 250.
ships."  But before the consuls left Rome, the tidings came of a most complete
victory in Sicily, and of the total destruction of the dreaded Carthaginian elephants. Resuming then all their former confidence, the Romans increased their
fleet to two hundred ships,71 and sent out both consuls with two consular armies
to form at once the siege of Lilybreum, the strongest and almost the only place
still held by the Carthaginians in Sicily.
This most brilliant and seasonable victory had been won by L. Ccilius Metellus, who had been consul in the preceding year; and when his Battle of Panorns
colleague, C. Furius, had gone home at the end of the campaign, yGreat.vrYbtaine
Metellus78 was left in Sicily with his own army as proconsul. It rthaginim nelephantsThecar
appears that Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian general, was taunted for taken.
7 Fasti Capitolini.                    75 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIII. 15.
2 Polybius, I. 89. Zonaras, VIII. 14. Ore- Zonaras, VIII. 14. Polybius, I. 89.
sius, IV. 9.                             7G Polybius, I. 39.
7 Valerius Maximus, II. 9, Â~ 7. Frontinus,  " Polybias, I. 41.
Strategemn. IV. 1, Â~ 22.                 7 Zonaras, VIII. 14. Polyb. I. 40.
7 Frontinus, Strategem. IV. 1, Â~ 80, 381. Val.




ï~~438

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XL

his inactivity;" and relying, besides, too much on the terror of his elephants,
he crossed the mountains from Selinus, and descended into the plain of Panormus. Metellus kept close within the walls of the town, till Hasdrubal, not content with having laid waste the open country, advanced towards Panormus, and
drew out his army in order of battle, as if in defiance. Then the proconsul"
keeping his regular infantry within one of the gates on the left of the enemy, so
that by a timely sally he could attack them in flank, scattered his light troops in
great numbers over the ground immediately in front of them, with orders, it
hard pressed, to leap down into the ditch fcr refuge.     Meantime all the idle
hands in the town were employed in throwing down fresh supplies of missile
weapons at the foot of the wall within the ditch, that the light troops might not
exhaust their weapons. The elephants charged, drove the enemy before them,
and advanced to the edge of the counterscarp, or outer side of the ditch. Here
they were overwhelmed with missiles of all sizes; some fell into the ditch, and
were there dispatched by thrusts of pikes; the rest turned about, and, becoming
ungovernable, broke into the ranks of their own army, which was advancing
behind them, and threw it into great confusion. Philinus,8' who favored the
Carthaginians, said that the Gauls in their army had indulged so freely in the
wines which foreign traders sent to Sicily to tempt the soldiers to traffic with
their plunder, as to be incapable of doing their duty. But there was no need of
drunkenness to increase the disorder, when more than a hundred elephants,
driven to fury by their wounds, were running wild amidst the Carthaginian ranks.
Then Metellus sallied, attacked the enemy in flank, and completely defeated them.
Ten elephants were taken with their drivers still mounted on them;82 the rest had
thrown off their drivers, and the Romans knew not how to take them alive, till
Metellus made proclamation that any prisoner who should secure an elephant
should be set at liberty.   This induced the drivers to exert themselves, and in
the end all the elephants were secured, and conveyed safely to Rome,83 to be exhibited in the conqueror's triumph. And the device of an elephant, which is
frequent on the coins of the Caecilian family, shows the lasting sense entertained
by the Metelli in after-times of the glory of their ancestor's victory.
The battle of Panormus was fought about midsummer, and Metellus returned
to Rome with his army and his trophies, and triumphed on the
Triomph and oubseq  thonor f Mtel- seventh of September.84  The captured elephants were exhibited
too        in the circus maximus,85 and hunted up and down it by men armed
onry with pointless spears, to teach the people not to be afraid of them; after
w vic' they were shot at with real weapons and destroyed.    Metellus must have
lived for nearly fifty years after his triumph,8 full of honors and glory. He was
a second time chosen consul, he was appointed once master of the horse, and
once dictator, and he was alsc created pontifex maximus, in which last office he
acquired a new glory, by rescuing the sacred palladium from the temple of Vesta
when it was on fire, at the risk of his life, and to the actual loss of his sight. For
this act of piety he was allowed ever after to be drawn to the senate in a chariot,
an extraordinary honor, as the chariot was accounted one of the marks of kingly
state, and therefore not to be used by the citizen of a commonwealth.
Thirteen noble Carthaginians" had been taken at Panormus, and had been led
7 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoesehel. XXIII. 15.  Strategem. I. 7, Â~ 1. Pliny, Hist. Natur. VIII.
0 Polybius, I. 40.                     Â~ 16.
81 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIII. 15.  8' Fasti Capitolini.
82 Polybius, I. 40. Zonaras, VIII. 14.   8 Pliny, Histor. Natur. VIII. Â~ 17.
83 They were carried across the straits on  80 He lived to the age of a hundred years
rafts composed of a number of casks lashed to- (Pliny, Histor. Natur. VII. Â~ 157), and we can
gether, with a sort of flooring fastened together scarcely suppose him to have been much more
upon them. The flooring or deck was fenced than fifty when he obtained his first consulship.
in with high bulwarks, and covered over with For his other honors see Pliny, Hist. Nat. VII.
earth, so that the elephants were not aware Â~ 139. He was appointed dictator just after the
of their situation, and were conveyed over the Gaulish invasion of 529. See Fasti Capitolini.
mea quietly. Zonaras, VIII. 14. Frontinus,  d7 Livy, Epitom. XIX. Zonaras, VIII. 15.
Orosius, IV. 10.




ï~~CuA. XL.J

SIEGE OF LIL YB EUM.

439

in the triumphal procession of the conqueror.  The Carthaginians, Embsy from Car
Embassy from Carwishing to recover these and others of their citizens, sent an em- thage to propos an e.
change  of prisoners.
bassy to Rome to propose an exchange of prisoners, and M. Regu- Reguluos acompanie.
it.  His maganimous
pus was allowed to accompany the ambassadors, upon his promise co uonel. Return to
given to return with them to Carthage if the negotiation failed. Carthage anddeath.
Pyrrhus had given a similar permission to his Roman prisoners, with the hope,
no doubt, that in order to avoid returning to captivity, they would use their influence to procure the acceptance of his terms. But Regulus, thinking that the
proposed exchange would be to the advantage of the Carthaginians, nobly dissuaded the senate from consenting to it; he himself would be ill-exchanged, he
said, for a Carthaginian general in full health and strength, for the Carthaginians,
he believed, had given him a secret poison,88 and he felt that he could not live
long. The exchange was refused; Regulus returned to Carthage, and soon
after died. His springs of life had been poisoned, not by the deliberate crime of
the Carthaginians, but by mortification, shame, a pining after his country, and
the common miseries of a prisoner's condition, at a period when the courtesies
of war were unknown. Afterwards the story prevailed, that the Carthaginians,
in their disappointment, had put him to a death cf lingering torment; whilst the
Carthaginians told a similar story of the cruel treatment of two noble Carthaginian
prisonerss" by the wife and sons of Regulus, into whose hands they had been
given as hostages, and Regulus' natural death was made, according to the story,
the pretext for wreaking their cruelty upon the unfortunate Carthaginians in their
power.   We may hope that these stories are both untrue; but even if the Carthaginians had exercised towards Regulus the full severity of the ancient laws of
war, it ill became the Romans to complain of it, when their habitual treatment,
even of generous and magnanimous enemies, was such as we have seen it exemplified in the execution of the Samnite, C. Pontius.
Never had the prospects of the Romans been fairer than when, in the autumn of
the fifteenth year of the war, the consuls, C. Atilius and L. Man- To  Romans form the
lius, began the siege of Lilybaeum. This place and Drepanum were siege of Lilybauto.
the only two points in Sicily still retained by the Carthaginians; and here they
concentrated all their efforts, destroying even Selinus,9 their earliest conquest
from the Greeks, and removing to Lilybmum its inhabitants and its garrison. But
from this time forward to the very end of the war the victories of the Romans
ceased, and during a period of eight successive years the Fasti record not a single
triumph, a blank not to be paralleled in any other part of the Roman annals.
Lilybmum and Drepanum remained unconquered to the last, after the former had
sustained a siege which for its length and the efforts made both by besiegers and
besieged is not to be surpassed in history.
The general difficulty of ascertaining precisely the position of the ancient towns
and harbors is felt particul ily when we attempt to fix the topog- Situation of Lilybmum
raphy of Lilybsum.     It seems that the ancient city, covering and tsopo oth 'Fores
p                                   y           employed oil both sides
more ground than the modern town of Marsala, must have occu- in the siege.
pied the extreme point of Sicily, now called Cape Boeo; and to have had two
sea fronts, one looking N. w. and the other s. w., while on the land side the
wall ran across the point from sea to sea, facing eastwards, and forming the base
of a triangle, of which the two sea fronts meeting at the point of Cape Boeo formed
the sides. Polybius speaks of the harbors of Lilybeum, as if there were more
than one; and as the ancient harbors were almost always basins closed by artificial moles, it is probable that there would be one at each'sea front of the town.
But the principal harbor looked towards Africa, on the s. w. side of Lilybeum,
and its entrance was very narrow, because at a little distance9' from the shore
e A. Gellius, VI. 4. Zonaras, VIII. 15.  1 See Captain Smyth's Ilydrographical Re" Diodorus, Fragm. de Virtut. et Vitiis, marks on the coast of Sicily, p. xxvi., and his
XXIV. A. Gellius, II. 4.               plan of the anchorages and shoals in the neigh
" Diodorus, Frarnm. Hoeschel. XXIV. 1.  borhood of Trapani, in his Sicilian Atlas.




ï~~440

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CarI,. XL

there extends a line of shoals nearly rising in some places to the water's edge,
and running parallel to the coast, and the passages through these shoals, or round
their extremity, were exceedingly narrow and intricate. The land side was fortified by a wall with towers at intervals,9" and covered by a ditch ninety feet wide
and sixty deep. The garrison consisted at first of ten thousand regular soldiers
besides the inhabitants, and the governor Himilcon was an able and active officer,
equal to the need. The Romans employed in the siege two consular armies, and
the seamen of a fleet of two hundred ships of war, and a great multitude of small
craft; so that as the seamen worked regularly at the trenches, the besieging
force may well have amounted to 110,000 men.93
The Romans attacked the land front of the town in form:94 they carried mounds
Attpts of the oacross the ditch, and battered the towers in succession; whilst a
ans to stop upt se en formidable artillery covered their operations, and played upon the
trances into the harbor. defenders of the walls. On the sea side they endeavored to block
up the harbor by sinking stone ships in the channels through the shoals, but a
violent storm9i raised such a sea that every thing was swept away, and the harbor still remained open.
But material fortifications, however strong, must yiEAd at last to a persevering
Ahe and..cre... at- enemy.  The real strength of Lilybaeum lay in the courage and,ompts of the Cartha- ability which the long war had at last enkindled among the Cargtnian naval officers to
throw succors into the thaginian officers; so that now all was energy and wisdom, in
pLace.       complete contrast to the weakness and timidity of former generals.  Himilcon was defending Lilybmum   with the utmost ability and vigor;
Adherbal, a man no less brave and able, had the command at Drepanum, and
had with him a worthy associate in Carthalo; while Hannibal, one of his intimate friends, was sent from Carthage to carry succors to Himilcon. And here,
for the first time, the Carthaginians displayed the combined skill and coolness of
true seamen. Hannibal sailed from Carthage96 with fifty ships, and lay waiting
his time at the small.zEgusan islands which lie to the north of Lilybreum. At
length the wind blew fresh from the north, setting full into the harbor's mouth;
Hannibal placed his soldiers on the decks ready for battle, hoisted every sail, and
knowing the channels well, he ran down before the wind to the entrance between
the shoals, dashed through the narrow passage, whilst the Romans in astonrshment and awkwardness did not put out a single ship to stop him, and amidst the
bieers and shouts of the whole garrison and people of Lilybmum, who had
crowded to the walls to watch the event, he landed ten thousand men in safety
within the harbor. Other officers of single ships passed several times backwards
and forwards with equal success," acquainting the Carthaginian government with

Diodorus, Fragm. Hoesch. XXIV. 1. Polybius, I. 42.
3 The amount given by Diodorus, XXIV. 1.
94 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIV. 1.
Polybius, I. 42.
'5 Diodorus, Fragm. IHoeschel. XXIV. 1,
copying, probably, from Philinus.  Polybius
ascribes the failure of the work to the depth of
the sea and the force of the current in the narrow channels. But for more than amile off the
land the water is shallow, nowhere exceeding
four lathoms, and it is inconceivable that in
fair weather such a depth of water could have
been a serious impediment to a people like the
Romans, when they had at their command the
labor of a hundred thousand men. According
to Captain Smyth, some of the stones thrown in
by the Romans in this siege have been weighed
by an English wine merchant residing near
Marsala, and have been used by him to build a
very respectable mole opposite to his own esteblishment, nearly at what must have been the
southeast corner of the ancient town.  One

would be glad to know the exact spot at which
these stones were weighed up; but Captain
Smyth does not mention it. See his Survey of
Sicily, p. 234.
" Polybius, I. 44. It is not easy to ascertain
whether Hannibal ran into the harbor on the
N. w. front of Lilybnum, or into that on the
s. w. front. Probably it was the latter, so that
he passed between Cape Boeo and the shoals
which lie a little off the land, and so ran on in
a direction parallel to the line of the coast till he
came to the actual entrance between the moles
in the harbor.
" Polybius, I. 46, 47. There is a passage in
this description which, if we could discover the
line of the ancient walls of Lilybnum, might
determine the position of the harbor. The way
to enter the harbor, says Polybius, was " to app roach it from the side towards Italy, and to
bring the tower on the sea-shore in a line with
all the towers of the wall looking towards Africa, so as to cover them  all."  I. 47. The
" tower on the sea-shore" must mean the tower




ï~~Cn. XL]

SUFFERINGS OF THE ROMANS.

441

every particular of the siege, and confounding the Romans by their absolute
command, as it seemed, of the winds and waves.
But the courage of the Roman soldiers was as firm as ever. Immediately
after Hannibal's arrival, Himilcon made a general sally98 to destroy Sally of the garrison.
the works of the besiegers, but the Romans maintained their ground Thoey burn the Roman
and he was Iepulsed with loss.    The land wall of the town was works.
carried,"9 but Himilcon, meanwhile, had raised a second wall within, parallel to
the first; so that when the first was taken the Romans had to begin all their
approaches over again; and a second attempt5Â~0 to burn the works, being favored
by a strong wind, was completely successful. All the Roman engines, their
covered galleries, and towers, were burnt to ashes, and the consuls, in despair,
turned the siege into a blockade.
During the winter the sufferings of the Romans were very great. Thousands
of men had perished in the course of the siege,1'Â~ and the loss of serig of the
Sufferings of the Â~Loseamen had been so great, as they, it seems, were chiefly employed mans during the winin the works, that the fleet was useless for want of hands to workt.
it. Besides, the troops were ill-supplied with corn, and were obliged to subsist
chiefly on meat; o a change of diet most unwelcome and hurtful to the Romans, who were accustomed then as now to live almost wholly on their polenta
and on vegetables.   Fevers broke out amongst them, and were very fatal; but
Hiero again came to their assistance, and supplied them with corn. But no progress was made with the siege, when the following summer brought the new consul, P. Claudius, to Sicily to take the command.
P. Claudius was the son of Appius Claudius, the famous censor, and he inherited, even in over measure, the pride and overbearing temper of A.U.C.505. A.C.249.
his family. He loudly reproached the former consuls for their minac- P. Claudius takes the
omand at Lilybaeum
tivity;l03 and complaining that the discipline of the army was gone coe aIstoattack Ad.
3  1               r            rmy      b     herbal at Drepanumn.
to ruin, he exercised the greatest severities on all under his co- Hisobtinaya pr.omand, whether Romans or Italians. He renewed with equal ill-suc-.anee...
cess the attempt to block up the entrance to the harbor, and being impatient to distinguish himself, he no sooner received a reinforcement of 10,000 seamen from
Rome than he resolved to put to sea and attack Adherbal, who was lying with the
Carthaginian fleet in the harbor of Drepanum. It seems that his own officersl"
foreboded the failure of his attempt, but none could hope to move a Claudius from
his purpose. The consul's pride disdained alike the warnings of gods and men;
as he was going to sail it was reported to him that the omens were unfavorable,
for the sacred chickens refused to eat.  "Then they shall drink," was Claudius'
answer, and he ordered them immediately to be thrown into the sea.
Adherbal did not expect the attack;10 but so great was his promptitude, that on
the first sight of the enemy he manned all his ships with his sea- Bttle of Dr epannm.
men and soldiers, and keeping close under the land, stood out of Great vic tory of Adher-oman
the harbor while the enemy were actually entering it.    Claudius, fleet under P.Cladius.
confounded at this, ordered his ships to put about and stand out to sea again.
Some ran foul of each other in doing this, but at last he got clear of the harbor
nearest to the extreme point of Cape Boeo, but  102 Kpewlopoarg s ovov gi rn  v6ov e rroev.
whether the line of towers looking towards Af- Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIV. 1. We
rica followed the line of the coast, so that to may compare the distress of Casar's soldiers on
bring them into a line with the " tower on the the coast of Epirus, when, although they had
sea side," a vessel must advance in a course meat in plenty, yet they wanted corn, and nonearly s. E., or whether they ran due eastward thing could make up to them for the loss of
from Cape Boeo, in the direction of the modern their bread. Casar, Bell. Civil. III. 40.
Marsala, and therefore did not follow the line of  11s Diodorus, Fragm. de Virtut. et Vitiis,
the coast, can hardly be ascertained without a fur- XXIV. Fragm. Hioeschel. XXIV. 1. Polybius,
ther and more careful examination of the ground. I. 49.
Â~ Polybius, I. 45.. -      o Cicero de Nat. Deor. II. 8. Valei. Maxim.
89 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIV. 1.  I. 4, Â~ 3.
100 Polybius, I. 48.                     10Â~ Polybius, I. 49-51. Orosius, IV. 10. Dieo1o0 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIV. 1. dorus, Fragm. Hoesehel. XXIV. 1.
Pole bius, I. 49.




ï~~442

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XL

and formed his fleet under the land, with the ships' heads turned to the sea.
Adherbal, who had brought his own fleet safely into the open sea, now formed
his line of battle and attacked the Romans. We hear no more of Duilius' bridges
for boarding; whether the Carthaginians had discovered some means of baffling
them, or whether the practised soldiers now on board the Carthaginian ships
rendered such a contrivance no longer formidable. Adherbal's victory was complete; Claudius escaped with only thirty ships, and the rest, amounting to ninetythree, were taken; with a loss in men, although some escaped to land, of not
fewer than 8000 killed and 20,000 prisoners. The conquerors did not lose a
single ship, and the number of their killed and wounded was very inconsiderable.
They followed up their victory with vigor.06  Thirty ships sailed to Panormus,
and carried off from thence the Roman magazines of corn, which
The Carthaginians foloi. their success were sent to supply the garrison of Lilybmum. Carthalo arrived
wt vigor.     with seventy ships from Carthage, and being reinforced by Adherbal, attacked the remains of the Roman fleet which had been drawn up on shore
at Lilybreum under the protection of the army, carried off five ships and destroyed
others. Meanwhile the other consul, L. Junius Pullus, had sailed from Rome with
a large fleet of ships laden with corn and other supplies for the army at Lilybeum, which he convoyed with a hundred and twenty ships of war.      Being
himself detained at Syracuse to wait for some of the ships of his convoy, and to
collect corn from some of the districts in the interior of the island, he intrusted
about four hundred of the corn-ships with some of his ships of war to his quaestors, and sent them on to Lilybmum, where the want of corn was severely felt.
Carthalo was lying at Heraclea, near Agrigentum, looking out for the Roman
fleet; and when he heard of their approach he put out to sea to intercept them.
The qurestors being in no condition to fight, fled to the small bay of Phintias,
not far from Ecnomus, the scene of the great naval battle seven years before,
and there mooring their ships at the bottom of the bay, and mounting the artillery of the town on the cliffs on each side of them, they waited for the enemy's
attack. Carthalo was disappointed to find them so well prepared, and as their resistance was obstinate, he only carried off a few of the corn-ships, and returned to
Heraclea, watching for the time when they should venture to continue their voyage.
He had not waited long when his look-out ships1Â~7 announced that the rearTwo Rono fleets are division of the Roman fleet under the consul in person had doubled
totally wrekoea.  Cape Pachynus, and was advancing along the southern coast of
Sicily. Wishing to meet these ships before they could join their other division
in the bay of Phintias, he sailed in pursuit of them with all speed. The consul
made for the shore near Camarina, dreading an open and rocky coast, and the
danger of the southwest gales, less than an engagement with an enemy so superior. Carthalo, not choosing to attack him in this situation, stationed his fleet
off a headland between Phintias and Camarina, and there lay, watching the movements of both the Roman divisions. Meanwhile it began to blow hard from the
south, and there were signs of a coming storm which were not lost on the experienced Carthaginian pilots, who urged Carthalo to run in time for shelter. With
great exertions he got around Cape Pachynus, and there lay safely in smooth
water. But the storm burst with all its fury on the Romans, and overwhelmed
both their fleets with such utter destruction, that all the corn-ships, amounting
to nearly 800, and 105 ships of war, were dashed to pieces.  With two ships of
war only did the unfortunate consul arrive at Lilybeum.
These accumulated disasters broke the resolution of the Romans. P. Claudius
P. Claudis is recalled was recalled to Rome, ts and required to name a dictator, that he
ad a dictator appoit might himself be brought to trial for misconduct. He named one
ed.           of his own clerks, M. Claudius Glicia, as if he delighted to express
19 Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIV. 1.  07' Diodorus, Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIV. 1
Folybius, I. 52, 58.                  P6lybius, I. 53, 54.
1oÂ~ Livy, Epitom. XIX. Zonaras, VIII. 15,




ï~~CUAr. XL]

TRIAL OF P. CLAUDIUS.

443

his scorn of his country when it no longer held him in honor. The senate obliged
Glicia to resign his office immediately, and appointed by their own authority, as
in ancient times, A. Atilius Calatinus. Atilius named L. Metellus his master of
horse, and they both set out without delay to take the command in Sicily.
P. Claudius was tried before the people for his profane contempt of the auspices; but, according to the most probable account,09 the trial was A U. 505, 50. A
broken off by a sudden storm, which if noticed by any one present c. 49, 248s. Trial of
obliged the comitia to separate. It was done, in all likelihood, on P. Claudius,
an lunderstanding that the accused would by his own act satisfy the justice of the
people; and the Romans at this period shrank from shedding noble blood by the
hands of the executioner. We only know that three years afterwards P. Claudius was no longer alive; for his sister, being pressed by the crow i of spectators
as she was going home from the circus, said aloud that she wished her brother
could come to life, and command another fleet, that he might make the streets
less crowded. For this speech she was impeached"Â~ by the ediles, and heavily
fined: and this trial is recorded to have taken place three years after the defeat
at Drepanum.
L. Junius" was not more fortunate than his colleague, although he had on
shore endeavored to make up for his disasters at sea, and had and of hi colloeague,.
stormed and occupied the mountain and town of Eryx, immediately J"ius.
above Drepanum. He too was tried for having put to sea in defiance of the
auspices, and finding his condemnation certain he killed himself.
It was about this period of the contest that Hamilcar Barca,"1 the father
of the great Hannibal, was appointed to command the Cartha- A. U.. 50. A..
A. U. C. 507. A. C.
ginian forces in Sicily.  The Romans had resigned the sea to their 47.  m oic.Bar ra...is appointed to the corn.
enemy, but their superiority by land was at present irresistible; the.ieio scily. ra
terror of the elephants had vanished, and Sicily, in general, is not nlmofafa.
a country peculiarly suited to the action of cavalry. It was Hamilcar's object,
which he pursued steadily to the end of his life, to form an infantry which should
be a match for the Roman legions; and this could only be done by avoiding for
the present all pitched battles, and at the same time carrying on an incessant
warfare of posts, in which his soldiers would be constantly trained, and learn to
feel confidence in their general and in each other. This was the method by which
alone Pompey could have resisted Caesar's veterans; but Pompey, although he
saw what was right, had not the firmness to persevere in it, and Pharsalia was
the reward of his weakness. Hamilcar possessed patience equal to his ability,
and his influence with the government enabled him to turn both to the best advantage.
During six years, therefore, Hamilcar made Sicily a training school for the
Carthaginian soldiers, as he afterwards made Spain. He first oc- A. U.c. 0o-5 1. A.
cupied the summit of a table-mountain near Panormus,3 now        C.o247-243.e
~His long occupation of
called Monte Pellegrino, rising immediately above the sea, with the table-mounta inne
precipitous cliffs on every side, and with a level surface of consid-.anorm, andofEryx.
erable extent on the summit, and abundant springs of water. A steep descent
led to a little cove where ships could be drawn upon the beach with safety;114
and here he kept a light fleet always at hand, with which he made repeated
plundering descents on the coasts of Italy, while by land he was continually
breaking out and making inroads into the territory of the Roman allies, even as
far as the eastern coast of the island.'15  Year after year the consuls were em1o Valer. Maximus, VIII. 1, Â~ 4.     Rosolia's bones were said to have been found
10 A. Gellius, X. 6.                  in 1624, and where a church has since been
11 Polybius, I. 55. Cicero, de Natur. Deor. built in her honor.
II. 8.                                   114 Apparently the small bay of Mondello, be.
" Polybius, I. 56. Hamilcar seems to have tween Capo di Gallo and Monte Pellegrino.
succeeded Carthalo. Zonaras, VIII. 16.   11 A fragment of Diodorous speaks of Hamil
14 Polybius, I. 56. Monte Pellegrino is fa- car as making war in the neighborhood of C&
mous in modern times for the cave in which Sta. tana. Fragm. Hoeschel. XXIV. 2.




ï~~444

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XL

ployed against him, but they never could gain any pretence for claiming a triumph. During the latter part of this remarkable warfare Hamilcar recovered,
and fixed his head-quarters at the town of Eryx,'16 although the summit of the
mountain above him was occupied by the Romans, and a Roman army lay also
below him, nominally engaged in blockading Drepanum. It appears that the
Romans still continued also to blockade or rather to be encamped before Lilybaeum; but as the sea was perfectly open, their presence produced no effect on
the garrison.
We wish in vain to catch any glimpses of the internal state of Rome after
Internal state of Rome. twenty years of such destructive warfare. If the varying numbers
Depreciationofthe cop. of the MSS. of Livy's epitomes can be trusted, the Roman citizens
per comoage.  at. the end of the war were fewer by one-sixth part than they had
been ten years before: the census sank from 297,797 to 251,222,11 and the decrease amongst the Latins and Italian allies must have been at least equal. We
find also that the As towards the end of the war was reduced five-eighths of its
original weight; from having weighed twelve ounces it was brought down to
two;118 and although it is certain that this reduction was gradual, inasmuch as
Ases of several intermediate weights are still in existence, yet Pliny may be so
far correct that the As, having weighed a full pound, or nearly so, down to the
beginning of the first Punic war, was reduced to two ounces before the end of it.
No rise in the value of copper could possibly have justified such a reduction,
which could only have been one of the ordinary tricks of distressed governments;
it is clear also that the silver denarii coined a few years before must have vanished out of circulation, as otherwise, if the general payments of the government
were made in silver, they would have gained nothing by the depreciation of the
copper coinage. Besides, the constant employment of such immense armaments
in Sicily must have drained Italy of its silver, as even the Sicilian states, and
much more the foreign merchants, who always gathered in numbers where war
was going on on a large scale, would have been unwilling to take the Roman copper money. And this great scarcity of money would perhaps explain the very
low reported prices of provisions at Rome119 on one or two occasions during the war,
if those prices were indeed to be depended on; for if the government did not
want to make purchases of corn for its armies, a plentiful harvest would create a
great glut of it in the market: the actual war, and the general jealousy of the
anc.ient world on that point, making it alike impossible to dispose of it by exportation.
Twenty years before, the Roman people, we are told, had voted for engaging
avy taxation. Foun- in the war with Carthage, while the senate sat hesitating; and the
cof ol ne. twoa plunder of Sicily, in the first campaigns, made them doubtless resignatio of lands.  joice in their decision. At a later period, something was occasionally gained by the soldiers in the same way, but from the beginning of the siege
of Lilybmeum it ceased altogether, and the warfare with Hamilcar was as unprofitable to the Roman armies as it was laborious and dangerous. Meanwhile
the taxation must have been very heavy; for the building of such large fleets,
though not to be measured by the cost of our ships of war, was still expensive,
and armaments of a hundred thousand men, including soldiers and seamen together, such as were often sent out in the course of the war, must have greatly
ns Polybius, I. 58. Diodorus, Fragm. Hoe- understand the As before its depreciation, or
schel. XXIV. 2.                        rather that the reckoning was made according
'1 Livy, Epitomn. XVIII. XIX.        to the old standard and not the later and ren Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXXIII. Â~ 44.    duced one. It is very strange, however, that in
11 Pliny, Hist. Natur. XVIII. Â~ 17, quoting the very winter after this season of plenty, the
from Varro, says that at the time of L. Metellus' Romans should have been in such great distress
triumph, the modius or peck of corn sold for for corn at Lilybnum. See p. 441. The low
a single As, and that the congius of wine, and prices at the time of Metellus' triumph were
twelve pounds of meat, were sold also at the not probably market prices, but merely the
same price. Some accident must have occa- rate at which he made distributions of corn and
stioned these prices, unless indeed we are to wine to the people in honor of his success.




ï~~CUAP. XL.]

INTERNAL STATE OF ROME.

443

drained the treasury. To all this was to be added, since the disasters of the
Roman fleets, the ravage of the coast of Italy by the enemy; for Hamilcar, from
his stronghold near Panormus, more than once put to sea with his ships of war,
and wasted not only the Bruttian and Lucanian coasts, but the shores of the gulf
of Salernum, and even of the bay of Naples as far as Cumae.12Â~ On the other hand,
private citizens were allowed to fit out the government ships of war on their own
account," and some plunder was thus taken, but very insufficient to make up for
the losses of the war. Two or three colonies were planted, such as Alsium and Fregena on the Etruscan coast near the mouth of the Tiber, and Brundisium; but
these were more for public objects, the two in Etruria being founded probably
as outposts to check the descents of the Carthaginian fleet, than for the relief
of the poorer citizens. An accidental notice in Pliny'22 informs us that!. Metellus was in the course of his life appointed one of fifteen commissioners for
granting out lands; a larger number of commissioners than we find on any other
occasion named for that purpose. It would be important to fix the date of this
appointment, but this can only be done by conjecture; it could scarcely, however,
have been as early as the great assignation of lands made after the fourth Samnite
war, for that was twenty years before Metellus obtained his first consulship; nor
could it have been much later thnm the period of Hamilcar's warfare in Sicily,
for in the beginning of the last year22 of the war he was already pontifex maximus, and in the year following he lost his sight in saving the palladium. The
probability is, therefore, that an assignment of lands on the largest scale took
place about the close of the war, either to the poorer citizens generally, or, as
after the second Punic war, to the old soldiers who had undergone such hard
and unprofitable service in Sicily.
On the other side, Carthage maintained no large fleets since the Romans had
laid aside theirs, purposely to avoid so great an expense. Hamil- Effects of the war on
car's army could not have been very large, and the agriculture Carthage.
and internal trade of Africa suffered little or nothing from the war. But the
contest was tedious and wearing, and in Sicily it was almost wholly defensive,
which in itself is apt to sicken a nation of continuing it; nor were ordinary minds
likely to enter into the views of Hamilcar, and await patiently the result of his
system of creating an effective army. Besides, the unsoundness of the Carthaginian power in Africa was always felt in seasons of pressure; and at this very
time hostilities'2-4 were going on against some of the African people, which, however successful, were necessarily an expense and a distraction to the government.
It seemed, therefore, that in spite of Hamilcar's ability, the possession of Lilybaeum and Drepanum was held but by a thread, which a single unfortunate
event might sever.
The Roman government at last, in the twenty-fourth year of the war, rousect
itself for one more decisive effort. But so exhausted was the A. U. C. 512. A. C.
treasury, that a fleet could only be raised by a patriotic loan; that ov4oTheo   s erove to aed nuothes
is to say, one, two, or three wealthy persons, according to their fleet o sea.
means, advanced money to build a quinquereme, which was to be repaid to them
in better times."'  In this way two hundred ships. were constructed; and the
Romans had an excellent model in one of the best sailing of the Carthaginian
ships, which had been taken some years before off Lilybaum. The consuls of
the year were C. Lutatius Catulus and A. Postumius Albinus. Lutatius was
the founder of the nobility of his house, and a man worthy to have been the ancestor of that Q. Catulus whose pure virtue bore the hardest of trials, the triumph
of his own party. Postumius belonged to a family scarcely second to the Claudii in overbearing pride; and it was perhaps not without some suspicion of his
12 Polybius, I. 56.                    14' Diodorus, Fragm. de Virtut. et Vitiis,
121 Zonaras, VIII. 16.                XXIV. Polybius, I. 78.
SVII. Â~ 189.                           35 Polybius, I. 59.
Valerius Maximus, I. 1, Â~ 2.




ï~~446

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHrA. XL

following the example of P. Claudius at Drepanum, that the pontifex maximus,t6
Metellus, forbade him to take any foreign command, because, as he was flamen
of Mars, his religious duties required his constant presence at Rome. The fleet
therefore was intrusted to C. Lutatius.
The anxiety for the success of this enterprise was naturally great. On such
Anxiety foritssuces., occasions omens and prophecies were never wanting; and the conS sul himself longed to discover his future fate, and wished to consult the famous lots kept in the temple of Fortune at Praneste.21  But the
senate forbade him, resolving that the consul of the Roman people should go
forth with no auspices but those vouchsafed to him by the gods of Rome.
Thejleet sailed at an unusual season; for if Eutropius' date of the battle be
c. LtaiuCtunarcorrect, the ships must have left the Tiber as early as the month
rives with the fleeti of February. Lutatius, accordingly, found that the Carthaginian
Drepanum.     ships had all gone back to Carthage28 for the winter, so that he
occupied the harbor of Drepanum without opposition, and began vigorously to
besiege the town. As Q. Valerius, the praetor, accompanied him to Sicily, it
is probable that two consular armies were employed, and so large a force obliged
Hamilcar to remain quiet in Eryx, and made it certain that Drepanum must fall,
unless relieved by a fleet from Carthage.
Lutatius, expecting to be attacked by sea,'29 was indefatigable in exercising his
seamen both in rowing and in maneuvring, and he attended careA Carthaginian fleet is
sent over fromAfrica into fully to their food and manner of living, that they might be in
oppeoe him,   the best possible condition.  The Carthaginians, on their part,
equipped a fleet with all haste, and appointed Hanno to command it, an officer
who had acquired distinction by his services against the Africans. But they
had lately so neglected their navy that their seamen and soldiers on board were
alike, for the most part, without experience; and the ships, besides, were heavily
laden with provisions and other stores for the relief of Drepanum.
Hanno first put in at the small island of Hiera,20 which lies some miles out to
catu o s is a nxious to sea off the western point of Sicily. His hope was to dash over
Literceptthem.  unperceived to the coast of Drepanum, to land his stores, and to
take Hamilcar and his veterans on board from Eryx; which being effected, he
would not fear to encounter the Romans. This Catulus was above all things
anxious to hinder, and he resolved to bring on the action, if possible, before the
enemy could communicate with Hamilcar. He had himself been badly wounded
a little before in some skirmish with the garrison of Drepanum, and was unable
to leave his bed; but Q. Valerius, the pretor, was ready to take the command,
and kept earnestly watching for the enemy.
It was the morning of the 10th of March;131 the Roman fleet having taken on
Banttleof or....board picked soldiers from the legions, had sailed on the precedthe Afgtes. Gret vi- ing evening tothe island of,Egusa, which lies between Hiera and.ory or the R omans. the Sicilian coast, and had there spent the night. When day
broke, the wind was blowing fresh from the west, and rolling a heavy sea in
upon the land; the Carthaginians took advantage of it, hoisted their sails, and
ran down before the wind towards Drepanum. The Roman fleet, notwithstanding the heavy sea and the adverse wind, worked out to intercept them, and
formed in line of battle with their heads to windward, cutting off the enemy's
passage. Then the Carthaginians lowered their masts and sails, and prepared
of necessity to fight. But their heavy ships and raw seamen and soldiers were
too unequal to the contest, and the fortune of the day was soon decided. Fifty
ships were sunk, and seventy taken; the rest fled, and the wind, happily for
them, shifting just in time, they again hoisted their sails, and escaped to Hiera.
126 Valerius Maxim. I. 1, Â~ 4.       1" Polybius, I. 60. Zonaras, VIII. 17. Valer.
127 Cicero, de Divinat. II. 41.     Maxim. II. 8, Â~ 2.
126 Polybius, I. 59.                  131 Eutropius, II. Polybius, I. 60.
2 Polybius, I. 59, 60.




ï~~CHAP. XL.]

CONOLUSION.

447

To continue the war was now impossible, and orders were sent to Hamilcar
to negotiate for peace.12  Lutatius, whose consulship was on the  C gni...
point of expiring, readily received his overtures; but he required Te pac. Terms of
that Hamilcar's army should give up their arms, and all the Ro- the treaty
man deserters who had fled to them, as the price for being allowed to return to
Carthage. This demand was rejected by Hamilcar with indignation: "Never,"
he replied, "would he surrender to the Romans the arms which his country had
given him to use against them;" and he declared that sooner than submit to
such terms, he would defend Eryx to the last extremity. Lutatius thought of
Regulus, and of the vengeance which had punished his abuse of victory, and he
withdrew his demand. It was then agreed, "that the Carthaginians should
evacuate Sicily, and make no war upon Hiero or his allies; that they should
release all Roman prisoners without ransom; and pay to the Romans in twenty
years 2200 Euboic talents." These were the preliminaries, which were subject
to the approval of the Roman government; the senate and people would not,
however, ratify them, but sent over ten commissioners with full powers to conclude a treaty.133  These plenipotentiaries required that the money to be paid
should be increased to 3200 talents, and the term of years reduced to ten; and
they insisted that the Carthaginians should also give up all the islands between
Sicily and Italy. This clause was intended apparently to prevent their forming
any establishments on the Liparman Islands, which, although not at present in
their power, they might after the peace have attempted to reoccupy, as some
of them were uninhabited, and none possibly had been as yet formally occupied
by the Romans.
Hamilcar would not break off the negotiation on such points as these. His
views were now turned to Spain, a wide field of enterprise which Hamilcar evacuates si.
might amply compensate for the loss of Sicily. And he wished ciy
to see his country relieved from the burden of the war with Rome, and enabled
to repair and consolidate its resources. The peace, therefore, was concluded:
Hamilcar evacuated Eryx,'34 and his troops were embarked at Lilybaeum for Carthage. But their unseasonable and bloody rebellion which immediately followed, and which for more than three years involved the Carthaginians in a war
far more destructive than that with the Romans, deranged all his plans, and delayed probably for many years the renewal of the contest between the two rival
nations.
Such was the end of the first Punic war, in which, although the contest was
long and wearisome, yet both parties fought as it were at arm's
length, and if we except the short expedition of Regulus, neithercuio
struck a blow at any vital part of his enemy. But the next struggle was sure
to be of a more deadly character, to be fought, not so much for dominion as for
life and death. In this new contest, the genius of Hamilcar and of his son de
termined that in the mortal assault Carthage should anticipate her rival; and
Italy for fifteen years was laid waste by a foreign invader. The state of the
Roman supremacy in Italy, when it was exposed to this searching trial, the fate
of the several Italian nations under the Roman dominion, and their dispositions,
whether of attachment or of hatred, will form, therefore, the fit beginning of the
succeeding portion of this history, which will embrace the third period of the
Roman commonwealth; the period of its foreign conquests, before Rome,
"-whom mighty kingdoms curtsied to,
Like a forlorn and desperate castaway,
Did shameful execution on herself."

13 Polybius, I. 62. Diodorus, Fragm. Vatican.
XXIV. 4. Cornel. Nopos in Hamilcar, 1.

319 Polybius, I. 63.
184 Polybius, I. 66.




ï~~CHAPTEIR XLI,
STA rE OF ITALY AFTER THE ROMAN CONQUEST-POLITICAL RELATIONS Oi
THE INHABITANTS, AND DIFFERENT TENURES OF LAND-LATIN COLONIES.
I0eCsc yep-i1reXS6vro,--cai va Kal fibrrrovc Kai feyi e ixoeaL o ovvd efvot brveyeitv ore bc oks
reta. re fera3oX70 r dbedopov abrois,, rpoaiyovro Av, ovr'' be rapaeevco rXA) )peecKovre livrcs, cpaX\6
nievor dE r rXdw,-rdpov.-THUcYD. VII. 55.
THE first and second Punic wars were separated by an interval of two-andEstablishmeont of the twenty years; and the first Punic war, as we have seen, had
Roman dominion over lasted for a period of exactly the same duration.  The end of
taly.          the fourth Samnite war, and the final submission of the Samnites,
Lucanians, and Bruttians, took place' eight years before the beginning of the
contest with Carthage; and the treaty which permanently settled the relations
of Rome with the Etrurians was concluded eight years earlier still.' Thus,
when Hannibal, in the spring of the year 537, invaded Etruria, few living Etrurians had seen their country independent, except in their childhood or earliest
youth; and all who were still in the vigor of manhood had been born since it
had become the dependent ally of Rome. And when, after his victory at the
lake Thrasymenus, he marched into Samnium, and encouraged the Samnites to take
up arms once more in their old national quarrel, fifty-five years had passed since
the Samnites, abandoned by Pyrrhus, and having tried fortune and hope to the
uttermost, had submitted to the consul Sp. Carvilius Maximus. So in Samnium,
as well as in Etruria, the existing generation had grown up in peace and alliance
with the Romans; and many a Samnite may have been enriched by the plunder
of Sicily, and must have shared with the Romans in the memorable vicissitudes
of the first Punic war; in the defeat of Drepanum, and the disastrous shipwrecks which followed it; in the five years of incessant fighting with Hannibal's father at Eryx and by Panormus; in the long and painful siege of Lilybmaum;
in the brilliant victory of S. Metellus, and in the final triumph of C. Lutatius at
the lEgates. It is true, that fifty-five years of constrained alliance had not extinguished the old feelings of hatred and rivalry; and the Samnites joined Hannibal, as a hundred and fifty years afterwards they joined the younger Marius,
against the same enemy, the dominion of the Roman aristocracy. But that their
rising was not universal,' nor persisted in with more desperate resolution; that
Etruria, with some doubtful exceptions,4 offered no encouragement to the Carthaginian general; that the fidelity of Picenum, of Umbria, of the Vestinians,
Marsians, Pelignians, Marrucinians, and Sabines never wavered; that the "Latin
name" remained true to a man; and that even in Campania the fidelity of Nola
and of Cuma was as marked as the desertion of Capua;-all this is to be attributed mainly to the system of government which the Romans had established
after their conquest of Italy, and which, so far as it can be traced, we must
now proceed to examine in its complicated details.  Not that we should by any
means regard this system of government as a constitution founded upon justice,
' In 482 A. U. c. See chap. XXXVIII. p. 410. guished himself on the Roman side, in an ac' In 474 A. U. c. See chap. XXXVIII. p. 401. tion fought by M. Minucius against Hannibal,
SThe Pentrian Samnites, that is to say, the in the year preceding the battle of Cannn.
Samnites on the north of the Matese, in whose Livy, XXII. 24.
territory.Esernia had formerly been, and who  4 Such as the alleged disaffection of the peostill held Bovianum, did not revolt from Rome ple of Arretium in the eleventh year of the secat all. See Livy, XXII. 61. A wealthy Sam- ond Punic war, which however displayed itself
nite of Bovianum, Numerius Decimius, distin- in no overt acts. Livy, XXVII. 21, 24.




ï~~CHAP. XLI.]

CONDITION OF THE ALLIES.

449

and granting to all whom it embraced within its range the benefits of equal law.
Its praise is rather, that it secured the Roman dominion, without adopting the
extreme measures of tyranny; that its policy was admirable, its iniquity and oppression not intolerable. And so small a portion of justice has usually been dealt
to the mass of mankind, that their highest hopes have commonly aspired to
nothing more than an escape from extravagant tyranny.      If life, and property,
and female honor, and domestic, national, and religious feelings, have not been
constantly and capriciously invaded and outraged, lesser evils have been contentedly endured. Political servitude, a severe conscription, and a heavy taxation, habitual arrogance on the part of the governors, and occasional outbreaks
of insolence and cruelty, have been considered no less incident to the condition
of humanity, than the visitations of poverty, disease, and death. The dominion
of the Romans over the people of Italy, therefore, as it allowed the ordinary
enjoyment of many rights, and conferred some positive advantages, was viewed
by its subjects, notwithstanding its constant absoluteness and occasional tyranny,
as a condition quite as likely, if overthrown, to be changed for th, worse as for
the better.
"The Lacedremonians," says Thucydides,5 "maintained their supremacy over
their allies, by taking care that an oligarchy such as suited their Aitort.re
Aristocratical character
own interests should be everywhere their allies' form of govern- of theR oma...
ment."   This also was one of the means by which the Romans ereignty.
secured their dominion in Italy. They universally supported' the aristocratical
party, and thus made the principal inhabitants of every city willing instruments
to uphold their sovereignty; a fact which alone would prove, if the point were
otherwise doubtful, that the constitution of Rome itself, even since the passing of
the Hortensian laws, was much more an aristocracy than a democracy.
I have said that the Roman dominion in Italy allowed its subjects the ordinary
enjoyment of many rights, and conferred on them     some positive i avantage.
advantages.   Moreover, it held out to them   hopes more or lessItsatge.
definite of rising to a higher political condition hereafter. These three points will
give us the fair side of the Roman sovereignty, and they shall now be considered
in order.
I. According to the general practice of the ancient world, the relation between
Rome and her Italian subjects was nominally that of alliance; and Ancient rights retained
the very term alliance implies something of distinctness; for the under it.
members of the same commonwealth cannot be each other's allies. Thus it is
understood at once, that most of the Italian states retained their municipal independence: they had their own magistrates; they could pass laws for their internal government; and their ancient' laws of inheritance, and marriage, as well as
their criminal law, were still preserved in full force. But this applies only to
single states, or to the separate parts of a nation; for every thing like a national
council or diet was carefully prohibited. Arretium, Perusia, and Volaterrae,
might each legislate for themselves; but we hear no more of any general congress of the Lucumones, or chiefs of the whole Etruscan nation, at the temple of
Voltuimna. Nay, in some recorded instances,8 and probably in many others not
SI. 19, 76, 144.                       lating to marriage, till they obtained the lul
SIn the second Punic war, Livy says, " unus Roman franchise after the great Italian war in
velut morbus invaserat omnes Italie civitates, the middle of the seventh century. A. Gellius,
ut plebes ab optimatibus disentirent; senatis IV. 4. And their law of interest, being differRomanis faveret, plebs adPcenos rem traheret." ent from that of Rome, enabled Roman creditXXIV. 2. So it was at Nola; Livy, XXIII. ors to evade their own law, by nominally trans15. But we have the same thing already exist- ferring their debts to a Latin, who, according to
ing in the Samnite wars: where some of the his law, might exact a greater rate of interest
Ausonian aristocracy betray their cities to the than was permitted at Rome. Livy, XXXV. 7
Romans, and the Lucanian aristocracy is at-  8 As in the case of the Latins after the great
tached to the Roman alliance, while the popu- Latin war, Livy, VIII. 14; of the Hernicans
lar party favor the Samnites. See page 269 after their revolt in the second Samnite war,
of this history.                         Livy, IX. 483; and of the Macedonians, after the
' The Latins retained some peculiar laws re- battle of Pydna, Livy, XLV. 29.
29




ï~~450

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Oam. XLL

recorded, the several states or districts of the same nation were so isolated from
each other, that the citizens of one could neither intermarry with, nor inherit,
nor purchase land, from those of another. Thus the allies were left in possession
of their municipal independence; but all free national action amongst them was
totally destroyed.
II. Besides the benefits which the Roman dominion did not take away from
Benefitsconferredbyits subjects, there were some others which it conferred upon them,
Benefits conferred by i. and which they could not have enjoyed without it. The first and
greatest of these was the extinction of internal war. From the Rubicon to the
straits of Messana, there were no more of the intolerable miseries of a plundering
border warfare, no more wasting of lands, driving away of cattle, burning of
houses, and carrying off the inhabitants into slavery. Those cities which had
survived the Roman conquest, were thenceforward secure from.destruction; their
gods would be still worshipped in their old temples; their houses were no longer
liable to be laid in ruins by a victorius enemy; their people would not be massacred, made slaves, or scattered over the face of the earth, and their very name
and memory extinguished. The Americans feel truly that, whatever may be the
inconveniences of their federal union, it has still the inestimable advantage of banishing war from the whole of their vast continent; and this blessing was conferred on ancient Italy by the Roman dominion, and was so far even more valuable, as wars between independent states in the ancient world were far more frequent than now, and produced a far greater amount of human misery.
Again, the allies of Rome, while they escaped the worst miseries of war, were
enabled by the great power of their confederacy to reap largely its advantages.
In the plunder of Sicily the Italian allies and the Roman legions shared equally;
and after the fourth Samnite war the Campanians received as their share of
the spoil a large portion of the coast9 of the Gulf of Salerno, which had
formerly belonged to the Samnites. Individuals also amongst the allied states
might enjoy the benefits of an occupation of the Roman domain land; a privilege which would naturally bind many of the wealthiest families throughout
Italy to the Roman interest, some already possessing it, and others hoping to obtain it.
III. With these actual benefits the Roman dominion also held out hopes to its
Hopes held outby  subjects of rising sooner or later to a higher political condition.
HThe regular steps appear to have been, that an allied state should
first receive the Roman franchise without the right of voting; and after the lapse
of years these imperfect citizens gradually gained the full franchise, and were
either formed into one or more new tribes, or were admitted into one of the tribes
already existing. It is true that the first step in this process was generally an
unwelcome one; because it involved, under ordinary circumstances, the forfeiture
of all municipal independence, and the entire adoption of a foreign system of law.
But there were cases in which it was stripped of these degradations, and became,
as far as appears, a mere benefit: such seems to have been the condition of a
large portion of the Campanians at the beginning of the second Punie war.
Capua at that time was, beyond all doubt, municipally independent: it had its
own laws and magistrates, and its own domain lands:10 yet it is no less-certain
that the Campanian aristocracy, at any rate, were Roman citizens in all respects,
except in the right of suffrage."  Other allied states might expect the same reward of their continued fidelity; and from this condition the advance to the full
franchise was always to be looked for in the course of time; and would, in all
probability, have been the reward of Capua itself, had the Campanians devoted
This appears from the statement, that the nites, we may conclude that the Campanians
Roman colonies of Salernum and Buxentum, obtained it as their share of the spoil after the
founded after the second Punic war, were set- third or fourth Samnite war.
tied on land which had belonged to Capua.  1 Livy, XXIII. 3, foll. XXVIII. 46.
Livy, XXXIV. 45. As the coast of the Gulf of  1 Livy, VIII. 14. See Niebuhr, Vol. II. note
Salernum had originally belonged to the Sam- 186.




ï~~CHAP. XLI.]

CONDITION OF THE ALLIES.

451

their whole strength to the support of Rome after the battle of Cannae, instead
of opening their gates to Hannibal.
Living in such a state, with so much not taken from them, with so much given
to them, and with the hope of one day obtaining so much more;
and being further bound to their sovereigns by geographical posi- Its oppre.ivene.
tion in all cases, and in most by something of an acknowledged affinity in race
and language, the Roman allies had many inducements to acquiesce in their actual condition, and to regard themselves as united indissolubly with Rome,
whether for better or for worse. But they had also much to bear; nor can we
wonder if the descendants of C. Pontius, or Gellius Egnatius, or Stimius Statilius,
or of the Calavii of Capua, should have thought life intolerable under the absolute dominion of that people, against whom their fathers had fought in equal
rivalry. England, for many generations, upheld a system of domestic slavery in
her colonies, while her own law so abhorred it, that any slave landed upon English ground became immediately a freeman. What the four seas were to England,
that the line running round the city at the distance of a mile from the walls, was
to Rome: it was the boundary between law and despotism. Within this precinct the sentences of the magistrates were the sentence of the law (legitima judicia); and their power was controlled by the sacred interposition of the tribunes.
But without this limit all was absolute dominion, imperiumn: there the magistrate
wielded the sword with full sovereignty; and judicial sentences were held to
proceed not from the law, but from his personal power, so that their validity
lasted in strictness no longer than the duration of his authority. Even Roman
citizens had no present protection from this tyranny; they had only the resource
of seeking for redress afterwards from the courts of Rome. But the allies had
not even this relief, except in cases of extraordinary atrocity: for the imperium
of the Roman magistrates conferred a plenitude of dominion over the persons and
property of the subjects of Rome: any thing might be done on the plea of the
service of the Roman people, or of maintaining the dignity of its officers; and
the least opposition was held to be rebellion. Therefore, although barefaced
robberies of private property were as yet mostly restrained by public opinion,
which would not allow a magistrate to use his power for purposes of personal
plunder; yet acts of insolence and cruelty, far more galling than any mere spoliations of property, were no doubt frequent from the very beginning of the Roman dominion over Italy, and arose partly out of the very position of the Roman
officers with respect to the allies, and partly out of the inherent coarseness and
arrogance of the Roman national character.
Thus far we have considered the subjects or allies of Rome, in their relations
to Rome generally, without noticing any differences in their condi- Differences in the contior which distinguished them more or less from each other; in- dition of the a  ies.
dee, in that distant view of the sixth century of Rome, which is all that we are
permitted to enjoy, these differences are scarcely perceptible; greatly as they
must have affected the internal state of the Italian people, yet in their recorded
outward movements we see scarcely any thing but the equal working of the Roman power, which all were alike obliged to obey. The treaties which fixed the
relatiois of the several allied states with Rome, varied considerably in their conditions. Camerinum, in Umbria, and Heraclea, on the Ionian Sea, are noticed as
having treated with the Romans on almost equal terms;12 and Etruria, making
peace at the very moment when Pyrrhus was advancing victoriously upon Rome,
must surely have secured more favorable conditions than could be obtained by
the exhausted Samnites and Lucanians, when in utter helplessness they submitted
to their triumphant enemy. But we neither know what these differences were,
nor, if we did, would the knowledge be of much importance, without much fuller
SLivy, XXVIII. 46. Camnertcs, quum nquo fcedere cum Romanis essent. On Heraclea, see
Cicero pro Arch. c. 4.




ï~~452

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XL1

information on the other points than we can now ever recover. One great distinction, however, claims the attention of the most general history,-that which
separated all the other Italian allies from those of the Latin name.
When Mago brought to Carthage the tidings of the victory of Canum, and told
the council how, not only the Bruttians and Apulians, but even some of the Lucanians and Samnites, and above all, the great city of Capua itself, had in consequence of it joined the Carthaginians, the leader of the party opposed to Hannibal is represented as asking, whether a single people of the Latin name had revolted, or a single citizen of the thirty-five tribes deserted to the enemy?13 Unfaithfulness to Rome was thought to be not more impossible in her very citizens
than in her Latin allies: Samnium and Capuia might revolt; but the fidelity of
the Latin name was never to be shaken. What, then, were the ties which bound
the two nations together so indissolubly?
In order to answer this question, we must first explain what was meant in the
sixth century of Rome by the "Latin name."  Now, if we rememThe Latin name.  ber that almost all the cities of ancient Latium were long since
become Roman, so that scarcely any except Tibur and Prmneste could any longer
be included under the name of allies, we may wonder how the Latin name could
still be spoken of as so powerful, or where could be found those eighty-five thousand Latins, who were returned as able to bear arms in the census of the great
Gaulish war.14
The answer is, that the Latin name was now extended far beyond its old geographical limits, and was represented by a multitude of flourishing cities
Its extent.   scattered over the whole of Italy, from the frontier of Cisalpine
Gaul to the southern extremity of Apulia. The people of the Latin name in the
sixth century of Rome were not the Tiburtines merely and the Prmnestines,15 but
the inhabitants of Circeii and Ardea on the old coast of Latium, of Cora and
Norba on the edge of the Volscian highlands, of Fregelle and Interamna in the
valley of the Liris, of Sutrium and Nepete under the Ciminian hills, of Cales,
Suessa Aurunca, and Saticula on the edge of the Campanian plain, of Alba in
the country of the Marsians, of.Esernia and Beneventum in the heart of Samnium, of Narnia and Spoletum in Umbria, of Luceria and Venusia in or close to
the frontiers of Apulia, of Hadria and Firmum in Picenum, and finally of Brundisium, far to the south, where the Adriatic opens into the Ionian Sea, and of
Ariminum on the frontiers of the Cisalpine Gauls, where the Apennines first leave
the shores of the Adriatic, and make room for the vast plain of northern Italy.'4
All these states, with others which I have not noticed, formed the Latin name in
the sixth century; not that they were Latins in their origin, or connected with
the cities of the old Latium: on the contrary, they were by extraction Romans;
they were colonies founded by the Roman people, and consisting of Roman citizens: but the Roman government had resolved, that in their political relations
they should be considered, not as Romans, but as Latins; and the Roman settlers, in consideration of the advantages which they enjoyed as colonists, were
content to descend politically to a lower condition than that which they had received as their birthright.
The states of the Latin name, whether cities of old Latium or Roman colonies,
Privilege, belonging to all enjoyed their own laws and municipal government, like the
it.           other allies; and all were, like the other allies, subject to the sovereign dominion of the Romans. They were also so much regarded as foreigners,
that they could not buy or inherit land from Roman citizens; nor had they
generally the right of intermarriage with Romans. But they had two peculiar
privileges: one, that any Latin who left behind him a son in his own city, to perpetuate his family there, might remove to Rome, and acquire the Roman frandhise; the other, that every person who had held any magistracy or distinguished
2' Livy, XXIII. 12.                    Livy, XXVII. 9, 10. Savigny, on the Jui
14 Polybius, II. 24.                Latii, in the Philological Museum. I. 56.




ï~~CHuAr. XLI.,

THE LATIN COLONIES.

453

office in a Latin state, might become at once a Roman citizen. So that in this
manner all the principal families in the Latin cities had a definite prospect assured
to them of arriving in time at the rights of citizens of Rome.
Yet it is remarkable that when twelve of the Latin colonies, in the middle of
the second Punic war, renounced the sovereignty of Rome, the   relation toome.
consuls, in their remonstrance with them, are represented as appealing, not to their peculiar political privileges, but to their sense of duty and
gratitude towards their mother-country. "They were originally Romans, settled
on lands conquered by the Roman arms for the very purpose of rearing sons to
do their country service; and whatever duties children owed to their parents,
were owed by them to the commonwealth of Rome.""'     And as no age made a
son, according to the Roman law, independent of his father, but entire obedience
was ever due to him, without any respect of the greater or less benefits which the
son might have received from his kindness, so the Romans thought that the allegiance of their colonies was not to depend on a sense of the advantages which
their connection with Rome gave to them, but was a plain matter of duty. When
they called on the Campanians not to desert them after the battle of Cann e,
they appealed to their gratitude for the boon of political or social privileges:
"We gave you," they said, "the enjoyment of your own laws, and to a great
proportion of your people we communicated the rights of our own franchise."'8
How different is this language from the simple admonition of the Latin colonies,
"that they were the children of Rome, and should render to their parent a child's
obedience!"
Yet the sense of filial duty might have been quickened in the Latin colonies by
a recollection of what they owed to Rome, and how much of their condition of the Latin
political existence depended on her protection. The colonists of colonies.
Beneventum and Esernia, of Luceria and Spoletum, were not the only inhabitants of those cities: they had not been sent as settlers into a wilderness, where
every work of man around them was to be their own creation. According to
the Roman notions of a colony, they had been sent to occupy cities already built
and inhabited, to enter into the possession of lands which man's labor had long
since made prodtuctive. They were to be the masters and citizens of their new
city and its territory, while the old inhabitants were to be their subjects, and
strangers, as it were, in their own land. And as long as they remained true to
their duties as Roman colonies, the power of Rome would maintain their dominion: but if Rome no longer upheld them, there was no slight danger of their
being expelled by the old population of the colony, aided, as the latter would
soon be, by their countrymen in the neighboring cities; and Beneventum  and
AEsernia would then no longer be Latin colonies, but return to their old condition
of independent states of Samnium.
It may be asked, however, why the Romans refused to their own colonies the
private rights, at any rate, of Roman citizens; and as in some instances colonies
of Roman citizens were founded, why was not this made the general rule, and
why were the great majority of the colonies obliged to content themselves with
the name and franchise of Latins? I do not believe that any existing ancient
writer has/ answered this question directly; and the uncertain history of the early
times of Rome embarrasses our conjectures. But it is probable that colonies
founded during the equal alliance between Rome and Latium, such as Norba and
Ardea, were properly Latin cities, to which the Latins sent colonists equally with
the Romans; so that they did not belong exclusively to Rome. It is more difficult to understand why Sutrium and Nepete, colonies planted on the Etrurian
frontier, and at a period when the old Latin alliance was virtually at an end, still
received the Latin franchise, and not the Roman; and why Cales, and the other
colonies founded after the great Latin war, were colonies, not of the Roman, but

* Livy, XXVII. 9.

ie Livy, XXIII. 5.




ï~~454

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CiAP. XL;

of the Latin name. We may suppose, perhaps, that in all these settlements the
population of the colony was mixed from the beginning-colonists from Latin
cities, some of which were always friendly to Rome, being amongst the original
settlers; and after the Latin war, we may conceive that there were many Latins,
whom, either as a reward or a precaution, the Romans may have been glad to
establish in a colony out of their own country. We may understand also, that
as the Roman colonists were often taken, not only from the class of poorer citizens, but also from the freedmen, the government would be glad to get them off
from the roll of Roman citizens, which could only be done by their consenting to
join a Latin colony, in consideration of its providing them with a grant of land.
And generally, as the country of a Greek or a Roman was essentially a single
city, it was natural that men leaving that city, and settling in another at a distance, should, in the common course of things, cease to be citizens of their old
country. In the Greek colonies the connection was broken off altogether: but,
as this would have defeated the very purpose for which Rome founded hers, it
was not entirely severed, but exchanged for the relation of subject and sovereign,
or, in the Roman language, of child and parent.
Besides the allies and the Latin name, there was yet a third class of Roman
subjects, those who were Romans in their private rights, but not
Pubjeect of Rome en-.
joying the lovefri in their political, who possessed the rights of intermarriage, and
hise of the city, under
theo jurisdictio of re- of inheritance, or purchase of land by mancipation, connubium and
fect          commercium, but had no vote in the comitia, and were ineligible
to all public offices of authority. This condition, although it was often a preparatory step to receiving the full Roman franchise, was yet in itself considered
far inferior to that of the allies or of the Latin name,. inasmuch as it implied the
complete forfeiture of all a nation's laws and institutions, and a complete adoption of the laws and customs of Rome. It was a natural consequence of this
state, that it did away all municipal government. A people thus become subject
to Rome had properly no magistrates of its own; such public officers as it still
retained had merely an honorary office: they were to superintend the sacrifices,
preside at festivals, and direct other matters of pageantry and ceremonial. The
administration of justice was vested in the hands of a priefect sent from Rome;
and districts so governed were properly called prmefectures. These prefectures
were probably very numerous all over Italy; for the magistrates of the cities
had no jurisdiction beyond the city walls; and even in the territories of the colonies themselves the country district was called a prefecture, although in these
cases the prefect was not sent from Rome, but appointed by the colony. It is
possible that this may explain what otherwise seems so puzzling, the application
of the terms priefectura and municipium to the same places, and that too in
cases where municipium undoubtedly expresses the existence of a municipal
government, as at Cumie, Fundi, and Formiem.9 In these instances the towns
were municipia, and had their own magistrates; but the country around them
may have been a prmefecture; and the priefect was not appointed, as in the
colonies, by the government of what may be called its local capital, but was sent
immediately from Rome.
This intermixture of different kinds of government, within the same geographical limits, may lead us to consider another point of some importioust.....a. ance: the variety of the tenures of land which the Roman conquest had introduced into every part of Italy; so that in each separate country,
for instance in Etruria, Umbria, Samnium, or Lucania, as there were great differences of political condition, so also was there the greatest diversity in the tenures of property. There might be found everywhere three sorts of land,-l-1st,
Land held by the old inhabitants, whether it had never been forfeited, or, if forfeited at the period of their conquest, formally restored to them by the Roman

19 Festus, v. Prefecturn.




ï~~CHAT. XLI.]

TENURES OF LAND.

455

government; 2dly, Land held by a Roman or Latin colony, by grant from the
Roman people; and 3dly, Land still held by the Roman people as domain, whether
it was let or farmed by the government, or was in the occupation of individuals,
whether Romans, Latins, or Italians of other nations. We have no Domesdaybook of Italy remaining, which would enable us to determine the relative proportion of these three kinds of land; but the amount of the third kind, or domain
land, was absolutely enormous; for the Roman people retained their full right
of property, as we have seen before, in all land occupied (possessus) by individuals; whereas a large proportion of the manors which Domesday-book records
as belonging to the crown, when granted, as they soon were, to private persons,
ceased to be domain, and became to all intents and purposes private property.
Thus in England, and in other countries of modern Europe, the domain lands
have become gradually less and less extensive; but as at Rome nothing could
alienate them except a regular assignation, and as various circumstances from
time to time added to their amount, on the whole their extent went on increasing
rather than diminishing; and we are astonished at the vast proportion of domain
land belonging to the commonwealth, even at the end of the seventh century, all
of which would have come within the disposal of a general agrarian law.
The later effects of these enormous tracts of domain land are well known, and
will require our notice hereafter. But from the beginning they Effect of the domain
must have greatly injured the spirit and life of Italy. The whole land on the state of
spring of social and civil activity in the ancient world lay in ty.
its cities; and domain land and cities could not exist together. Towns, therefore, which had been taken at the first conquest of the country, and their inhabitants massacred or sold for slaves, becoming in many instances the domain of
the conqueror, were condemned to perpetual desolation. Their old population
was dispersed or destroyed; and the wealthy Roman, who became the occupant
of their territory, allowed a large part of it perhaps to lie waste, and settled the
slaves whom he employed in cultivating the remainder, rather in farm buildings or
workhouses in the country, than in the houses of the old town. Thus a scanty
and scattered slave population succeeded in the place of those numerous free
cities, which, small as they were, yet well answered the great object of civil society, in bringing out at once the faculties and affections of mankind; while by
the frequent interposition of these large and blank districts, the free towns which
were left became more isolated, and their resources diminished, because they too
had lost a part of their territory to the conqueror. The larger cities had in
many instances become Latin colonies, and were lost to their old nation: and
thus, when the Samnites joined Hannibal, it was like the insurrection of a peasantry, where all the fortresses are in possession of the enemy. Beneventum and.iEserina, the principal cities remaining in Samnium, were Latin colonies, or in
other words Roman garrisons; the Samnite towns were all inconsiderable; and
as soon as Hannibal's protection was withdrawn, the first Roman army which
invaded the country recovered them almost without resistance.
Many questions might be asked concerning the state of Italy, to which the
above sketch contains no answer. Many, indeed, I could not answer satisfactorily; and the discussion of doubtful points of law or antiquities, where the
greatest men have been unable to arrive at any certain conclusions, seems to me
to encumber history, rather than illustrate it. Some points I have forborne to
notice at present, because their bearing on the general course of the story is not
yet manifest. I have wished, not to write an essay on the condition of ancient Italy
in the abstract, but to connect my notices of it with the history of the period,
that this chapter may catch some portion of the interest attached to Hannibal's
great invasion; whilst it may render the narrative of that invasion more intelligible, and may enable me to pursue it with fewer interruptions.
Meantime we must follow the course of events abroad and at home, through
the two-and-twenty years which still separate us from the beginning of the ex
pedition of Hannibal.




ï~~CHAPTER XLII.
GENERAL HISTORY FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND PUNIC VAR-ILLYRIAI
WAR-GREAT GAULISH INVASION-MUSTER OF THE FORCES OF ALL ITALYDEFEAT OF THE GAULS-ROMAN INVASIONS OF CISALPINE GAUL-M. MARCELLUS AND C. FLAMINIUS. A. U. C. 518 TO 585. A. C. 241 TO 219.
ALREADY at the end of the first Punic war some eminent Romans were in their
EminentRomansof this full manhood, whose names are enduringly associated with the
period,       events of the second. Q. Fabius Maximus, the great dictator,
"who by his caution saved the Roman state," was consul eight years after the
conclusion of the treaty with Carthage; Q. Fulvius Flaccus, the conqueror and
butcher of Capua, obtained his first consulship four years earlier, in the year 517;
and M. Claudius Marcellus, the conqueror of Syracuse, must have been thirty
years old at the end of the first Punic war, had already won honors by his personal prowess as a soldier in Sicily, and had held the office of curule redile. The
earliest Roman historians, C. Fabius Pictor, and L. Cincius Alimentus, must have
been at this time old enough to retain some impression of things around them;
Nrevius, the earliest known Roman poet, had served in the last war in Sicily;
Livius Andronicus, the oldest dramatist, brought his first piece upon the stage
in the very year after the conclusion of the war. Hannibal himA. U. Cs 513. A. C. 241. elf, whose genius was to be the mover and controller of the future invasion of Italy, was already born; but he was as yet an innocent child,
only six years old, playing in his father's house at Carthage.
The transition from war to peace, which we remember five or six and twenty
state of R ome after theo years ago, after a contest of very nearly the same length as the
w"          first Punic war, brought rather an increase than an abatement of
embarrassment.   A  great stimulant was withdrawn; but a great burden remained to be borne; and the end is not yet manifest. But no sooner do the
marks of battles pass away from the fields where they were fought, than the
effects even of an exhausting war were shaken off in ancient times by nations not
yet fallen into decline; because wars in those days were not maintained at the
expense of posterity. The sole debt which Rome had contracted had been
incurred for the building of her last fleet; and this could be paid off immediately
by the Carthaginian contributions. Population repairs its losses with wonderful
rapidity; and to the dominions which the Romans had possessed before the war,
was now added the greatest portion of Sicily. Q. Lutatius, the brother and successor of the consu. who had won the decisive victory of the.Egates, passed the
whole summer of his consulship in Sicily after the conclusion of the peace, and
settled the future condition of the Roman part of the island.' Sicily was the
earliest Roman province; and in it was first exhibited that remarkable system of
provincial government, which was gradually extended over so large a part of the
ancient world. The peculiar character of this system did not consist in the absolute dominion of the Roman magistrates; for their power was no less uncontrolled in Italy itself, everywhere beyond the immediate precinct of Rome, than
it could be in the provinces. But the nations of Italy, like the allies of Lacedmemon, aided the sovereign state with their arms, and paid no tribute; while the
provinces were disarmed, like the allies of Athens, and served their sovereign
with their money, and not with their men. Hence the perpetual difference in
Roman law between land in Italy and land in the provinces; that the former

Zonaras, VIII. 17.




ï~~CHAP. XLII.J

THE PUBLICANI.

457

might be held by individuals as their freehold, and was liable to no payments of
tithe or land tax; while the property of the latter was vested solely in the Roman people. When we hear that a Sicilian state had its forfeited lands restored
to it,2 this means only that they were restored subjected to the sovereign rights
of the conqueror; and therefore they were still burdened with the payment of
tithes, as an acknowledgment that they were not held by their possessors in
full property.
No sooner was the provincial system established in Sicily, than the moneyed
men of Rome, the famous Publicani, began to flock over to the so..o,     on.
Sources of wealth open.
island to farm the tithes and the various other revenues which ed to the farmers of thoe
came in from a province to the Roman people. Then were opened revenues.
all those sources of acquiring wealth at the expense of the provincials, which rich
or influential Roman citizens drained so unsparingly. Many Sicilian states were
hindered from buying land in each other's territories;3 but the Roman could purchase everywhere; and competition being thus restricted, he was enabled to
purchase at greater advantage. If any state, or any individual in it, had sustained losses which disabled them from paying what they owed to the government
at the appointed time, a wealthy Roman was always ready to lend them money;
and as the Roman law of interest did not extend to the +rovinces, he lent it on
his own terms, and availed himself of the necessities of the borrower to the
utmost.   Even in common commercial transactions the Roman merchant in
the provinces came into the market with great advantages. If he wished to
buy, a provincial would often be afraid to bid against him: if he sold at a high
price, the provincial dealers in the same commodity would be afraid to undersell
him. The money thus gained by Roman citizens in the provinces gave them
influence at Rome; and this again made their friendship or enmity of importance
to the Roman provincial governors. Thus they were armed not only with the
general authority of the Roman name, but with the direct countenance and support of the Roman magistrates; and those magistrates held the lives and properties of the provincials at their absolute disposal.
While the wealthy had these means afforded them of becoming more wealthy,
the end of a long war seemed a fit season for rewarding the faith- rwoewris,
Two new tribes, raising
ful services of som  f the poorer citizens, and of the subjects of he number to thirythe commonwealth     I have already noticed the large assignation ive'
of lands which tooK place somewhere about this period, and for the direction of
which no fewer than fifteen commissioners were appointed. And the censors of
the year 513 created two new tribes of Roman citizens, the Quirinian and the
Velinian,4 containing, as the names show, the Sabines of the neighborhood of
Cures and of the valley of the Velinus, and the people possibly of some other
towns and districts also. These new tribes raised the whole number of tribes to
thirty-five: and none were ever added afterwards. Nearly sixty years had
elapsed since the last creation of two tribes, the Aniensian and Terentine,
between the second and third Samnite wars. But before another period of
sixty years could elapse, Hannibal's invasion had so changed the state of Italy
and of the Roman people, that the old practice was never again repeated: and
thus the Roman tribes remained fixed at the number of thirty-five, rather from
accident, as I believe, than from deliberate design.
But the remedy in human affairs is seldom commensurate with the evil.
Neither the assignation of lands by the fifteen commissioners, nor  etion o agriDestruction of agriculthe grant of the full Roman franchise to a portion of the Sabine toral laborers supplied
people, could compensate to Italy for the wide destruction of the by saves.
poorest classes of free citizens occasioned by the naval losses of the first Punic
war. "The Romans," says Polybius,4 "lost in battle and by shipwreck, in the
course of the war, no fewer than 700 quinqueremes." They lost besides, at one

2 Cicero in Verrem, III. 6.
' Cicero in Verremn, II. 50, III. 40.

4 Livy, Epitom. XIX.
6 I. 63.




ï~~458

HISTORY OF ROME,

[CHAP. XLIL

time, nearly 800 corn ships in the great storm which wrecked the two fleets ot
L. Junius, on the south coast of Sicily, in the year 505. Now the seamen, as
is well known, were taken exclusively from the poorest class of freemen; from
those who, in many instances no doubt, like the corresponding class in Greece,
lived only by their labor; who in Etruria, especially, and elsewhere, resembled
the Coloni, so well known from the law books of the latter empire, a class of men
humble and dependent, but not slaves. As the war drained this class more and
more, it had at the same time supplied the slave market beyond all former example. Nor did the supply cease with the war against Carthage; for several
years afterwards we read of expeditions against the Ligurians, Sardinians, of
Corsicans:1 and every expedition brought off slaves as a part of its plunder.
"Sardinians for sale"' became a proverb to express any thing of the least possible
value; and the Corsicans were a race so brutish, according to the judgment of
the slave dealers of the Augustan age, that they would fetch only the smallest
price in the market.8 These poor wretches therefore would not pay the expense
of carrying them to the distant markets of Greece or Asia: they must be sold
at home; and their purchasers would commonly be the holders of large estates
of domain land, who employed them there in the place of free laborers. Thus
began that general use of slave labor in Italy, which in the course of a hundred
years had in some places almost extirpated the free population.
At the end of the summer of 513, the consul Q. Lutatius returned home from
War with the Fralis- the settlement of Sicily: but before he went out of office in the
ens.         following spring, both he and his colleague, A. Manlius, were
obliged to employ the whole force of the commonwealth against an enemy scarcely
thirty miles distant from the walls of Rome. These enemies were the Faliscans, or people of Falerii:' a name which has not been heard of in Roman history for more than a hundred and fifty years; when it is said that the four new
tribes created after the recovery of Rome from the Gauls, in the year 368, were
composed partly out of the inhabitants of the territory of Falerii. What could
tempt a single city to brave the power of Rome at a period when there was no
foreign war to make a diversion in its favor, we know not, and can scarcely conjecture. But the Romans thought the example so dangerous, that they exerted
their whole force to put an immediate stop to it; and in six days the Faliscans,
after a desperate resistance, were obliged to submit at discretion. They were
forced to surrender all their arms, horses, and movable property, and half of
their domain land: their city was destroyed; and they were removed to another
spot less strongly situated; a condition similar to that which had been imposed
on the people of Volsinii, four-and-twenty years earlier. For this conquest both
consuls obtained a triumph.
With the exception of this six days' war, the three years which followed the
Employments dauring treaty with Carthage were to Rome a period of perfect peace.
three years of peace. While the Carthaginians in Africa were struggling for their existence against their revolted subjects and their rebellious mercenary soldiers, the
Roman annals record nothing but friendly embassies, works of internal improvement, new festivals, and new kinds of amusement. Ambassadors were sent to
Ptolemy Euergetes, king of Egypt, to offer him the aid of Rome against the king
of Syria;o but it was declined with thanks, as the war was already at an end.
A carriage road was made to the top of the Aventine by the mediles, L. and M.
Publicius, with the fines which they had recovered from persons convicted of
pasturing their cattle illegally on the domains of the commonwealth: with
another portion of these same fines was defrayed the expense of the games of
e Zonaras, VIII. 18.                   S Strabo, V. p. 224.
SSardi venales. Aurelius Victor, de Vir. Ill.  9 Livy, Epitom. XIX. Zonaras, VIII. 18.
e. LVII. attributes the origin of this saying to Polybius, I. 65. Eutropius, II. 28. Orosius,
the time of the conquest of Sardinia by Tiberius IV. 11.
Gracchus.                                10 Eutropius, III. 1.




ï~~CHnAP XLII.]

NEW DISPUTES.

459

Flora,'- now for the first time instituted, and celebrated from henceforward every
year, beginning on the 28th of April: and in 514, as I have already mentioned,
the first regular drama was exhibited at Rome by L. Livius Andronicus.2    It
may be noticed as a curious coincidence, that the next year, 515, witnessed the
birth of Q. Ennius, who may be called the father of the existing poetry of the
Latin language.
This season of peace appears to have infused a spirit of unwonted moderation and honesty into the Roman councils.  Some Italian yes- Friendly relations with
sels carrying corn to the African rebels were interrupted by the carthage.
Carthaginians, and the crews thrown into prison.3 The Romans sent an embassy to require their liberation, which the Carthaginians granted; and this
ready compliance so gratified the Roman government, that they released without
ransom all the Carthaginian prisoners still left in their hands, permitted supplies
of all kinds to be carried to Africa for the use of the Carthaginians, while they
strictly forbade all traffic with the rebels; and even, it is said, allowed the Carthaginians to levy soldiers in their dominions; that is, to enlist, as they had been
wont in times long past, Lucanian, or Samnite, or Bruttian mercenaries. Nor
was this all; for when the mercenaries in Sardinia revolted from Carthage, and
called in the Romans to their aid, their request was not listened to; and when
the people of Utica, dreading the vengeance of the Carthaginians, offered to give
themselves up to Rome, the Romans rejected this offer also.
But when Hamilcar's genius had delivered his country from-its extreme peril,
when the rebel mercenaries were destroyed, and when Utica and Beginning of new din.
the other revolted towns and people of Africa had been obliged pate.
to submit at discretion, when perhaps also rumors were already abroad of Hamil0
car's intended expedition to Spain, then the jealousy of the Romans seems to
have revived, and their whole conduct towards Carthage underwent a total
change. The mercenaries of Sardinia, after having revolted from Carthage, and
applied at that time vainly for the aid of the Romans, were overpowered by the
natives and obliged to fly from the island.'4 They took refuge in Italy, and had
probably never ceased soliciting the Roman government to espouse their quarrel,
and take possession of Sardinia for themselves. But now the Romans began to
listen to them; and it was resolved to send over a fleet to Sardinia to restore
them. The Carthaginians meanwhile, having recovered their dominion in Africa,
were proceeding to reduce the revolted islands; and an armament was prepared
to attack Sardinia. Then the Romans complained that the Carthaginians, while
employing their fleet to preyent the African rebels from receiving A... A.c.aI.
supplies by sea, had committed many outrages upon Roman subjects sailing to and from Africa; that this had manifested their hostile feeling
towards Rome; and that the armament, prepared ostensibly for the recovery of
Sardinia, was intended t_ attack Italy. Accordingly, the senate and people
passed a resolution for war with Carthage. The Carthaginians, utterly unable
to engage in a new contest, offered any terms for the sake of peace; and the
Romans not only obliged them to make a formal cession of Sardinia, but required
them to pay 1200 talents, in addition to the sum stipulated by the last treaty,
as a compensation for the injuries sustained by the Roman merchants, and a penalty for their meditated aggression.5 Hamilcar advised compliance with these
demands; but he hastened, no doubt, with tenfold eagerness, the preparations
for his expedition to Spain.
When all was ready, the general performed a solemn sacrifice, to propitiate the
gods for the success of his enterprise."6  The omens were declared Hanniba vow
favorable; Hamilcar had poured the libation on the victim, which  nniba'o.
" Ovid, Fast. V. 279-294. Festus, v. Pub-  14 Polybius, I. 29.
licius.;5 Polybius, I. 88. Appian de Reb. Punic. c. 5.
SCicero, Tuse. Qu est. I. 1. Brut. 18.  is Polybius, III. 11.
" Polybius, I. 88.




ï~~460

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLII

was duly offered on the altar, when on a sudden he desired all his officers, and
the ministers of the sacrifice, to step aside to a little distance, and then called
his son Hannibal. Hannibal, a boy of nine years old, went up to his father, and
Hamilcar asked him kindly, if he would like to go with him to the war. The
boy eagerly caught at the offer, and with a child's earnestness implored his
father to take him. Then Hamilcar took him by the hand, and led him up to
the altar, and bade him, if he wished to follow his father, lay his hand upon the
sacrifice, and swear "that he would never be the friend of the Romans." Hannibal swore, and never to his latest hour forgot his vow. He went forth devoted
to his country's gods as the appointed enemy and destroyer of their enemies;
and the thought of his high calling dwelt ever on his mind, directing and concentrating the spirit and enthusiasm of his youth, and mingling with it the forecast, the great purposes, and the deep and unwavering resolution of the maturest manhood.
This story of his solemn vow was told by Hannibal himself many years afterRenew& disputes wi wards to Antiochus, king of Syria; but, at the time, it was heard
Carthage.     by no other ears than his father's; and when he sailed with Hamilcar to Spain, none knew that he went with any feelings beyond the common
light-hearted curiosity of a child. But the Romans viewed Hamilcar's expedition
with alarm, and were probably well aware that he would brook his country's
humiliation only so long as he was unable to avenge it. More than once they
renewed their complaints that the Carthaginians annoyed their merchants at sea,
and that they were intriguing with the Sardinians, to excite them to revolt from
Rome. A fresh sum of money was paid by Carthage; but the complaints still
continued; and the Romans, for the second time it is said, passed a resolution for
A. U. c. 519. A. C. war. Embassy after embassy was sent to Rome by the Cartha35.           ginian government, to deprecate a renewal of the contest;17 and at
last ten of the principal members of the council of elders were appointed ambassadors, if perhaps their rank and dignity might at once move the Romans to pity,
and inspire confidence in the peaceful intentions of Carthage. Still the Romans
were for a long time inexorable; till Hanno, the youngest of the ambassadors,
and, if he was, as is probable, the famous opponent of Hannibal, himself sincerely
inclined to maintain the peace, remonstrated with the senate plainly and boldly.
"If you will not have peace with us," he said, "then give us back Sardinia and
Sicily; for we yielded them to you, not to purchase a brief truce, but your lasting friendship."'  Then the Romans were persuaded; and the treaty of peace
was again renewed and ratified. This was in the year of Rome 519, in the consulship of T. Manlius Torquatus and C. Atilius Bulbus. It was, apparently, to
assure the Carthaginians that the peace thus ratified was to be sincere and lasting,
that the old ceremony of shutting the gates of Janus was now performed;19 for
the first time, it was said, since the reign of King Numa; for the last time also
until they were closed by Augustus after his conquest of Egypt.
But in this very year, as well as for several years before and after it, the RoA. U. C. 521. A. c. man arms found employment against barbarian enemies in Sardinia,
233. Divers wars.  in Corsica, in Liguria, and in Cisalpine Gaul.20  These wars served
to exercise the citizens in arms, to furnish the consuls with an occasion of triumphs, and to bring fresh multitudes of slaves into Italy. Q. Fabius Maximus,
afterwards so famous, was consul for the first time in 521, and obtained a triumph for his victories over the Ligurians.2
Twelve years after the end of the first Punic war, and six after the solemn confirmation of the treaty, a Roman army was sent, for the first time, across the Ionian
17 Zonaras, VIII. 18. Orosius, IV. 12.  Maximus, VI. 3, Â~ 3; Eutropius, III. 3. For tts
S Dion Cassius, Fragm. Ursin. CL.    war in Liguria, Dion Cassius, Fragm. Peiresc.
1 Eutropius, III. 3. Orosius, IV. 12.  XLV.; and for that in Cisalpine Gaul, Polybiun,
2' For the wars in Corsica and Sardinia, see II. 21.
Zonaras, VIII. 28; Livy, Epit. XX.; Valerius  21 Plutarch, Fabius, 2.




ï~~CHAr. XLII.]

THE ILLYRIANS.

461

gulf.  More than forty years had now passed since the death of The Ro omans cross th
Pyrrhus; his family in the second generation had become ex- Adriatio.
tinct; and the Epirots were governing themselves without a king.      But their
power had sunk almost to nothing; and the only name now dreaded in those
parts was that of the Illyrians.
The various tribes of the Illyrian nation occupied the whole eastern coast of
the Adriatic, from its most northern extremity to its mouth. Their
extent inland can scarcely be determined: in the later Roman ge- TheIllyrians.
ography, the name of Illyricum was applied to the whole country between Macedonia and the Danube,"2 while the early Greek writers distinguished the Illyrians from the Preonians or Pannonians, and appear to have confined the Illyrian
name to the tract of country more or less narrow where the streams flow into the
Adriatic; and placed other nations, the Triballians, Pmonians, and Thracians, in
the country beyond the watershed, where the streams run northward to the
Danube.   In truth, all these nations were probably connected with each other;
and their language, if it belonged, as seems likely, to the Sclavonic branch of the
great Indo-Germanic family, was not wholly foreign either to the Hellenic, spoken
on their southern borders, or to the various dialects of Italy, from which they
are so little distant on their western frontier. The Illyrians on the Adriatic coast,
and on the western border of Upper Macedonia,' were held by the Greeks in
great respect for their courage; but, like most barbarians, they loved to maintain
themselves by plunder instead of labor; and the innumerable harbors along their
coast tempted them to plunder by sea rather than by land. Seventy years before
this, they were already formidable to all who navigated the Adriatic: but now,
since the fall of the Epirot power, the coast to the southward lay unprotected;
and their vessels made frequent plundering descents, not only on Epirus, but
even on the western shores of Peloponnesus, on Elis, and on Messenia. This
brought them more in the way of the merchant ships of Italy, which were engaged in traffic with Greece and the East; and complaints of the Illyrian piracies had been frequently brought before the Roman government. A. U. c. 525. A. C.
These were for a time neglected, but at last they became more 229.
numerous and pressing; and they were further supported by the people of the
island of Issa, a Greek colony, who, being attacked by the Illyrians, sent to implore the protection of the Romans.
The senate accordingly sent, as was its custom, three ambassadors to Illyria,
to learn the state of the Illyrian power,"3 and to find out what Ambassadors sent to Ifriends the Romans would be likely to have within the country lyria put to death.
itself, if they should have occasion to declare war. The ambassadors found the
king of the Illyrians dead; and his widow, Teuta, as the Illyrian law permitted,
was governing in the name of her step-son, Pinnes, who was still a child. At the
moment when the ambassadors arrived, the Illyrian queen was besieging Issa,
and was highly elated with the recent success of her fleet, which had returned
loaded with spoil from a plundering expedition against Epirus. She was in no
mood therefore to brook the peremptory language always used by Roman ambassadors; and one of the three so offended her, that she sent one of her ships
after them on their return home, to seize them. Two of them were killed, and
the third was brought to the queen, and thrown into prison."4
The Romans, without delay, declared war against the Illyrians, and both consuls, Cn. Fulvius Centumalus and L. Postumius Albinus, were
sent across the Adriatic with a fleet and army such as had rarely wa ith the llyrians.
been seen in those parts.  As usual, they found allies within the country; DemeS Zonaras, VIII. 19. Appian, Illyr. I.  Pliny, XXXIV.11, says that statues (tripedanee)
2 Polybius, II. 8. Dion, Fragm. Ursin. CLI. were raised by the republic to P. Junius and
Zonaras, VIII. 19.                      Titus Coruncancius, who were killed by Teuta,
2 Polybius, II. 8, gives Caius and Lucius queen of the Illyrians. "Hoc a republica tribai
Voruncancius as the names of the ambassadors. solebat injuria ciesis."




ï~~462

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIL

trius, a Greek of the island of Pharos, who was holding Corcyra for the Illyrian
queen, surrendered it at once to the Roman fleet,25 and guided the consuls in all
their subsequent operations. A Roman fleet of two hundred quinqueremes, and
a regular consular army of 22,000 men, were, as opposed to the piratical barks
and robber soldiery of Queen Teuta, like a giant amongst pigmies. Town after
town, and tribe after tribe, yielded to them, and Teuta, having taken refuge in
Rhizon, which was almost her last remaining stronghold, was glad to obtain
peace on the conqueror's terms. The greater part of her former dominion was
bestowed on Demetrius; she was to pay a fixed tribute to the Romans, and
was never to allow more than two of her ships together, and these not armed
vessels, to sail to the south of the port of Lissus, the last place in the Illyrian
dominions."  In the course of this short war, not only Corcyra, but Apollonia
also, and Epidamnus, submitted to the Romans at discretion, and received
their liberty, as was afterwards the fate of all Greece, as a gift from the Roman
people.
The Illyrian war having been settled rather by the Roman fleet than by the
Roman embassies into army, On. Fabius, who had commanded the fleet, returned home
Greee.       alone to obtain a triumph; while his colleague, L. Postumius, was
left with a small force at Corcyra. He sent ambassadors to the.iEtolians
and the Archaean league, to explain the grounds on which the Romans had
crossed the sea, and to read the treaty which had been concluded with the Illyrians. As all the Greeks had suffered from or dreaded the Illyrian piracies, the
Roman ambassadors had met with a most friendly reception, and were welcomed
as the benefactors of Greece. Soon afterwards the Romans sent other embassies to Corinth and to Athens, with no other object, so far as appears, than of introducing themselves to some of the most illustrious states of the Greek name,
which many of the Romans had already learnt to admire. At Corinth they received the solemn thanks of the Corinthians for the services they had rendered
to the Greek nation; and the Romans were allowed to take part in the Isthmian
games, as if they were acknowledged to have some connection with the Hellenian
race.27 The Athenians, it is said, went further, granted to the Roman people the
honorary franchise of Athenian citizens, and admitted them to the Eleusinian
mysteries. That this honor was not despised by the highest Roman nobility may
be concluded from the fact, that A. Manlius Torquatus, who was censor in 506,
and consul in 509 and 512, has the surname of Atticus, in the Capitoline Fasti,
a name borne, so far as we know, by no other member of his family, either before
or afterwards.
Nearly about the time when the consuls, On. Fulvius and L. Postumius, left
Rome on their expedition to Illyria, the Romans must have heard
Death of amilcar.  the tidings of the death of Hamilcar. From his first landing in
Spain he had advanced with uninterrupted success, training his army in this constant warfare with the bravest of barbarians, and gaining fresh popularity and
influence both at home and with his soldiers, by his free distribution of his spoils;
spoils not to be estimated by the common poverty of barbarians, but rich in silver and gold, the produce of the still abundant mines of Spain. In the ninth
yeai of his command he had reached the Tagus, when he was killed in a battle
with the Vettonians, a tribe who dwelt between the Tagus and the Douro, and
was succeeded by his son-in-law, Hasdrubal.8
The work which Hamilcar had begun by the sword, was continued and consoliHadrubal's progress dated by the policy of his successor. Hasdrubal was one of those
ink Spai n.t 1eas res men who are especially fitted to exercise an ascendency over the
to cheek him  minds of barbarians;29 his personal appearance was engaging; he
understood the habits and feelings of the Spaniards, and spared no pains to
a Polybius, II. 11.                  2s Polybius, II. 1. Zonaras, VIII. 19. N-o.
Polybins, II. 12.                   pos, Diodor. Eel. lib. XXV.
' Polybius, II. 12. Zonaras, VIII. 19.  29Polybius, II. 18, 36. Appian, VI. 4, 6.




ï~~CHAP. XLII.]

THREATENED INVASION.

463

accommodate himself to them. Thus the native princes, far and near, sought
his friendship, and were eager to become the allies of Carthage; A.  c. 52.6. A. C.
while by the foundation of New Carthage, or Carthagena, a place "'-8.
possessing one of the best harbors in the Mediterranean, and naturally strong on
the land side, he was enabled to command the heart of Spain, from a position
close at hand, instead of beginning his operations from a distant corner of the country, like Gades. The Romans observed his progress with no small alarm; but
their dread of an approaching Gaulish invasion made them unwilling to provoke
a war at this moment with Carthage. They endeavored therefore to secure
themselves by treaty, and concluded a convention with Hasdrubal, by which he
bound himself not to extend his conquests to the north of the Iberus or Ebro 3
By this stipulation the Romans hoped to keep him at a sufficient distance, not
from Italy only, but from their old allies, the people of Massalia, some of whose
colonies had been founded south of the Pyrenees, along the coast of what is now
Catalonia. Nor were they abandoning to him the whole country southward of
the Iberus; for they had lately formed an alliance with the Saguntines, a people
partly of Greek, or at any rate not of Spanish extraction, who lived near the
coast between the Iberus and the Sucro, and who, in their fear of the Carthaginian power, had put themselves under the protection of Rome.31  The treaty
concluded with Hamilcar, at the end of the first Punic war, had contained a
clause forbidding either of the contracting parties to molest the allies of the
other;32 Saguntum, therefore, was safe from attack; and the Romans hoped, no
doubt, to secure their footing in Spain through its means, and from thence, so
soon as the Gaulish war was over, to sap the newly formed dominion of Carthage, by offering their aid to all the native tribes who might wish to escape
from it.
But these hopes and fears for their dominion in Spain were overpowered at
present by a nearer anxiety, the dread of a Gaulish invasion. The Threatening, of  an inCisalpine Gauls had for the last ten years resumed their old hos- vasion by the Gauls.
tile dispositions, which before that time had slumbered for nearly forty-five years,
since their great defeat by the consul Q. Â~Emilius Papus, two years before the
invasion of Pyrrhus.33 In that interval they had seen two Roman colonies founded
on the land which had formerly been theirs; Sena, immediately after the war,34
and Ariminum, about fourteen years afterwards, or four years before the beginning of the war with Carthage. But neither of these occupations of what they
must have considered their own land, provoked them, as it seems, to attack the
Romans; and they remained quiet through the whole of the first Punic war,
when the Romans, engaged year after year in Sicily, would have resisted them
at the greatest disadvantage. But three years after the peace with Carthage,
we find the Roman consuls invading the territory of the Gauls. It is difficult to
believe that these renewed hostilities were wholly owing, as Polybius says,35 to
the innate restlessness of the Gaulish character, and to the rising up of a new
generation who had forgotten the defeats of their fathers. But this new generation must have been ready for war at least ten years earlier; and their impatience would scarcely have waited so long only to break forth at last when the
favorable opportunity was over.
The Cisalpine Gauls called in their brethren from beyond the Alps to aid
them; but these new-comers excited jealousies; and on one occa- Preparations of the
sion there was a regular battle fought between them and the Cis- Gaula for war.
alpine Gauls, with such slaughter on both sides as relieved the Romans from all
present danger.6 But afterwards, in the year 521, when Fabius Maximus was
for the first time consul, an agrarian law was proposed and carried by C. Fla$ Polybius, II. 13. III. 27, 9.        a A. U. C. 472. Chap. XXXVII. p. 390 of
31 Polybius, III. 15, 21 80.         this history.
3 Polybius, III. 21.                   ' Polybius, II. 19.  3 II. 21.
36 Polybius, II. 21.




ï~~464

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIL

minius, one of the tribunes, for a general assignation of the land between Ariminum and Sena,37 a measure which not only ejected, perhaps, many of the old
Gaulish inhabitants, who had still been suffered to enjoy their former possessions,
but seemed an earnest of the intention of the Romans to extirpate the Gauls altoA. v. c. 528. A. c. gether from every portion of Gaulish territory which the fortune
226.          of war might hereafter give them. Accordingly, there was now
a unanimous cry amongst the Gauls for war, and for obtaining the aid of their
Transalpine countrymen. Their preparations were made with unusual patience;
there was no premature movement; but they endeavored to provide themselves
with money, of which they had none of their own, by selling various commodities, wool and hides, and, above all, captive slaves, to merchants who would pay for
them in gold and silver."  Thus they were enabled to engage the services of a
large body of Transalpine Gauls, whom they tempted besides with the prospect
of a permanent settlement in Italy; whilst the Romans, knowing full well that
the storm was gathering, yet unwilling to provoke it by commencing hostilities,
were kept year after year in a state of anxious preparation, till the invasion at
last, as it seems, actually burst upon them unexpectedly.
In this state of suspense, superstitious terrors possessed men's minds readily.
The Capitol was struck with lightning, an unwonted prodigy; and
Supstitiouero. the Sibylline books were consulted in consequence. The books
said, "When the lightning shall strike the Capitol and the temple of Apollo, then
must thou, O Roman, beware of the Gauls."39 And another prophecy said that
a time should come "when the race of the Greeks and the race of the Gauls
should occupy the Forum of Rome." It is characteristic of superstition to transfer to its idols that mockery of truth which itself so delights in, and to believe
that they care not for wickedness, if it be done to promote their service. A man
and woman of the Gaulish race, with a Greek man and woman, were buried alive
in the Forum Boarium, that the prophecy might be fulfilled in word, and might,
so the Romans hoped, be proved to be in spirit a lie."9
It was the spring of the year 529, and the consuls chosen were L. Â~Emilius Papus
and C. Atilius Regulus, son of that Regulus who had been so
Revolt of Sardinia.  famous in the first Punic war. The Transalpine Gauls had not
yet crossed the Alps; and, on the other hand, tidings arrived that the Sardinians,
impatient of the dominion of a Roman preetor, to which they had now, for the
first time, been made regularly subject, had broken out into a general revolt.
Accordingly, C. Regulus, with one consular army, was sent over to Sardinia to
put down the revolt.40
He was already arrived in his province, when the Transalpine Gauls, on the
Preparations for the first melting of the snows, crossed the Alps; and the Cisalpine
great Gaulish war.  Gauls, joining them with all their own disposable forces, the invasion of Italy was no longer delayed. The alarm was given at Rome; and then
was seen with what vast power and energy the Roman government could meet
an emergency of real danger. The whole free population of Italy, of an age to
bear arms, was reported to Rome in the returns of the census of the several
A. U. c. 527. A. c. states; and in a contest with barbarians such as the Gauls, every
227.          state and every man could be depended on; for no evil could
equal the victory of such an enemy. Thus knowing the whole extent of its resources, the government prepared accordingly its active armies, and its armies of
reserve, while every important city was duly provisioned, and provided with
7 Cicero, De Senectute, c. 4 places this law when Fabius was consul along with MI'. Pomin 526, when Q. Fabius, consu iterum, C. Fla- ponius Matho.
minio, quoad potuit, restitit, agrum Picentem  8 Zonaras, VIII. 19.
et Gallicum viritim contra senatus auctoritatem  89 See the fragments of Dion, published by
dividenti. But from Polybius, II. 21, it ap- Mai, p. 185.
pears that the law was carried into effect by M..  9Orosius, IV. 13. Plutarch, Marcell. 3. ZoLepidus, who was consul in 523; so that it naras, VIII. 19.
must have been passed in the previous year,  4o Polybius, II. 23. Zonaras, VIII. 10.




ï~~CHAr. XLII.]

POSITION OF THE ROMAN ARMIES.

465

large magazines of arms, and the system being never forgotten of securing allies
to act on the enemy's flank or rear, the friendship of the Cenomanians and Venetians was timely obtained, whose country, lying along the lower part of the course
of the Po, and on the shores of the Adriatic, was in direct communication with
the Romans at Ariminum, and commanded the whole eastern frontier of the hostile Gauls, so as to threaten their territory with invasion, as soon as their army
should begin to march southwards. In fact, this desertion of the Gaulish cause
by the Cenomanians and Venetians crippled the invasion at the very outset; for a
large force was kept at home to cover the frontier, and the invading army, according to Polybius, did not finally amount to more than 50,000 foot, and 20,000
cavalry and war-chariots.4"
Two roads led from Cisalpine Gaul into the heart of Italy; the'one by Ariminum and Umbria, the other by Etruria. Of these the former was Position of the Roman
covered by a consular army of 27,000 men, by the disposable armies.
force of the Umbrians, amounting to 20,000 men, and by the Cenomanian and
Venetian auxiliaries, who are computed at 20,000 men more. The Umbrians and
the barbarian auxiliaries were stationed on the edge of the Gaulish frontier, westward, probably, of Sarsina, to be ready to pour down upon the Boian country,
near the modern towns of Forli and Faenza; while the consul, L. _Emilius, was
posted at some point in the direction of Ariminum: but whether he was actually
at Ariminum to defend the frontier, or in some position nearer to Rome, from
whence he might more easily co-operate with the army covering Etruria, the
narrative of Polybius does not state clearly.42 On the other line, which led
through Etruria, there lay an army of 54,000 Sabines and Etruscans, commanded
by a Roman praetor; whilst Rome itself was covered by a reserve army of more
than 50,000, under the command, we may suppose, of the prator of the city. These
forces were actually called out and organized; but the returns of the population
capable of bearing arms, and which, in case of need, might recruit and support
the troops already in the field, presented, it is said, a sum total, inclusive of the
soldiers really enlisted, of no fewer than 750,000.3
The invaders seem to have conducted their march skilfully; for passing between the Roman armies, they descended from the Apennines A. U. C. 50. A. C.
into the valley of the upper Arno, followed it down nearly to 25. The Gauls invado
y                                              Etruria, and are deArretium, and from thence advanced towards Clusium, in the very foeated.
heart of Etruria, after having ravaged the whole country near the line of their
march without any opposition. When the Roman pretor became aware that the
enemy were between him and Rome, he put his army in motion to pursue them.
The Gauls met him and defeated him, but were prevented from completing the
destruction of his army by the sudden appearance of the consul L. iEmilius, who
had also hastened to the scene of action, when he heard that the enemy were in
Etruria.44 Then the Gauls, enriched, but at the same time encumbered, with
their plunder, and having been entirely successful hitherto, determined to carry
off their prisoners and spoil in safety to their own country, and afterwards, when
their army was again fit for action, to repeat their invasion. As the Roman
armies were between them and the Apennines, they resolved to retreat by the
coast road into Liguria, and descended into the valley of the Ombrone with that
object. But when they had reached the coast, and were marching northwards
towards the mouth of the Arno, they suddenly encountered a new enemy. The
consul, C. Regulus, having been recalled from Sardinia, had just landed at Pisa,
and was now on his march by the very same coast road towards Rome.45   The
Gauls were thus placed between two enemies; for L..Emilius was hanging on
41 II. 23.                          10' o) 'Avv[l3aS, JAdrrov iXov Otjabvplwv, i h3aA5y
a e A ov  Altietov...  arr tXav  hri'  tic riv 'IraAiav.
' A   t i v o v.                       4e Polybius, II. 25, 26.
4 Polybius, II. 24. Eutropius, III. 5. Po-,o Polybius, II. 27.
lybius, after giving this enormous muster, adds,
80




ï~~466

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. LXII

their rear; and they were obliged to engage both the consular armies at once.
The battle was long and bloody, and the Romans lost one of their consuls, C.
Regulus; but in the end they won a complete victory, and the Gaulish army
was almost destroyed.46 Immediately after the victory, L. AEmilius hastened to
invade the Gaulish territory by the same road which the Gauls had intended to
make their line of retreat; and as the Gauls were mostly on their other frontier,
to oppose the Umbrians and their barbarian allies, the consul overran the country without resistance. He returned to Rome and triumphed; and the golden
chains worn by the Gauls round their necks and arms were hung up as a splendid monument of the victory in the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter.4
This great success encouraged the Romans to press the war against the Gauls
Conquest of the Boians with the utmost vigor, in the hope of completing their destruction,
and Insubrians.  and effecting the conquest of their country. Trusting to their
treaty with Hasdrubal, they thought they should have time to deal with their
nearer enemies, before they turned their attention seriously to the affairs of Spain.
Accordingly for the next three years both consuls were each year employed in
Cisalpine Gaul, and with such success, that the Boian and Insubrian nations,
whose country stretched from the Apennines to the Alps across the whole plain
of Northern Italy, and extended from the neighborhood of Ariminum westward
as far as the Ticinus, were obliged one after the other to submit at discretion.48
The details of battles fought with barbarians are rarely worth recording; but
Campaign of. among the consuls of these three years were men whose personal
capaig or.  fame attracts our notice; and some of the circumstances connected
with their military proceedings will lead us naturally to a subject of far deeper
interest, the political state of Rome on the eve of the second Punic war.
The consuls of the year 530, who succeeded L. JEmilius and C. Regulus, had
both of them been consuls before, and censors; and in their censorship they had
been colleagues, as now in their second consulship. These were T. Manlius Torquatus and Q. Fulvius:Flaceus, men of kindred character; Manlius possessing all
the traditional sternness of his race, and Q. Fadvius, in his unyielding and unrelenting nature, rivalling the proudest patricians in Rome. They were made consuls together, in the hope that the Gaulish war, under their conduct, would be
brought to a speedy conclusion; but in this they disappointed their countrymen;
for although they reduced the Boians to submission, yet they could do nothing
against the Insubrians, owing to an unusually rainy season, which, filling all
the streams, made the country about the Po impracticable, and occasioned epiA. U. C. 30. A. c. demic diseases among the soldiers.4"  The consuls were apparent224.         ly required to abdicate before the end of the year; for the old and
blind L. Metellus, the pontifex maximus, was named dictator, to hold the comitia;
and by him were elected the consuls of the following year, C. Flaminius Nepos
and P. Furius Philus.
Flaminius, as we have seen, had been tribune ten years before, and had then
Flamini defeats the carried an agrarian law for a general assignation of the land forFlaminius defeats the
Gauls and triumphs in merly conquered from the Gauls near Ariminum. It was perhaps
spito of. tenato.  from some expectation that, if he made fresh conquests, he would
propose a similar assignation of them, that the people elected him consul: the
senate, on the other hand, used their utmost endeavors to make his consulship
wholly inactive. He was already in the field with his colleagues, and had entered the enemy's country when the senate sent orders to both the consuls to
return instantly to Rome.Dreadful prodigies had been manifested; three
moons had been seen at once in the sky; a vulture had haunted the Forum; and
a stream in Picenum had run blood."  The augurs declared that the omens had
* Polybius, II. 28-81.               49 Polybius, II. 31.
"47 Polybins, II. 81.                 o Zonaras, VIII. 20. Orosius, IV. 18.
* Polybius, II. 32-85. Zonaras, VIII. 19
Orosius, IV. 13.




ï~~COA, XLII.]

FLAMINIUS AND MARCELLUS.

46

not been duly observed at the election of the consuls; they must therefore be
forthwith recalled. Flaminius, guessing the purport of the senate's dispatches,
and. receiving them when he was on the very eve of a battle, would not read
them till the action was over; and having gained acomplete victory, he declared,
when he did read them, that the gods themselves had solved the A. U. C. 531. A. C.
senate's scruples as to the lawfulness of his appointment, and that 223.
it was needless for him now to return. He continued his operations therefore till
the end of the season with much success; he took a great many prisoners, and a
large amount of plunddr, all of which he distributed to his soldiers; and on his
return to Rome he demanded a triumph. The senate, resenting his disobedience,
refused it; but he obtained it, as the popular consuls Horatius and Valerius had
done 220 years before, by a decree of the comitia.62
Flaminius was through life the enemy of the aristocratical party; and our
accounts of these times come from    writers whose feeling was character ofriaminiu.
strongly aristocratical. Besides, his defeat and death at Thrasymenus made the Romans in general unfriendly to his memory; as national pride
is always ready to ascribe disasters in war tc the incapacity either of the general
or the government. But Flaminius was a brave and honest man, over-confident,
it is true, and over-vehement, but neither a demagogue, nor a mere blind partisan. Like many others of the noblest of the plebeians, he was impatient of that
craft of augury, which he well knew was no genuine and simple-hearted superstition, but an engine of aristocratical policy used by the nobility against those
whom they hated or feared. Yet the time was not come when the people at
large saw this equally; and therefore Flaminius shared the fate, and incurred
the blame, of those premature reformers, who, putting the sickle to the corn
before it is ripe, reap only mischief to themselves, and obtain no fruit for the world.
Flaminius and Furius were succeeded in the consulship by M. Claudius Marcellus and On. Cornelius Scipio. Marcellus; afterwards so famous, A. U. C. 532. A. C.
was at this time nearly fifty years old, and in his natural charac- 222. Character of Marcellos.
ter seems greatly to have resembled Flaminius.  Like him he was   ns
a brave and hardy soldier, open in his teniper, active and enterprising in the
highest degree; but so adventurous and imprudent, that even in old age he
retained the thoughtlessness of a boy, and perished at sixty by plunging into a
snare which a stripling might have expected and shunned. But he attached himself to the aristocracy, which Flaminius opposed; and all his military successes
met with their full share of honor and reward. In this his first consulship he
encountered Britomarus, or Viridomarus, one of the Gaulish chiefs, in single combat, and slew him in the sight of his army. For this exploit he was ranked with
Romulus and Cornelius Cossus, who, like him, when commanding the Roman
armies, had slain the enemy's general with their own hand; and he offered the
Spolia Opima, or choice spoils, of the slain chief to Jupiter Feretrius, as the most
striking part of the spectacle of his splendid triumph.13
The two following years, 533 and 534, were only marked by wars with new
barbarian enemies; the Istrians, whose country ran out like a pen- A.. C. 233. A. C.
insula into the Adriatic, at the very head of the gulf, to the east 221 W.ar with the
of the country of the Venetians, and the Gaulish or mixed Gaul- Istrians.
ish tribes, which lived to the north of the Insubrians, on the very roots of the
Alps. The Istrians, a people of kindred race and habits to the Illyrians of the
more southern parts of the Adriatic, were accused like them of having committed
acts of piracy on the Roman merchant vessels. They were defeated, but not
without a severe loss on the side of the Romans. One of the consuls employed
against them was M. Minucius Rufus, so famous four years afterwards as master
of the horse to the dictator Q. Fabius."4
22 Zonaras, VIII. 20.                  * Zonaras, VIII. 20. Orosiu3, IV. 13. Eutro' Plutarch, Marcell. 7, 8. Livy, Epit. XX. plus, III. 7.
Eutropius, III. 6.




ï~~468

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIL

The year of Rome 534 was marked by the censorship of L. Â~Emilius Papus
Censorship of Flamin- and C. Flaminius; a censorship distinguished by several memora-....          ble regulations and public works, and which throws great light
on the character of Flaminius, and through him on the general state of parties
in the commonwealth. In the first place, we may be quite certain that no mere
demagogue, nor any one who was considered a bad or unwise man, would have
been elected a censor at this period. The high dignity of the office repelled from
it all but citizens of the very first reputation; nor were the bravery and activity
of a good soldier the qualities which most fitted a man to discharge its many
important duties. Flaminius had carried an agrarian law, and had continued to
command his army as consul, in direct opposition to the majority of the senate;
but he knew how to distinguish between the selfishness and jealousy of an aristocracy, and those aristocratical elements which are essential to all good government; and the great measure of his censorship was a repetition of the regulation
made by the famous censors Q. Fabius Rullus and P. Decius, about eighty years
before: he removed all freedmen from the country tribes, and enrolled them in
the four city tribes, the Palatine, the Esquiline, the Colline, and the Suburran.
A single line in the epitome of Livy's twentieth book contains all our informaTransfer of theo freed- tion respecting this measure, and it relates the fact merely, withmen to theo city tribes. out a word of explanation. We must suppose that the regulation
of Fabius and Decius had been regarded as a remedy for a crying evil at a particular time, and not as a general rule to be observed forever. In common
times the freedman, being still closely connected with his old master, who was
now become his patron, patronus, would be enrolled in his patron's tribe; and
this would seem the most natural course, when the particular case was considered, without reference to the political consequences of the system, so soon as
it was generally adopted. These consequences would be to give political influence to a class of men in all respects unlike the old agricultural commons. The
class of freedmen contained many rich citizens, and many poor ones; but rich
and poor alike lived by trade rather than by agriculture,-in Rome, rather than
in the country. It is said that the freed negro in America is confined by public
feeling to the exercise of two or three trades or callings only, and these humble
ones; but the freedman of the ancient world labored under no such restriction.
He might keep a little stall in the Forum, or he might be a merchant trafficking
with Egypt and with Carthage: or again, he might be a moneyed man, and live
on the interest of his loans; or he might go out as a farmer of the taxes to Sicily,
and acquire an immense fortune at the expense of the province. But in no case
were his habits like those of the agricultural citizen; and Flaminius, like M.
Curius, and P. Decius, and like C. Marius in later times, was an enemy to every
thing which might elevate the mercantile and moneyed classes, and still more the
small shopkeepers and low populace of the city, above the proprietors and cultivators of the land.
It was probably in the same spirit that Flaminius shortly afterwards supported
nil to check the the bill of an unknown tribune, Q. Claudius, which forbade all
growth of a mercantile
gwht o th eantes senators and sons of senators from being the owners of a ship of
atro.         the burden of more than 300 amphorm. The express object of
this bill was to hinder the Roman aristocracy from becoming, like the Venetian
nobles, a company of wealthy merchants. The corn ships which the Istrians
were accused of intercepting, belonged, no doubt, to some of the nobility, and
were engaged in carrying the corn grown on their extensive occupation lands in
Picenum and the coast of Umbria, to the markets of Greece and Macedonia.
Flaminius thought that traffic was unworthy of the Roman nobility: perhaps he
fancied that they who derived their wealth from foreign trade would be too much
afraid of offending their customers, and would compromise their country's honor
for the sake of their own profit. But on this occasion he stood alone in the senate: neither Q. Fabius, nor T. Manlius, nor M. Marcellus, nor any of the Atilii,




ï~~CHAP. XLII.]

HANNIBAL SUCCEEDS HASDRUBAL.

or Sempronii, or Sarvilii, supported him; but as the comitia by the Hortensiar
law enjoyed the supreme legislative power, the opposition of the senate was vain,
and the bill was passed.55
Yet, while Flaminius imitated Fabius and Decius in their political regulations,
he rivalled Appius Claudius in the greatness of his public works. Public works. The Fla.
He perfected the direct communication between Rome and Ari- minian way.
minum,5t the great road, which, turning to the right after crossing the Milvian
bridge, ascended the valley of the Tiber, leaving Soracte on its left, till it again
joined the line of the modern road where it recrosses the Tiber and ascends to
Ocriculum; which then ascended the valley of the Nar to Narnia and Interamnia, passed over the lofty ridge of the Monte Somma, descended on the newly
founded colony of Spoletum, and passed through the magnificent plain beyond,
till it reached Fulginia; which there again penetrating into the green valley of
the Calcignolo, wound its way along the stream to Nuceria; which then, by an
imperceptible ascent, rose through the wide upland plain of Helvillum (Sigillo) to
the central ridge of the Apennines; which, the moment it had crossed the ridge,
plunged precipitately down into the deep and narrow gorge of the Cantiano, and,
hemmed in between gigantic walls of cliff, struggled on for many miles through
the defile, till it came out upon the open country, where the Cantiano joins the
Metaurus; which then, through a rich and slightly varied plain, followed the left
bank of that fateful stream till it reached the shores of the Adriatic; and which
finally kept the line of the low coast to Ariminum, the last city of Italy, on the
very edge of Cisalpine Gaul. This great road, which is still one of the chief
lines of communication' in Italy, and which still exhibits in its bridges, substructions, and above all in the magnificent tunnel of Furlo, splendid monuments of
Roman greatness, has immortalized the name of C. Flaminius, and was known
throughout the times of the Commonwealth and the Empire as the Flaminian
Way.
His other great work was the building of a circus in the Campus Martius,
which was also called by his name, and which, like the Greek
The Flameinian Circus.
theatres, was used not only for the exhibition of games, but also  ho ai..
occasionally for meetings of the senate and assemblies of the people, when they
were held without the walls of the city.
Flaminius, although opposed to the overbearing rule of the aristocracy, stood
aloof, as we have seen, from the party of the populace, and wished Growth of a  lower deto do no more than to tread in the steps of the best citizens of mocraticalparty.
former times, of Fabius Rullus and Decius, of M. Curius and Fabricius. But we
find symptoms of the growth of another party, which, in the later times of the
Commonwealth, was almost the sole representative of the popular cause, the party
of the poorer classes within Rome itself, the Forum populace, as they were called,
in whom the ancient political writers saw the worst form of democracy. By the
influence of this party, it seems C. Tarentius Varro, a butcher's son, had already
been raised to the quaestorship, and had been made plebeian and curule edile,
and was now looking forward to still highe distinctions. But the war with Carthage crushed it for the present, and delayed its revival for nearly a hundred
years, and established the power of the aristocracy on the firmest base, that of
the public respect and love, feelings which their conduct in the great national
struggle had justly earned for them.
Hasdrubal had died in the year before Flaminius' censorship, having been
assassinated in his tent by a Gaulish slave, in revenge for the death Death of Hadrbal.
of his master.7  The voice of the army had immediately called Hannibal takes the
command;  ambassa.
Hannibal to the command, and the government of Carthage had do asent to Hanbal
ratified their choice. He had made two campaigns, and had so and to Carthage.
put down all opposition to the Carthaginian dominion, that the Saguntines, ex.

SLivy, XXI. 68.
se Livy, Epit. XX.

L' Polybius, II. 86. Appian, IEispan. S.




ï~~470

HISTORY OF ROME.

[ChAr. XLIII

pecting to be attacked next, as the only people still left independent, sent earnest
embassies to Rome, to request the interference of the Romans in their behalf.5"
Towards the close of the year 534, Roman ambassadors visited Hannibal in his
winter-quarters at New Carthage, warning him not to attack Saguntum, which
was an ally of Rome, nor to carry his arms beyond the Iberus. Receiving unsatisfactory answers, they proceeded to Carthage, and declared to the government
that the Romans would consider any attack upon Saguntum, or any advance of
the Carthaginians beyond the Iberus, as acts of direct hostility against Rome.
They could not imagine that Carthage would dare to incur such a penalty; she
had paid money and ceded parts of her territory to escape the resentment of the
Romans; would she now voluntarily brave it by acts of aggression?  Hannibal's
party could not have obtained so complete an ascendency; and his opponents
would surely recover their influence, when his polidy threatened to involve his
country in the dreaded evils of another war with Rome. So L. JEmilius Paullus
and M. Livius were chosen consuls for the year 535, as if the peace would not
be broken; and they were both sent over to Illyria with two consular armies to
chastise the revolt of Demetrius of Pharus, who, relying on his intimate connection with the court of Macedon, had committed various breaches of treaty, and
was setting the Romans at defiance.9
L..Emilius was a brave and able officer; and he and his colleague did their
A.. c. 53. A. c. work effectually; they reduced all the enemy's strongholds, took
29. Warinllyria. Pharus itself, and obliged Demetrius to escape for his life to
Macedonia, and finally received the submission of all Illyria, and settled its
affairs at their discretion. They returned to Rome at the end of the season, and
obtained a triumph, the last that was for some years enjoyed by any Roman
officer; for already the falsehood of the Roman calculations was manifest; Saguntum, unaided by Rome, had been taken and destroyed: war with Carthage
was no longer doubtful; and the seat of that war was likely to be no longer
Spain, but Italy.
CHAPTER XLIII.
SECOND     PUNIC WAR.
HANNIBAL-MARCH OF HANNIBAL FROM SPAIN TO ITALY-PASSAGE OF THE
ALPS-BATTLES OF THE TREBIA, AND OF THRASYMENUS-Q. FABIUS MAXIMUS DICTATOR-BATTLE OF CANNE-A. U. C. 535 TO 588.
TwIcE in history has there been witnessed the struggle of the highest individA. U. c. 535. A. c. ual genius against the resources and institutions of a great nation;
219. second unio and, in both cases, the nation has been victorious. For seventeen
war.          years Hannibal strove against Rome; for sixteen years Napoleon
Bonaparte strove against England: the efforts of the first ended in Zama, those
of the second in Waterloo.
True it is, as Polybius has said, that Hannibal was supported by the zealous
Gratnes of Hannibal. exertions of Carthage; and the strength of the opposition to his
Great anniba.policy has been very possibly exaggerated by the Roman writers.
N Polybius, III. 15. Appian, Hispan. 11.  * Polvbius, III. 16, 18. Zonaras, VIII. 20.
Livy, XXI. 10.                           Polybius, III. 10.




ï~~CHAP. XLIII.]

THE GREATNESS OF ROME.

471

But the zeal of his country in the contest, as Polybius himself remarks in another
place,2 was itself the work of his family. Never did great men more show themselves the living spirit of a nation than Hamilcar, and Hasdrubal, and Hannibal,
during a period of nearly fifty years, approved themselves to be to Carthage. It
is not, then, merely through our ignorance of the internal state of Carthage that
Hannibal stands so prominent in all our conceptions of the second Punic war:
he was really its moving and directing power; and the energy of his country was
but a light reflected from his own. History therefore gathers itself into his single person: in that vast tempest which, from north and south, from the west
and the east, broke upon Italy, we see nothing but Hannibal.
But if Hannibal's genius may be likened to the Homeric god, who in his hatred
of the Trojans rises from the deep to rally the fainting Greeks, Geaness of R ome.
and to lead them against the enemy; so the calm courage with The bsucces of Rome
500                 bas been for the good
which Hector met his more than human adversary in his country's of mankind.
cause, is no unworthy image of the unyielding magnanimity displayed by the
aristocracy of Rome. As Hannibal utterly eclipses Carthage, so on the contrary
Fabius, Marcellus, Claudius Nero, even Scipio himself, are as nothing when compared to the spirit, and wisdom, and power of Rome. The senatle which voted
its thanks to its political enemy, Varro, after his disastrous defeat, "because he
had not despaired of the Commonwealth," and which disdained either to solicit,
or to reprove, or to threaten, or in any way to notice the twelve colonies which
had refused their accustomed supplies of men for the army, is far more to be
honored than the conqueror of Zama. This we should the more carefully bear
in mind, because our tendency is to admire individual greatness far more than
national; and as no single Roman will bear comparison with Hannibal, we are
apt to murmur at the event of the contest, and to think that the victory was
awarded to the least worthy of the combatants. On the contrary, never was the
wisdom of God's providence more manifest than in the issue of the struggle between Rome and Carthage. It was clearly for the good of mankind that Hannibal should be conquered: his triumph would have stopped the progress of the
world. For great men can only act permanently by forming great nations; and
no one man, even though it were Hannibal himself, can in one generation effect
such a work. But where the nation has been merely enkindled for a while by a
great man's spirit, the light passes away with him who communicated it; and the
nation, when he is gone, is like a dead body, to which magic power had for a
moment given an unnatural life: when the charm has ceased, the body is cold
and stiff as before. He who grieves over the battle of Zama, should carry on
his thoughts to a period thirty years later, when Hannibal must, in the course
of nature, have been dead, and consider how the isolated Phoenician city of Carthage was fitted to receive and to consolidate the civilization of Greece, or by its
laws and institutions to bind together barbarians of every race and language into
an organized empire, and prepare them for becoming, when that empire was dissolved, the free members of the commonwealth of Christian Europe.
Hannibal was twenty-six years of age when he was appointed commander-inchief of the Carthaginian armies in Spain, upon the sudden death Hannibal takoes Sagunof Hasdrubal. Two years, we have seen, had been employed in t"n.
expeditions against the native Spaniards; the third year was devoted to the siege
of Saguntum. Hannibal's pretext for attacking it was, that the Saguntines had
oppressed one of the Spanish tribes in alliance with Carthage;3 but no caution in
the Saguntine government could have avoided a quarrel, which their enemy was
determined to provoke. Saguntum, although not a city of native Spaniards, resisted as obstinately as if the very air of Spain had breathed into foreign settlers
on its soil the spirit so often, in many different ages, displayed by the Spanish
people. Saguntum was defended like Numantia and Gerona: the siege lasted

2 Polybius, IX. 22.

3 Polybius, III. 15. Appian, Hispan. XI.




ï~~472

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLII1

eight months; and when all hope was gone, several of the chiefs kindled a fire
in the market-place, and after having thrown in their most precious effects, leapt
into it themselves, and perished. Still the spoil found in the place was very considerable: there was a large treasure of money, which Hannibal kept for his wai
expenses; there were numerous captives, whom he distributed amongst his soldiers as their share of the plunder; and there was much costly furniture from
the public and private buildings, which he sent home to decorate the temples
and palaces of Carthage.4
It must have been towards the close of the year, but apparently before the
consuls were returned from Illyria, that the news of the fall of SaCrthage, who declare guntum reached Rome. Immediately ambassadors were sent to
war.          Carthage; M. Fabius Buteo, who had been consul seven-andtwenty years before, C. Licinius Varus, and Q. Baebius Tamphilus. Their orders
were simply to demand that Hannibal and his principal officers should be given
up for their attack upon the allies of Rome, in breach of the treaty, and, if this
were refused, to declare war. The Carthaginians tried to discuss the previous
question, whether the attack on Saguntum was a breach of the treaty; "ut to
this the Romans would not listen. At length M. Fabius gathered up hie toga,
as if he was wrapping up something in it, and holding it out thus folded together,
he said, "Behold, here are peace and war; take which you choose!"  The Carthaginian suffete, or judge, answered, " Give whichever thou wilt."  Hereupon
Fabius shook out the folds of his toga, saying, "Then here we give you war;"
to which several members of the council shouted in answer, "With all our hearts
we welcome it." Thus the Roman ambassadors left Carthage, and returned
straight to Rome.
But before the result of this embassy could be known in Spain, Hannibal had
Hannibal'spreparations been making preparations for his intended expedition, in a manner
for war.      which showed, not only that he was sure of the support of his
government, but that he was able to dispose at his pleasure of all the military
resources of Carthage. At his suggestion fresh troops from Africa were sent
over to Spain to secure it during his absence, and to be commanded by his own
brother, Hasdrubal; and their place was to be supplied by other troops raised
in Spain;6 so that Africa was to be defended by Spaniards, and Spain by Africans, the soldiers of each nation, when quartered amongst foreigners, being cut
off from all temptation or opportunity to revolt. So completely was he allowed
to direct every military measure, that he is said to have sent Spanish and
Numidian troops to garrison Carthage itself; in other words, this was a part
of his general plan, and was adopted accordingly by the government. Meanwhile he had sent ambassadors into Gaul, and even across the Alps, to the Gauls
who had so lately been at war with the Romans, both to obtain information as to
the country through which his march lay, and to secure the assistance and guidance of the Gauls in his passage of the Alps, and their co-operation in arms when
he should arrive in Italy. His Spanish troops he had dismissed to their several
homes at the end of the last campaign, that they might carry their spoils with
them, and tell of their exploits to their countrymen, and enjoy, during the winter,
that almost listless ease which is the barbarian's relief from war and plunder. At
length he received the news of the Roman embassy to Carthage, and the "actual
declaration of war; his officers also had returned from Cisalpine Gaul. "The
natural difficulties of the passage of the Alps were great," they said, "but by no
A. U. c. 536. A. c. means insuperable; while the disposition of the Gauls was most
218.         friendly, and they were eagerly expecting his arrival."7  Then
Hannibal called his soldiers together, and told them openly that he was going to
lead them into Italy. "The Romans," hlie said, "have demanded that I and my
4 Livy, XXI. 14. Polybius, III. 18.   6 Polybius, III. 33. Livy, XXI. 21.
s Livy, XXI. 18  nlvbius, III. 20. Zonaras,  7 Polybius, III. 34.
"VIII. 82.




ï~~Ca. XLIII.]

HANNIBAL'S SACRIFICE AND VISION.

473

principal officers should be delivered up to them as malefactors. Soldiers, will
you suffer such an indignity? The Gauls are holding out their arms to us, inviting us to come to them, and to assist them in revenging their manifold injuries.
And the country which we shall invade, so rich in corn, and wine, and oil, so full
of flocks and herds, so covered with flourishing cities, will be the richest prize
that could be offered by the gods to reward your valor." One common shout
from the soldiers assured him of their readiness to follow him. He thanked them,
fixed the day on which they were to be ready to march, and then dismissed them.
In this interval, and now on the very eve of commencing his appointed work,
to which for eighteen years he had been solemnly devoted, and
to which he had so long been looking forward with almost sicken-  nnb'cr.
ing hope, he left the head-quarters of his army to visit Gades, and there, in the
temple of the supreme god of Tyre, and all the colonies of Tyire, to offer his
prayers and vows for the success of his enterprise.8 He was attended only by
those immediately attached to his person; and amongst these was a Sicilian
Greek, Silenus, who followed him throughout his Italian expedition, and lived at
his table. When the sacrifice was over, Hannibal returned to his army at New
Carthage; and every thing being ready, and the season sufficintry advanced, for
it was now late in May, he set out on his march for the Iberus.
And here the fulness of his mind, and his strong sense of being the devoted
instrument of his country's gods to destroy their enemies, haunted
him by night as they possessed him by day. In his sleep, sc he  is vision.
told Silenus, he fancied that the supreme god of his fathers had called him into
the presence of all the gods of Carthage, who were sitting on their thrones in
council. There he received a solemn charge to invade Italy; and one, of the
heavenly council went with him and with his army, to guide him on his way.
He Went on, and his divine guide commanded him, "See that thou look not behind thee."  But after a while, impatient of the restraint, he turned to look back;
and there he beheld a huge and monstrous form, thick-set all over with serpents;
wherever it moved, orchards, and woods, and houses fell crashing before it. He
asked his guide in wonder, what that monster form was? The god answered,
" Thou seest the desolation of Italy; go on thy way, straight forward, and cast
no look behind."'  Thus, with no divided heart, and with an entire resignation
of all personal and domestic enjoyments forever, Hannibal went forth, at the age
of twenty-seven,0 to do the work of his country's gods, and to redeem his early
VOW.
The consuls at Rome came into office at this period on the fifteenth of March:
it was possible therefore for a consular army to arrive on the scene  isealculations of th
of action in time to dispute with Hannibal not only the passage of.omans.
the Rhone, but that of the Pyrenees. But the Romans exaggerated the difficulties of his march, and seem to have expected that the resistance of the Spanish
tribes between the Iberus and the Pyrenees, and of the Gauls between the Pyrenees and the Rhone, would so delay him that he would not reach the Rhone
till the end of the season. They therefore made their preparations leisurely.
Of the consuls for this year, the year of Rome 536, and 218 before the Christian era, one was P. Cornelius Scipio, the son of L. Scipio, who Their preparations for
had been consul in the sixth year of the first Punic war, and the war.
grandson of L. Scipio Barbatus, whose services in the third Samnite war are recorded in his famous epitaph. The other was Ti. Sempronius Longus, probably,
but not certainly, the son of that C. Sempronius Blaesus who had been consul in
the year 501. The consuls' provinces were to be Spain and Sicily; Scipio, with
two Roman legions, and 15,600 of the Italian allies, and with a fleet of sixty
quinqueremes, was to command in Spain; Sempronius, with a somewhat larger
8 Livy, XXI. 21. Compare Polybius, XXXIV. Valerius Maximus, I. 7, 1, Externa. Zonaras,
9.                                    VIII. 22.
SCicero de Liv. I. 24. Livy, XXIV. 22.  1 Nepos, Hannibal, c. 8.




ï~~474

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLII1

army, and a fleet of 160 quinqueremes, was to cross over to Lilybmum, and from
thence, if circumstances favored, to make a descent on Africa. A third army,
consisting also of two Roman legions, and 11,000 of the allies, was stationed in
Cisalpine Gaul, under the praetor, L. Manlius Vulso."  The Romans suspected
that the Gauls would rise in arms ere long; and they hastened to send out the
colonists of two colonies, which had been resolved on before, but not actually
founded, to occupy the important stations of Placentia and Cremona on the opposite banks of the Po. The colonists sent to each of these places were no fewer
than six thousand; and they received notice to be at their colonies in thirty days.
Three commissioners, one of them, C. Lutatius Catulus, being of consular rank,
were sent out, as usual, to superintend the allotment of lands to the settlers; and
these 12,000 men, together with the prmtor's army, were supposed to be capable of keeping the Gauls quiet.12
It is a curious fact, that the danger on the side of Spain was considered to be
Revolt of the Gaul. so much the less urgent, that Scipio's army was raised the last,
vafter those of his colleague and of the pretor, L. Manlius."  Indeed, Scipio was still at Rome, when tidings came that the Boians and Insubrians
had revolted, had dispersed the new settlers at Placentia and Cremona, and
driven them to take refuge at Mutina, had treacherously seized the three commissioners at a conference, and had defeated the prator, L. Manlius, and obliged
him also to take shelter in one of the towns of Cisalpine Gaul, where they were
blockading him."4 One of Scipio's legions, with five thousand of the allies, was
immediately sent off into Gaul under another prmtor, C. Atilius Serranus; and
Scipio waited till his own army should again be completed by new levies. Thus,
he cannot have left Rome till late in the summer; and when he arrived with his
fleet and army at the mouth of the eastern branch of the Rhone, he found that
Hannibal had crossed the Pyrenees; but he still hoped to impede his passage
of the river.
Hannibal meanwhile, having set out from New Carthage with an army of
Hannibal conquers the 90,000 foot and 12,000 horse, crossed the Iberus;15 and from
north of Spain.  thenceforward the hostile operations of his march began. He
might, probably, have marched through the country between the Iberus and the
Pyrenees, had that been his sole object, as easily as he made his way from the
Pyrenees to the Rhone; a few presents and civilities would easily have induced
the Spanish chiefs to allow him a free passage. But some of the tribes northward of the Iberus were friendly to Rome: on the coast were the Greek cities
of Rhoda and Emporie, Massaliot colonies, and thus attached to the Romans as
the old allies of their mother city: if this part of Spain were left unconquered,
the Romans would immediately make use of it as the base of their operations,
and proceed from thence to attack the whole Carthaginian dominion. Accordingly, Hannibal employed his army in subduing the whole country, which he
effected with no great loss of time, but at a heavy expense of men, as he was
obliged to carry the enemy's strongholds by assault, rather than incur the delay
of besieging them. He left Hanno with eleven thousand men to retain possession of the newly conquered country; and he further diminished his army by
sending home as many more of his Spanish soldiers, probably those who had
most distinguished themselves, as an earnest to the rest, that they too, if they
did their duty well, might expect a similar release, and might look forward to
return ere long to their homes full of spoil and of glory. These detachments,
together with the heavy loss sustained in the field, reduced the force with which
Hannibal entered Gaul to no more than 50,000 foot and 9000 horse.6
From the Pyrenees to the Rhone his progress was easy. Here he had no wish
to make regular conquests; and presents to the chiefs mostly succeeded in con- Polybius, III. 40, 41.             4 Polybius, III. 40.
12 Polybius, III. 40.                15 Polybius, III. 85. Livy, XXI. 23.
" Livy, XXI. 26.                     16 Polybius, III. 35.




ï~~OHA. XL1II.]

HANNIBAL'S PREPARATIONS.

475

ciliating their friendship, so that he was allowed to pass freely. He marheso to the
But on the left bank of the Rhone the influence of the Massaliots Rhone.
with the Gaulish tribes had disposed them to resist the invader; and the passage
of the Rhone was not to be effected without a contest.
Scipio, by this time, had landed his army near the eastern mouth of the Rhone;
and his information of Hannibal's movements was vague and imper- sipo m et.
fect. His men had suffered from sea-sickness on their voyage from
Pisa to the Rhone; and he wished to give them a short time to recover their
strength and spirits, before he led them against the enemy. He still felt confident that Hannibal's advance from the Pyrenees must be slow, supposing that he
would be obliged to fight his way; so that he never doubted that he should have
ample time to oppose his passage of the Rhone. Meanwhile he sent out 300
horse, with some Gauls, who were in the service of the Massaliots, ordering them
to ascend the left bank of the Rhone, and discover, if possible, the situation of
the enemy. He seems to have been unwilling to place the river on his rear, and
therefore never to have thought of conducting his operations on the right bank,
or even of sending out reconnoitring parties in this direction."
The resolution which Scipio formed a few days afterwards, of sending his army
to Spain, when he himself returned to Italy, was deserving of such
Hannibal's  prepare.
high praise, that we must hesitate to accuse him of over caution ion for passing the
or needless delay at this critical moment. Yet he was sitting idle Rhone.
at the mouth of the Rhone, while the Gauls were vainly endeavoring to oppose
Hannibal's passage of the river. We must understand that Hannibal kept his
army as far away from the sea as possible, in order to conceal his movements from
the Romans; therefore he came upon the Rhone, not on the line of the later
Roman road from Spain to Italy, which crossed the river at Tarasco, between
Avignon and Arles, but at a point much higher up, above its confluence with the
Durance, and nearly half way, if we can trust Polybius' reckoning, from the sea
to its confluence with the Isere."  Here he obtained from the natives on the
right bank, by paying a fixed price, all their boats and vessels of every description with which they were accustomed to traffic down the river: they allowed
him also to cut timber for the construction of others; and thus in two days he
was provided with the means of transporting his army. But finding that the
Gauls were assembled on the eastern bank to oppose his passage, he sent off a
detachment of his army by night with native guides, to ascend the right bank,
for about two-and-twenty miles, and there to cross as they could, where there
was no enemy to stop them. The woods, which then lined the river, supplied
this detachment with the means of constructing barks and rafts enough for the
passage; they took advantage of one of the many islands in this part of the
Rhone, to cross where the stream was divided; and thus they all reached the
left bank in safety. There they took up a strong position, probably one of those
strange masses of rock which rise here and there with steep cliffy sides like islands
out of the vast plain, and rested for four-and-twenty hours after their exertions
in the march and the passage of the river.
Hannibal allowed eight-and-forty hours to pass from the time when the detachment left his camp; and then, on the morning of the fifth day The army crosses the
after his arrival on the Rhone, he made his preparations for the river.
passage of his main army. The mighty stream of the river, fed by the snows of
the,high Alps, is swelled rather than diminished by the heats of summer; so
that, although the season was that when the southern rivers are generally at their
lowest, it was rolling the vast mass of its waters along with a startling fulness
and rapidity. The heaviest vessels were therefore placed on the left, highest up
the stream, to form something of a breakwater for the smaller craft crossing below; the small boats held the flower of the light-armed foot, while the cavalry

17 Polybius, II. 41. Livy, XXI. 26.

18 Polybius, III. 42.




ï~~476

IhISTORY OF ROME.

[CnuP. XLHL

were in the larger vessels; most of the horses being towed astern swimming, and
a single soldier holding three or four together by their bridles. Every thing was
ready, and the Gauls on the opposite side had poured out of their camp, and
lined the bank in scattered groups at the most accessible points, thinking that
their task of stopping the enemy's landing would be easily accomplished. At
length Hannibal's eye observed a column of smoke rising on the farther shore,
above or on the right of the barbarians. This was the concerted signal which
assured him of the arrival of his detachment; and he instantly ordered his men
to embark, and to push across with all possible speed. They pulled vigorously
against the rapid stream, cheering each other to the work; while behind them
were their friends, cheering them also from the bank; and before them were the
Gauls singing their war-songs, and calling them to come on with tones and gestures of defiance. But on a sudden a mass of fire was seen on the rear of the
barbarians; the Gauls on the bank looked behind, and began to turn away from
the river; and presently the bright arms and white linen coats of the African and
Spanish soldiers appeared above the bank, breaking in upon the disorde )  ine
of the Gauls. Hannibal himself, who was with the party crossing the river,
leapedon shore amongst the first, and forming his men as fast as they landed, led
them instantly to the charge. But the Gauls, confused and bewildered, made
little resistance; they fled in utter rout; whilst Hannibal, not losing a moment,
sent back his vessels and boats for a fresh detachment of his army; and before
night his whole force, with the exception of his elephants, was safely established
on the eastern side of the Rhone.19
As the river was no longer between him and the enemy, Hannibal early on the
Aival of emissaries next morning sent out a party of Numidian cavalry to discover
ri tho cipine the position and number of Scipioa forces, and then called his
Gauls.        army together, to see and hear the communications of some chiefs of
the Cisalpine Gauls, who were just arrived from the other side of the Alps. Their
words were explained to the Africans and Spaniards in the army by interpreters;
but the very sight of the chiefs was itself an encouragement; for it told the soldiers
that the communication with Cisalpine Gaul was not impracticable, and that the
Gauls had undertaken so long a journey for the purpose of obtaining the aid of
the Carthaginian army against their old enemies, the Romans. Besides, the interpreters explained to the soldiers that the chiefs undertook to guide them into
Italy by a short and safe route, on which they would be able to find provisions;
and spoke strongly of the great extent and richness of Italy, when they did
arrive there, and how zealously the Gauls would aid them. Hannibal then came
forward himself and addressed his army: their work, he said, was more than
half accomplished by the passage of the Rhone; their own eyes and ears had
witnessed the zeal of their Gaulish allies in their cause; for the rest, their business was to do their duty, and obey his orders implicitly, leaving every thing
else to him. The cheers and shouts of the soldiers again satisfied him how fully
he might depend upon them; and he then addressed his prayers and vows to
the gods of Carthage, imploring them to watch over the army, and to prosper its
work to the end, as they had prospered its beginning. The soldiers were now
dismissed, with orders to prepare for their march on the morrow.2"
Scarcely was the assembly broken up, when some of the Numidians who had
i         been sent out in the morning, were seen riding for their lives to
Scipio sends his army                                              Nthl
to Spain, and retusto the camp, manifestly in flight from a victorious enemy.  Not half
ay.           of the original party returned; for they had fallen in with Scipio's
detachment of Roman and Gaulish horse, and, after an obstinate conflict, had been
completely beaten. Presently after, the Roman horsemen appeared in pursuit; but
when they observed the Carthaginian camp, they wheeled about and rode off, to
carry back word to their general. Then at last Scipio put his army in motion, and

"AoT jo~us, III. 42, 43.                         Icy~s     I  4

20P olybius, III,.44.




ï~~CAP. XLIII.]

MARCH THROUGH GAUL.

47

ascended the left bank of the river to find and engage the enemy? But when
he arrived at the spot where his cavalry had seen the Carthaginian camp, he
found it deserted, and was told that Hannibal had been gone three days, having
marched northwards, ascending the left bank of the river. To follow him seemed
desperate: it was plunging into a country wholly unknown to the Romans, where
they had neither allies nor guides, nor resources of any kind; and where the
natives, over and above the common jealousy felt by all barbarians towards a
foreign army, were likely, as Gauls, to regard the Romans with peculiar hostility.
But if Hannibal could not be followed now, he might easily be met on his first
arrival in Italy; from the mouth of the Rhone to Pisa was the chord of a circle,
while Hannibal was going to make a long circuit; and the Romans had an army
already in Cisalpine Gaul; while the enemy would reach the scene of action exhausted with the fatigues and privations of his march across the Alps. Accordingly, Scipio descended the Rhone again, embarked Lis army and sent it on to
Spain under the command of his brother, Cneus Scipio, as his lieutenant; while
he himself, in his own ship, sailed for Pisa, and immediately crossed the Apennines
to take the command of the forces of the two prretors, Manlius and Atilius, who,
as we have seen, had an army of about 25,000 men, over and above the colonists
of Placentia and Cremona, still disposable in Cisalpine Gaul.22
This resolution of Scipio to send his own army on to Spain, and to meet Hannibal with the army of the two prmtors, appears to show that he wWom of this resolupossessed the highest qualities of a general, which involve the,io.
wisdom of a statesman no less than of a soldier. As a mere military question,
his calculation, though baffled by the event, was sound; but if we view it in a
higher light, the importance to the Romans of retaining their hold on Spain
would have justified a far greater hazard; for if the Carthaginians were suffered
to consolidate their dominion in Spain, and to avail themselves of its immense
resources, not in money only, but in men, the hardiest and steadiest of barbarians, and, under the training of such generals as Hannibal and his brother, equal
to the best soldiers in the world, the Romans would hardly have been able to
maintain the contest. Had not P. Scipio then dispatched his army to Spain at
this critical moment, instead of carrying it home to Italy, his son in all probability
would never have won the battle of Zama.
Meanwhile Hannibal, on the day after the skirmish with Scipio's horse, had
sent forward his infantry, keeping the cavalry to cover his opera- o ouThe elephants are car.
tions, as he still expected the Romans to pursue him; while he ried.ver the Rhone.
himself waited to superintend the passage of the elephants. These, were thirtyseven in number; and their dread of the water made their transport a very difficult operation. It was effected by fastening to the bank large rafts of 200 feet
in length, covered carefully with earth: to the end of these smaller rafts were
attached, covered with earth in the same manner, and with towing lines extended
to a number of the largest barks, which were to tow them over the stream. The
elephants, two females leading the way, were brought upon the rafts by their
drivers without difficulty; and as soon as they came upon the smaller rafts, these
were cut loose at once from the larger, and towed out into the middle of the
river. Some of the elephants, in their terror, leaped overboard, and drowned
their drivers; but they themselves, it is said, held their huge trunks above water,
and struggled to the shore; so that the whole thirty-seven were landed in
safety.23 Then Hannibal called in his cavalry, and covering his march with them
and with the elephants, set forward up the left bank of the Rhone to overtake
the infantry.
In four days they reached the spot where the Isere,"4 coming down from the
main Alps, brings to the Rhone a stream hardly less full or mighty  Hannibal's marc
than his own. In the plains above the confluence two Gaulish  through Gaul.

21 Polybius, III. 45.
2 Polybius, III. 47.

23 Polybius, III. 46. Livy, XXI. 28.
24 Polybius, III. 49.




ï~~478

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIII

brothers were contending which should be chief of their tribe; and the elder
called in the stranger general to support his cause. Hannibal readily complied, established him firmly on the throne, and received important aid from him
in return. He supplied the Carthaginian army plentifully with provisions, furnished them with new arms, gave them new clothing, especially shoes, which
were found very useful in the subsequent march, and accompanied them to the
first entrance on the mountain country, to secure them from attacks on the part
of his countrymen.
The attentive reader,'who is acquainted with the geography of the Alps and
Difficulty of determin- their neighborhood, will perceive that this account of Hannibal's
ingis ine of march. march is vague. It does not appear whether the Carthaginians
ascended the left bank of the Isere, or the right bank; or whether they continued
to ascend the Rhone for a time, and leaving it only so far as to avoid the great
angle which it makes at Lyons, rejoined it again just before they entered the
mountain country, a little to the left of the present road from Lyons to Chamberri. But these uncertainties cannot now be removed, because Polybius neither
possessed a sufficient knowledge of the bearings of the country, nor sufficient
liveliness as a painter, to describe the line of the march so as to be clearly recognized. I believe, however, that Hannibal crossed the Isere, and continued to
ascend the Rhone; and that afterwards, striking off to the right across the plains
of Dauphine, he reached what Polybius calls the first ascent of the Alps, at the
northern extremity of that ridge of limestone mountains, which, rising abruptly
from the plain to the height of 4000 or 5000 feet, and filling up the whole space
between the Rhone at Belley and the Isere below Grenoble, first introduces the
traveller coming from Lyons to the remarkable features of Alpine scenery.
At the end of the lowland country, the Gaulish chief, who had accompanied
Hannibal finds the Hannibal thus far, took leave of him: his influence probably did.ountaineer ready to not extend to the Alpine valleys; and the mountaineers, far from
lppose hi,.   respecting his safe-conduct, might be in the habit of making plundering inroads on his own territory. Here then Hannibal was left to himself; and he
found that the natives were prepared to beset his passage. They occupied all such
points as commanded the road; which, as usual, was a sort of terrace cut in the
mountain side, overhanging the valley whereby it penetrated to the central ridge.
But as the mountain line is of no great breadth here, the natives guarded the
defile only by day, and withdrew when night came on to their own homes, in a
town or village among the mountains, and lying in the valley behind them.25 Hannibal, having learnt this from some of his Gaulish guides whom he sent among
them, encamped in their sight just below the entrance of the defile; and as soon
as it was dusk, he set out with a detachment of light troops, made his way
through the pass, and occupied the positions which the barbarians, after their
usual practice, had abandoned at the approach of night.
Day dawned; the main army broke up from its camp, and began to enter the
defile; while the natives, finding their positions occupied by the
He baffles them.  enemy, at first looked on quietly, and offered no disturbance to
the march. But when they saw the long narrow line of the Carthaginian army
winding along the steep mountain side, and the cavalry and baggage-cattle
struggling at every step with the difficulties of the road, the temptation to plunder was too strong to be resisted; and from many points of the mountain above
the road they rushed down upon the Carthaginians. The confusion was terrible;
for the road or track was so narrow, that the least crowd or disorder pushed
the heavily loaded baggage-cattle down the steep below; and the horses,
wounded by the barbarians' missiles, and plunging about wildly in their pain
and terror, increased the mischief. At last Hannibal was obliged to charge
down from his position, which commanded the whole scene of confusion, and

rolybius, III. 50.




ï~~C r,. XLIII.]

PASSAGE OF THE ALPS.

479

to drive the barbarians off. This he effected; yet the conflict of so many men
on the narrow road made the disorder worse for a time; and he unavoidably
occasioned the destruction of many of his own men.Y   At last, the barbarians
being quite beaten off, the army wound its way out of the defile in safety, and
rested in the wide and rich valley which extends from the lake of Bourget, with
scarcely a perceptible change of level, to the Isere at Montmeillan. Hannibal
meanwhile attacked and stormed the town, which was the barbarians' principal
stronghold; and here he not only recovered a great many of his own men, horses,
and baggage-cattle, but also found a large supply of corn and cattle belonging
to the barbarians, which he immediately made use of for the consumption of his
soldiers.
In the plain which he had now reached, he halted for a whole day, and then,
resuming his march, proceeded for three days up the valley of the  Difficulties of tho
Isere on the right bank, without encountering any difficulty. Then  march.
the natives met him with branches of trees in their hands, and wreaths on their
heads in token of peace: they spoke fairly, offered hostages, and wished, they
said, neither to do the Carthaginians any injury, nor to receive any from them.
Hannibal mistrusted them, yet did not wish to offend them; he accepted their
terms, received their hostages, and obtained large supplies of cattle; and their
whole behavior seemed so trustworthy, that at last he accepted kheir guidance,
it is said, through a difficult part of the country, which he was now approaching.27 For all the Alpine valleys become narrower, as they draw nearer to the
central chain; and the mountains often come so close to the stream, that the
roads in old times were often obliged to leave the valley and ascend the hills by
any accessible point, to descend again when the gorge became wider, and follow
the stream as before. If this is not done, and the track is carried nearer the
river, it passes often through defiles of the most formidable character, being no
more than a narrow ledge above a furious torrent, with cliffs rising above it absolutely precipitous, and coming down on the other side of the torrent abruptly
to the water, leaving no passage by which man or even goat could make its
way.
It appears that the barbarians persuaded Hannibal to pass through one
of these defiles, instead of going round it; and while his army was Attacs of the mount.
involved in it, they suddenly, and without provocation, as we are aincers.
told, atacked him. Making their way along the mountain sides above the defile,
they rolled down masses of rock on the Carthaginians below, or even threw
stones upon them from their hands, stones and rocks being equally fatal against
an enemy'so entangled. It was well for Hannibal, that, still doubting the barbarians' faith, he had sent forward his cavalry and baggage, and covered the
march with his infantry, who thus had to sustain the brunt of the attack. Foot
soldiers on such ground were able to move, where horses would be quite helpless; and thus at last Hannibal, with his infantry, forced his way to the summit
of one of the bare cliffs overhanging the defile, and remained there during the
night, whilst the cavalry and baggage slowly struggled out of the defile." Thus
again baffled, the barbarians made no more general attacks on the army; some
partial annoyance was occasioned at intervals, and some baggage was carried off;
but it was observed, that wherever the elephants were, the line of march was
secure; for the barbarians beheld those huge creatures with terror, having never
had the slightest knowledge of them; and not daring to approach when they saw
them.
Without any further recorded difficulty, the army on the ninth day after they
had left the plains of Dauphine ariived at the summit of the Hannibal eaches the
central ridge of the Alps. Here there is always a plain of some summit of the Alps.

', Polybius, III. 51.
" Polybius, III. 52.

21 Polybius, 111. b3.




ï~~480

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIII

extent, immediately overhung by the snowy summits of the high mountains, but
itself in summer presenting in many parts a carpet of the freshest grass, with
the chalets of the shepherds scattered over it, and gay with a thousand flowers.
But far different is its aspect through the greatest part of the year: then it is
one unvaried waste of snow; and the little lakes, which on many ot the passes
enliven the summer landscape, are now frozen over and covered with snow, so as
to be no longer distinguishable. Hannibal was on the summit of the Alps about
he end of October: the first winter snows had already fallen; but two hundred
years before the Christian era, when all Germany was one vast forest, the climate
of the Alps was far colder than at present, and the snow lay on the passes all
through the year. Thus the soldiers were in dreary quarters; they remained
two days on the summit, resting from their fatigues, and giving opportunity to
many of the stragglers, and of the horses and cattle, to rejoin them by following
their track; but they were cold, and worn, and'disheartened; and mountains still
rose before them, through which, as they knew too well, even their descent
might be perilous and painful.
But their great general, who felt that he now stood victorious on the ramparts
Looks down opon Itly. of Italy, and that the torrent which rolled before him was carryming its waters to the rich plains of Cisalpine Gaul, endeavored to
kindle his soldiers with his own spirit of hope. He called them together; he
pointed out the valley beneath, to which the descent seemed the work of a moment: "That valley," he said, "is Italy; it leads us to the country of our friends
the Gauls; and yonder is our way to Rome."   His eyes were eagerly fixed on
that point of the horizon; and as he gazed, the distance between seemed to vanish, till he could almost fancy that he was crossing the Tiber, and assailing the
capitol2
After the two days' rest the descent began. Hannibal experienced no more
Descent.      open hostility from the barbarians, only some petty attempts here
and there to plunder; a fact strange in itself, but doubly so, if he
was really descending the valley of the Doria Baltea, through the country of the
Salassians, the most untamable robbers of all the Alpine barbarians. It is possible
that the influence of the Insubrians may partly have restrained the mountaineers;
and partly also they may have been deterred by the ill success of all former
attacks, and may by this time have regarded the strange army and its monstrous
beasts with something of superstitious terror. But the natural difficulties of the
ground on the descent were greater than ever. The snow covered the track so
that the men often lost it, and fell down the steep below: at last they came to a
place where an avalanche had carried it away altogether for about three hundred
yards, leaving the mountain side a mere wreck of scattered rocks and snow. To
go round was impossible; for the depth of the snow on the heights above rendered it hopeless to scale them; nothing therefore was left but to repair the road.
A summit of some extent was found, and cleared of the snow; and here the
army was obliged to encamp, whilst the work went on. There was no want of
hands; and every man was laboring for his life; the road therefore was restored,
and supported with solid substructions below; and in a single day it was made
practicable for the cavalry and baggage-cattle, which were immediately sent forward, and reached the lower valley in safety, where they were turned out
to pasture. A harder labor was required to make a passage for the elephants:
the way for them must be wide and solid; and the work could not be accomplished in less than three days. The poor animals suffered severely in the interval from hunger; for no forage was to be found in that wilderness of snow, nor
any trees whose leaves might supply the place of other herbage. At last they
too were able to proceed with safety:30 Hannibal overtook his cavalry and baggage; and in three days more the whole army had got clear of the Alpine val.

SPolybius, III. 54. Livy, XXI. 35.

10 Polybius, III. 54, 55.




ï~~CHAP. XLIII.]

HANNIBAL ARRIVES IN ITALY.

481

leys, and entered the country of their friends, the Insubrians, on the wide plain
of northern Italy.
Hannibal was arrived in Italy, but with a force so weakened by its losses in
men and horses, and by the exhausted state of the survivors, that Arrival in Italy. osea
he might seem to have accomplished his great march in vain. on the march.
According to his own statement, which there is no reason to doubt, he brought
out of the Alpine valleys no more than 12,000 African and 8000 Spanish infantry, with 6000 cavalry;1 so that his march from the Pyrenees to the plains
of northern Italy must have cost him 33,000 men; an enormous loss, which
proves how severely thearmy must have suffered from the privations of the march
and the severity of the Alpine climate; for not half of these 33,000 men can
have fallen in battle. With his army in this condition, some period of repose
was absolutely necessary; accordingly, Hannibal remained in the country of the
Insubrians, till rest, and a more temperate climate, and wholesome food, with
which the Gauls plentifully supplied him, restored ihe bodies and spirits of his
soldiers, and made them again ready for action." His first movement was against
the Taurinians, a Ligurian people, who were constant enemies of the Insubrians,
and therefore would not listen to Hannibal, when he invited them to join his
cause. He therefore attacked and stormed their principal town, put the garrison to the sword, and struck such terror into the neighboring tribes, that they
submitted immediately, and became his allies. This was his first accession of
strength in Italy, the first fruits, as he hoped, of a long succession of defections
among the allies of Rome, so that the swords of the Italians might effect for him
the conquest of Italy.
Meanwhile Scipio had landed at Pisa, had crossed the Apennines, and taken
the command of the pritors' army, sending the pritors themselves Scipi o marche s to meet
back to Rome, had crossed the Po at Placentia, and was ascending him.
its left bank, being anxious to advance with all possible haste, in order to hinder
a general rising of the Gauls by his presence.3  Hannibal, for the opposite reason, was equally anxious to meet him, being well aware that the Gauls were
only restrained from revolting to the Carthaginians by fear, and that on his first
success in the field they would join him." He therefore descended the left bank
of the Po, keeping the river on his right; and Scipio having thrown a bridge
over the Ticinus, had entered what are now the Sardinian dominions, and was
still advancing westward, with the Po on his left, although, as the river here
makes a bend to the southward, he was no longer in its immediate neighborhood."
Each general was aware that his enemy was at hand, and both pushed forward with their cavalry and light troops in advance of their main Engagement on the
armies, to reconnoiter each other's position and numbers. Thus i.inns.
was brought on accidentally the, first action between Hannibal and the Romans
in Italy, which, with some exaggeration, has been called the battle of the Ticinus.36  The Numidians in Hannibal's army, being now properly supported by
heavy cavalry, were able to follow their own manner of fighting, and, falling on
the flanks and rear of the Romans, who were already engaged in front with
Hannibal's heavy horsemen, took ample vengeance for their defeat on the Rhone.
The Romans were routed; and the consul himself was severely wounded, and
owed his life, it is said, to the courage and fidelity of a Ligurian slave.31 With
their cavalry thus crippled, it was impossible to act in such an open country; the
Romans therefore hastily retreated, recrossed the Ticinus, and broke down the
bridge, yet with so much hurry and confusion, that 600 men were left on the
right bank, and fell into the enemy's hands; and then, crossing the Po also, established themselves under the walls of their colony, Placentia.
s' Polybius, Ill. 56.            a.'olybius, 111. 64.
32 Polybius, III. 60.             6 Polybius, III. 65.
11 Polybius, III. 56.             7 Polybius, III. 66. Livy, XXI. 46.
" Polybius, III. 60.
31




ï~~482

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIII

Hannibal, finding the bridge over the Ticinus destroyed, reascended the left
Hannibas advance  bank of the Po till he found a convenient point to cross, and then,
having constructed a bridge with the river boats, carried over his
army in safety. Immediately, as he had expected, the Gauls on the right bank
received him with open arms; and again descending the river, he arrived on the
second day after his passage in sight of the Roman army, and on the following
day offered them battle. But as the Romans did not move, he chose out a spot
for his camp, and posted his army five or six miles from the enemy, and apparently on the east of Placentia, cutting off their direct communication with Ariminum and Rome.38
On the first news of Hannibal's arrival in Italy, the senate had sent orders to
Campai  c the other consul, Ti. Sempronius, to return immediately to reinS emp onis joins Soi- force his colleague.9  No event of importance had marked the
pio.         first summer of the war in Sicily. Hannibal's spirit so animated
the Carthaginian government, that they were everywhere preparing to act on
the offensive; and before the arrival of Sempronius, M..Emilius, the praetor,
had already had to fight a naval action with the enemy, in order to defend Lilybreum.40 He had defeated them, and prevented their landing, but the Carthaginian fleets still kept the sea; and whilst Sempronius was employing his whole
force in the conquest of the island of Melita, the enemy were cruising on the
northern side of Sicily, and making descents on the coast of Italy. On his return
to Lilybsum he was going in pursuit of them, when he received orders to return
home and join his colleague. He accordingly left part of his fleet with the prmtor in Sicily, and part he committed to Sex. Pomponius, his lieutenant, for the
protection of the coasts of Lucania and Campania; while, from a dread of the
dangers and delays of the winter navigation of the Adriatic, his army was to
march from Lilybeum to Messana, and, after crossing the strait, to go by land
through the whole length of Italy, the soldiers being bound by oath to appear
on a certain day at Ariminum. They completed their long march, it is said, in
forty days; and from Ariminum they hastened to the scene of action, and effected
their junction with the army of Scipio.41
Sempronius found his colleague no longer in his original position, close by
Position of the Roman Placentia and the Po, but withdrawn to the first hills which bound
army.         the great plain on the south, and leave an interval here of about
six miles between themselves and the river.42 But Hannibal's army lying, as it
seems, to the eastward, the Roman consul retreated westward, and leaving Placentia to its own resources, crossed to the left bank of the Trebia, and there lay
encamped, just where the stream issues from the last hills of the Apennines. It
appears that the Romans had several magazines on the right bank of the Po
above Placentia, on which the consul probably depended for his subsistence; and
these posts, together with the presence of his army, kept the Gauls on the immediate bank of the river quiet, so that they gave Hannibal no assistance. When
the Romans fell back behind the Trebia, Hannibal followed them, and encamped
about five miles off from them, directly between them and Placentia.43  But his
powerful cavalry kept his communications open in every direction; and the Gauls
who lived out of the immediate control of the Roman army and garrisons, supplied him with provisions abundantly.
It is not explained by any existing writer how Sempronius was able to effect
Pnnibaspolicy.  his junction with his colleague without any opposition from Hannibal.  The regular road from   Ariminum  to Placentia passes
through a country unvaried by a single hill; and the approach of a large army
should have been announced to Hannibal by his Numidian cavalry, soon enough
to allow him to interrupt it. But so much in war depends upon trifling accidents,
" Polybius, III. 66.           41 Polybius, III. 61, 68. Livy, XXI. 51.
a Polybius, III. 61.           42 Polybius, III. 67.
4o Livy, XXI. 49, 50.          4 Polybius, III. 68.




ï~~CHAP. XLIII.]

SEMPRONIUS ATTACKS HANNIBAL.

483

that it is in vain to guess where we are without information. We only know
that the two consular armies were united in Scipio's position on the left bank of
the Trebia; that their united forces amounted to 40,000 men; and that Hannibal, with an army so reinforced by the Gauls since his arrival in Italy, that it was
little inferior to his enemy's,44 was so far from fearing to engage either consul
singly, that he wished for nothing so much as to bring on a decisive battle with
the combined armies of both. Depending on the support of the Gauls for his
subsistence, he must not be too long a burden to them; they had hoped to be
led to live on the plunder of the enemy's country, not to maintain him at the
expense of their own. In order to force the Romans to a battle, he began to
attack their magazines. Clastidium, now Castiggio, a small town on the right
bank of the Po, nearly opposite to the mouth of the Ticinus, was betrayed into
his hands by the governor; and he here found large supplies of corn.45
On the other hand, Sempronius, having no fears for the event of a battle, was
longing for the glory of a triumph over such an enemy as Hanni- Sempronius corn
bal;46 and as Scipio was still disabled by his wound, he had the  ands sthe orn an sr
sly, and is anxious to
command of the whole Roman army. Besides, the Gauls who engage.
lived in the plain between the Trebia and Placentia, not knowing which side to
espouse, had been plundered by Hannibal's cavalry, and besought the consuls to
protect them. This was no time, Sempronius thought, to neglect any ally who
still remained faithful to Rome: he sent out his cavalry and light troops over the
Trebia to drive off the plunderers; and in such skirmishes he obtained some
partial success, which made him the more disposed to risk a general battle.47
For this, as a Roman officer, and before Hannibal's military talents were fully
known, he ought not to be harshly judged; but his manner of en- is rashness.
gaging was rash, and unworthy of an able general. He allowed His rashness.
the attacks of Hannibal's light cavalry to tempt him to follow them to their own
field of battle. Early in the morning the Numidians crossed the river, and skirmished close up to the Roman camp: the consul first sent out his cavalry, and
then his light infantry, to repel them;48 and when they gave way and recrossed
the river, he led his regular infantry out of his camp, and gave orders for the
whole army to advance over the Trebia and attack the enemy.
It was mid-winter, and the wide pebbly bed of the Trebia, which the summer
traveller may almost pass dry-shod, was now filled with a rapid commencement of theo
stream running breast-high. In the night it had rained or snowed battle on the Trebia.
heavily; and the morning was raw and chilly, threatening sleet or snow.49  Yet
Sempronius led his soldiers through the river, before they had eaten any thing;
and wet, cold, and hungry as they were, he formed them in order of battle on
the plain. Meanwhile Hannibal's men had eaten their breakfast in their tents,
and had oiled their bodies, and put on their armor around their fires. Then,
when the enemy had crossed the Trebia, and were advancing in the open plain,
the Carthaginians marched out to meet them; and about a mile in front of their
camp, they formed in order of battle. Their disposition was simple: the heavy
infantry, Gauls, Spaniards, and Africans, to the number of 20,000, were drawn
up in a single line; the cavalry, 10,000 strong, was, with the elephants, on the
two wings; the light infantry and Balerian slingers were in the front of the
whole army. This was all Hannibal's visible force. But near the Trebia, and
now left in their rear by the advancing Roman legions, were lying close hid in
the deep and overgrown bed of a small water-course, two thousand picked soldiers, horse and foot, commanded by Hannibal's younger brother, Mago, whom
he had posted there during the night, and whose ambush the Romans passed
with no suspicion. Arrived on the field of battle, the legions were formed in
their usual order, with the allied infantry on the wings; and their weak cavalry
44 Polybius, III. 72. Livy, XXI. 52.   47 Polybius, III. 69.
45 Polybius, Ill. 69.                  48 Polybius, III. 71.
16 Polybius, II. 70.                      Polybius III. 72.




ï~~484

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIII,

of 4000 men, ill able to contend with the numerous horsemen of Hannibal, were
on the flanks of the whole line.
The Roman velites, or light infantry, who had been in action since daybreak,
and had already shot away half their darts and arrows, were
Defeat of the Rema
light infantry and ca soon driven back upon the hastati and principes, and passed
alry.         through the intervals of the maniples to the rear.  With no less
ease were the cavalry beaten on both wings, by Hannibal's horse and elephants.
But when the heavy infantry, superior in numbers and better armed both for
offence and defence, closed with the enemy, the confidence of Sempronius seemed
to be justified: and the Romans, numbed and exhausted as they were, yet, by
their excellence in all soldierly qualities, maintained the fight with equal ad.
vantage.5o
On a sudden a loud alarm was heard; and Mago, with his chosen band, broke
Rot of the whole out from his ambush, and assaulted them furiously in the rear.
army.         Meantime both wings of the Roman infantry were broken down
by the elephants, and overwhelmed by the missiles of the light infantry, till they
were utterly routed, and fled towards the Trebia. The legions in the centre,
finding themselves assailed on the rear, pushed desperately forwards, forced their
way through the enemy's line, and marched off the field straight to Placentia.
Many of the routed cavalry made off in the same direction, and so escaped. But
those who fled towards the river were slaughtered unceasingly by the conquerors
till they reached it; and the loss here was enormous. The Carthaginians, however, stopped their pursuit on the brink of the Trebia: the cold was piercing, and
to the elephants so intolerable that they almost all perished; even of the men and
horses many were lost, so that the wreck of the Roman army reached their camp
in safety; and when night came on, Scipio again led them across the river, and,
passing unnoticed by the camp of the enemy, took refuge with his colleague
within the walls of Placentia."
So ended Hannibal's first campaign in Italy. The Romans, after their defeat,
Hannibal winters in despaired of maintaining their ground on the Po; and the two
caul.         consular armies retreated in opposite directions, Scipio's upon
Ariminum, and that of Sempronius across the Apennines into Etruria. Hannibal
remained master of Cisalpine Gaul; but the season did not allow him to besiege
Placentia and Cremona; and the temper of the Gauls rendered it evident that
he must not make their country the seat of war in another campaign. Already
they bore the burden of supporting his army so impatiently, that he made an attempt, in the dead of the winter, to cross the Apennines into Etruria, and was only
driven back by the extreme severity of the weather, the wind sweeping with such
fury over the ridges, and through the passes of the mountains, that neither man
nor beast could stand against it.52  He was forced therefore to winter in Gaul;
but the innate fickleness and treachery of the people led him to suspect that
attempts would be made against his life, and that a Gaulish assassin might hope
to purchase forgiveness from the Romans for his country's revolt, by destroying
the general who had seduced them. He therefore put on a variety of disguises
to baffle such designs; he wore false hair, appearing sometimes as a man of
mature years, and sometimes with the gray hairs of old age;3 and if he had that
taste for humor which great men are seldom without, and which some anecdotes
of him imply, he must have been often amused by the mistakes thus occasioned,
and have derived entertainment from that which policy or necessity had dictated.
We should be glad to catch a distinct view of the state of Rome, when the
news first arrived of the battle of the Trebia. Since the disaster of
tlaminius  is  chosen
ersl ond takes the Caudium, more than a hundred years before, there had been
s o mand.     known no defeat of two consular armies united; and the surprise

so Polybius, III. 73.
61 Polybius, III. 74.

2 Livy, XXI. 58.
13 Polybius, III. 78.




ï~~CHAP. XLIII.]

HANNIBAL ENTERS ETRURIA.

485

and vexation must have been great. Sempronius, it is said, returned to Rome
to hold the comitia; and the people resolved to elect as consul a man who, however unwelcome to the aristocracy, had already distinguished himself by brilliant
victories in the very country which was now the seat of war. They accordingly
chose C. Flaminius for the second time consul; and with him was elected Cn. Servilius Geminus, a man of an old patrician family, and personally attached to the
aristocratical party, but unknown to us before his present consulship. Flaminius'
election was most unpalatable to the aristocracy; and as numerous prodigies were
reported, and the Sibylline books consulted, and it was certain that various rites
would be ordered to propitiate the favor of the gods,54 he had some A.U..537. A.C.217.
reason to suspect that his election would again be declared null
and void, and he himself thus deprived of his command. He was anxious therefore to leave Rome as soon as possible: as his colleague was detained by the
religious ceremonies, and by the care of superintending the new levies, Flaminius,
it is said, left the city before the 15th of March, when his consulship was to begin, and actually entered upon his office at Ariminum, whither he had gone to
superintend the formation of magazines, and to examine the state of the army.55
But the aristocracy thought it was no time to press party animosities; they made
no attempt to disturb Flaminius' election; and he appears to have had his province assigned him without opposition, and to have been appointed to command
Sempronius' army in Etruria, while Servilius succeeded Scipio at Ariminum.
The levies of soldiers went on vigorously; two legions were employed in Spain;
one was sent to Sicily, another to Sardinia, and another to Tarentum; and four
legions, more or less thinned by the defeat at the Trebia, still formed the nucleus
of two armies in Ariminum and in Etruria. It appears that four new legions
were levied, with an unusually large proportion of soldiers from the Italian allies
and the Latin name; and these being divided between the two consuls, the armies opposed to Hannibal on either line, by which he might advance, must have
been, in point of numbers, exceedingly formidable. Servilius, as we have seen,
had his head-quarters at Ariminum; and Scipio, whom he superseded, sailed as
proconsul into Spain, to take command of his original army there. Flaminius
succeeded to Sempronius in Etruria, and lay encamped, it is said, in the neighborhood of Arretium.6
Thus the main Roman armies lay nearly in the same positions which they had
held eight years before, to oppose the expected invasion of the Hannibal enters EtraGauls. But as the Gauls then broke into Etruria unperceived by ".
either Roman army, so the Romans were again surprised by Hannibal on a line
where they had not expected him. He crossed the Apennines, not by the ordinary road to Lucca, descending the valley of the Macra, but, as it appears, by
a straighter line down the valley of the Anser or Serchio; and leaving Lucca on
his right, he proceeded to struggle through the low and flooded country which
lay between the right bank of the Arno and the Apennines below Florence, and
of which the marsh or lake of Fucecchio still remains a specimen. Here again
the sufferings of the army were extreme; but they were rewarded when they
reached the firm ground below Fnsule, and were let loose upon the plunder of
the rich valley of the upper Arno.57
Flaminius lay quietly at Arretium, and did not attempt to give battle, but sent
messengers to his colleague, to inform him of the enemy's appear- Advances towards Pe.
ance in Etruria. Hannibal was now on the south of the Apen- r"gia.
nines, and in the heart of Italy; but the experience of the Samnites and of Pyrrhus had shown that the Etruscans were scarcely more to be relied on than the
Gauls; and it was in the south, in Samnium, and Lucania, and Apulia, that the
only materials existed for organizing a new Italian war against Rome. Accord
*' Livy, XXI. 62.
* Livy, XXI. 63.

56 Livy, XXII. 2.
57 Polybius, III. 78, 79.




ï~~486

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Ox u. XLIII

ingly Hannibal advanced rapidly into Etruria, and finding that Flaminius still did
not move, passed by Arretium, leaving the Roman army in his rear, and marching, as it seemed, to gain the great plain of central Italy, which reaches from
Perusia to Spoletum, and was traversed by the great road from Ariminum tc
Rome.
The consul Flaminius now at last broke up from his position, and followed the
Flainnius follo-wsm. enemy. Hannibal laid waste the country on every side with fire
and sword, to provoke the Romans to a hasty battle; and leaving
Cortona on his left untouched on its mountain seat, he approached the lake of
Thrasymenus, and followed the road along its northeastern shore, till it ascended
the hills which divide the lake from the basin of the Tiber."8 Flaminius was fully
convinced that Hannibal's object was not to fight a battle, but tc lay waste the
richest part of Italy: had he wished to engage, why had he nor attacked him
when he lay at Arretium, and while his colleague was far away at Ariminum?
With this impression he pressed on his rear closely, never dreaming that the lion
would turn from the pursuit of his defenceless prey, to spring on the shepherds
who were dogging his steps behind.
The modern road along the lake, after passing the village of Passignano, runs
Difficty of maring for some way close to the water's edge on the right, hemmed in
out the field of battle. on the left by a line of cliffs, which make it an absolute defile.
Then it turns from the lake and ascends the hills; yet, although they form something of a curve, there is nothing to deserve the name of valley; and the road,
after leaving the lake, begins to ascend almost immediately, so that there is a very
short distance during which the hills on the right and left command it. The
ground therefore does not well correspond with the description of Polybius, who
states that the valley in which the Romans were caught was not the narrow
interval between the hills and the lake, but a valley beyond this defile, and running down to the lake, so that the Romans, when engaged in it, had the water,
not on their right flank, but on their rear.59 Livy's account is different, and
represents the Romans as caught in the defile beyond Passignano, between the
cliff and the lake. It is possible that if the exact line of the ancient road could
be discovered, it might assist in solving the difficulty: in the mean time the battle of Thrasymenus must be one of the many events in ancient military history,
where the accounts of historians, differing either with each other or with the
actual appearances of the ground, are to us inexplicable.
The consul had encamped in the evening on the side of the lake, just within
Flaminiu  advances to the present Roman frontier, and on the Tuscan side of Passignano:
attack Hannibal.  he had made a forced march, and had arrived at his position so
late that he could not examine the ground before him.0 Early the next morning he set forward again; the morning mist hung thickly over the lake and the
low grounds, leaving the heights, as is often the case, quite clear. Flaminius,
anxious to overtake his enemy, rejoiced in the friendly veil which thus concealed
his advance, and hoped to fall upon Hannibal's army while it was still in marching order, and its columns encumbered with the plunder of the valley of the
Arno. He passed through the defile of Passignano, and found no enemy; this
confirmed him in his belief that Hannibal did not mean to fight. Already the
Numidian cavalry were on the edge of the basin of the Tiber: unless he could
overtake them speedily, they would have reached the plain; and Africans, Spaniards, and Gauls, would be rioting in the devastation of the garden of Italy. So
the consul rejoiced as the heads of his columns emerged from the defile, and, turning to the left, began to ascend the hills, where he hoped at least to find the
rear-guard of the enemy.
At this moment the stillness of the mist was broken by barbarian war-cries on

5 Polybius, III. 82.   Livy, XXII. 8.
so III. 83.

1o Polybius, III. 83, 84.




ï~~CxAr. XLIII.]

BATTLE OF THRASYMENUS.

487

every side; and both flanks of the RIoman column were assailed Destruction of the muz
at once. Their right was overwhelmed by a storm of javelins and body of the R.mans.
arrows, shot as if from the midst of darkness, and striking into the soldier's unguarded side, where he had no shield to cover him; while ponderous stones,
against which no shield or helmet could avail, came crashing down upon their
heads. On the left were heard the trampling of horse, and the well-known warcries of the Gauls; and presently Hannibal's dreaded cavalry emerged from the
mist, and were in an instant in the midst of their ranks; and the huge forms of
the Gauls and their vast broadswords broke in upon them at the same moment. The head of the Roman column, which was already ascending to the
higher ground, found its advance also barred; for here was the enemy whom
they had so longed to overtake; here were some of the Spanish and African foot
of Hannibal's army drawn up to wait their assault. The Romans instantly attacked these troops, and cut their way through: these must be the covering
parties, they thought, of Hannibal's main battle; and, eager to bring the contest
to a decisive issue, they pushed forward up the heights, not doubting that on the
summit they should find the whole force of the enemy. And now they were on
the top of the ridge, and to their astonishment no enemy was there; but the
mist drew up, and, as they looked behind, they saw too plainly where Hannibal
was: the whole valley was one scene of carnage, while on the sides of the hills
above were the masses of the Spanish and African foot witnessing the destruction of the Roman army, which had scarcely cost them a single stroke.
The advanced troops of the Roman column had thus escaped the slaughter;
but being too few to retrieve the day, they continued their advance,
which was now become a flight, and took refuge in one of the ft rgo.
neighboring villages. Meantime, while the centre of the army was cut to pieces
in the valley, the rear was still winding through the defile beyond, between the
cliffs and the lake. But they too were attacked from the heights above by the
Gauls, and forced in confusion into the water. Some of the soldiers, in desperation, struck out into the deep water swimming, and, weighed down by their
armor, presently sank: others ran in as far as was within their depth, and there
stood helplessly, till the enemy's cavalry dashed in after them. Then they lifted
up their hands, and cried for quarter; but on this day of sacrifice, the gods of
Carthage were not to be defrauded of a single victim; and the horsemen pitilessly fulfilled Hannibal's vow.
Thus, with the exception of the advanced troops of the Roman column, who
were about 6000 men, the rest of the army was utterly destroyed. Deathorn mniao.
The consul himself had not seen the wreck consummated. On
finding himself surrounded, he had vainly endeavored to form his men amidst the
confusion, and to offer some regular resistance: when this was hopeless, he continued to do his duty as a brays soldier, till one of the Gaulish horsemen, who is
said to have known him by sight from his former consulship, rode up and ran
him through the body with his lance, crying out, " So perish the man who
slaughtered our brethren, and robbed us of the lands of our fathers."'' In these
last words we probably rather read the unquenchable hatred of the Roman aristocracy to the author of an agrarian law, than the genuine language of the Gaul.
Flaminius died bravely, sword in hand, having committed no greater military
error than many an impetuous soldier, whose death in his country's cause has
been felt to throw a veil over his rashness, and whose memory is pitied and honored. The party feelings which have so colored the language of the ancient
writers respecting him, need not be shared by a modern historian: Flaminius was
indeed an unequal antagonist to Hannibal; but in his previous life, as consul and as
censor, he had served his country well; and if the defile of Thrasymenus witnessed
his rashness, it also contains his honorable grave.

Â~1 Livy, XXII. 6.




ï~~4S8

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIl

The battle must have been ended before noon; and Hannibal's indefatigable
Capture of the 0,- cavalry, after having destroyed the centre and rear of the Roman
unt. o on balt  army, hastened to pursue the troops who had broken off from the
prisoners.   front, and had for the present escaped the general overthrow.
They were supported by the light-armed foot and the Spaniards, and finding the
Romans in the village to which they had retreated, proceeded to invest it on
every side. The Romans, cut off from all relief, and with no provisions, surrendered to Maharbal, who commanded the party sent against them. They were
brought to Hannibal: with the other prisoners taken in the battle, the whole
number amounted to 15,000. The general addressed them by an interpreter;
he told the soldiers who had surrendered to Maharbal, that their lives, if he
pleased, were still forfeited, for Maharbal had no authority to grant terms without his consent: then he proceeded with the vehemence often displayed by Napoleon in similar circumstances, to inveigh against the Roman government and
people, and concluded by giving all his Roman prisoners to the custody of the
several divisions of his army. Then he turned to the Italian allies: they Tiere
not his enemies, he said; on the contrary, he had invaded Italy to aid them in
casting off the yoke of Rome; he should still deal with them as he had treated
his Italian prisoners taken at the Trebia; they were frce from that moment, and
without ransom.62  This being done, he halted for a sho.t time to rest his army,
and buried with great solemnity thirty of the most distinguished of those who
had fallen on his own side in the battle. His whole loss had amounted only to
1500 men, of whom the greater part were Gauls. It is said also that he caused
careful search, but in vain, to be made for the body of the consul, Flaminius,
being anxious to give him honorable burial.63 So he acted afterwards to L..Emilius and to Marcellus; and these humanities are worthy of notice, as if he
had wished to show that, though his vow bound him to unrelenting enmity
towards the Romans while living, it was a pleasure to him to feel that he might
honor them when dead.
The army of Hannibal now broke up from the scene of its victory, and, leaving
Perusia unassailed, crossed the infant stream of the Tiber, and enHe ravages Umbria. tered upon the plains of Umbria. Here Maharbal, with the cavalry and light troops, obtained another victory over a party of some thousand
men, commanded by C. Centenius, and killed, took prisoners, or dispersed the
whole body.64  Then that rich plain, extending from the Tiber under Perusia to
Spoletum, at the foot of the Monte Somma, was laid waste by the Carthaginians
without mercy. The white oxen of the Clitumnus, so often offered in sacrifice to
the gods of Rome by her triumphant generals, were now the spoil of the enemy,
and were slaughtered on the altars of the gods of Carthage, amidst prayers for
the destruction of Rome. The left bank of the Tiber again heard the Gaulish
war-cry; and the terrified inhabitants fled to the mountains or into the fortified
cities from this unwonted storm of barbarian invasion. The figures and arms of
the Gauls, however formidable, might be familiar to many of the Umbrians; but
they gazed in wonder on the slingers from the Balearian islands, on the hardy
Spanish foot, conspicuous by their white linen coats bordered with scarlet;65 on
the regular African infantry, who had not yet exchanged their long lances and
small shields for the long shield and stabbing sword of the Roman soldier; on
the heavy cavalry, so numerous, and mounted on horses so superior to those of
Italy; above all, on the bands of wild Numidians, who rode without saddle or
bridle, as if the rider and his horse were one creature, and who scoured over the
country with a speed and impetuosity defying escape or resistance. Amidst such
a scene the colonists of Spoletum deserved well of their country, for shutting
their gates boldly, and not yielding to the general panic; and when the Numid62 Polybius, III. 85.                4 Polybius, III. 86.
63 Livy, XXII. 7. Compare Valerius Mtaxi- 6 Polybius, III. 114. Livy, XXII. 46.
nmus, V. 1, Ext. 6.




ï~~CHAP. XLIII.]

ROME ON HEARING OF THE BATTLE.

489

ian horsemen reined up their horses, and turned away from its well-manned walls,
the colonists, with an excusable boasting, might claim the glory of having repulsed
Hannibal."6
But Hannibal's way lay not over the Monte Somma, although its steep pass,
rising immediately behind Spoletum, was the last natural obstacle He marches into Apubetween him and Rome. Beyond that pass the country was full, ha.
not of Roman colonies merely, but of Roman citizens: he would soon have entered on the territory of the thirty-five Roman tribes, where every man whom he
would have met was his enemy. His eyes were fixed elsewhere: the south was
entirely open to him; the way to Apulia and Samnium was cleared of every impediment. He crossed the Apennines in the direction of Ancona, and invaded
Picenum: he then followed the coast of the Adriatic, through the country of the
Marrucinians and Frentanians, till he arrived in the northern part of Apulia, in
the country called by the Greeks Daunia.67 He advanced slowly and leisurely,
encamping after short marches, and spreading devastation far and wide: the
plunder of slaves, cattle, corn, wine, oil, and valuable property of every description, was almost more than the army could carry or drive along. The soldiers,
who, after their exhausting march from Spain ovcr the Alps, had ever since been
in active service, or in wretched quarters, and who from cold and the want of oil
for anointing the skin had suffered severely from scorbutic disorders, were now
revelling in plenty in a land of corn and olives and vines, where all good things
were in such abundance that the very horses of the army, so said report, were
bathed in old wines to improve their condition." Meanwhile, wherever the army
passed, all Romans or Latins, of an age to bear arms, were, by Hannibal's express orders, put to the sword.68 Many an occupier of domain land, many a
farmer of the taxes, or of those multiplied branches of revenue which the Roman
government possessed all over Italy, collectors of customs and port duties, surveyors and farmers of the forests, farmers of the mountain pastures, farmers of
the salt on the sea-coast, and of the mines in the mountains, were cut off by the
vengeance of the Carthaginians; and Rome, having lost thousands of her poorer
citizens in battle, and now losing hundreds of the richer classes in this exterminating march, lay bleeding at every pore.
But her spirit was invincible. When the tidings of the disaster of Thrasymenus reached the city, the people crowded to the Forum, and called
State of Rome on hearupon the magistrates to tell them the whole truth."  The prmtor  ioth enewfhebat
peregrinus, M. Pomponius Matho, ascended the rostra, and said tie.
to the assembled multitude, "We have been beaten in a great battle; our army
is destroyed; and C. Flaminius, the consul, is killed." Our colder temperaments
scarcely enable us to conceive the effect of such tidings on the lively feelings of
the people of the south, or to image to ourselves the cries, the tears, the hands
uplifted in prayer, or clenched in rage, the confused sounds of ten thousand
voices, giving utterance with breathless rapidity to their feelings of eager interest, of terror, of grief, or of fury.  All the northern gates of the city were beset
with crowds of wives and mothers, imploring every fresh fugitive from the fatal
field for some tidings of those most dear to them. The prmtors, M..Emilius and
M. Pomponius, kept the senate sitting for several days from sunrise to sunset,
without adjournment, in earnest consultation on the alarming state of their
country.
Peace was not thought of for a moment: nor was it proposed to withdraw a
single soldier from Spain, or Sicily, or Sardinia; but it was re- rFabius Maximus in ap.
solved that a dictator ought to be appointed, to secure unity of pointed dictator.
command. There had been no dictatorship for actual service since that of A.
Atilius Colatinus, two-and-thirty years before, in the disastrous consulship of
a6 Livy, XXII. 9.                       *' Polybius, III. 86.
67 Polybius, III. 86. Livy, XXII. 9.    o Polybius, III. 85. Livy, XXII. 7.
a Polybius, III. 87, 88.




ï~~490

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIIL

P. Claudius Pulcher and L. Junius Pullus. But it is probable that some jeal
ousy was entertained of the senate's choice, if, in the absence of the consul, On
Servilius, the appointment, according to ancient usage, had rested with them:
nor was it thought safe to leave the dictator to nominate his master of the horse.
Hence an unusual course was adopted: the centuries in their comitia elected
both the one and the other, choosing one from each of the two parties in the
state; the dictator, Q. Fabius Maximus, from one of the noblest, but at the same
time the most moderate families of the aristocracy, and himself a man of a nature
no less gentle than wise; the master of the horse, M. Minucius Rufus, as representing the popular party1
Religion in the mind of Q. Fabius was not a mere instrument for party purMeasures to propitiate poses: although he may have had little belief in its truth, he was
the gods.     convinced of its excellence, and that a reverence for the gods was
an essential element in the character of a nation, without which it must assuredly
degenerate. Therefore, on the very day that he entered on his office, he summoned the senate, and dwelling on the importance of propitiating the gods, moved
that the sibylline books should forthwith be consulted.2 They directed, among
other things, that the Roman people should vow to the gods what was called
"a holy spring;" that is to say, that every animal fit for sacrifice born in the
spring of that year, between the first day of March and the thirtieth of Apil,
and reared on any mountain or plain or river-bank or upland pasture throughout
Italy, should be offered to Jupiter."3 Extraordinary games were also vowed to
be celebrated in the Circus Maximus; prayers were put up at all the temples;
new temples were vowed to be built; and for three days those solemn sacrifices
were performed, in which the images of the gods were taken down from their
temples, and laid on couches richly covered, with tables full of meat and wine set
before them, in the sight of all the people, as if the gods could not but bless the
city where they had deigned to receive hospitality.
Then the dictator turned his attention to the state of the war. A long camPlan of Fabius for the paign was in prospect; for it was still so early in the season that
campaign,     the praetors had not yet gone out of their provinces; and Hannibal
was already in the heart of Italy. All measures were taken for the defence of
the country; even the walls and towers of Rome were ordered to be made good
against an attack. Bridges were to be broken down; the inhabitants of open
towns were to withdraw into places of security; and in the expected line of Hannibal's march, the country was to be laid waste before him, the corn destroyed,
and the houses burnt.74 This would probably be done effectually in the Roman
territory; but the allies were not likely to make such extreme sacrifices; and this
of itself was a reason why Hannibal did nbt advance directly upon Rome.
More than thirty thousand men, in killed and prisoners, had been lost to the
Romans in the late battle. The consul Cn. Servilius commanded
noman levies,  above thirty thousand in Cisalpine Gaul; and he Was now retreating in all haste, after having heard of the total defeat of his colleague. Two
new legions were raised, besides a large force out of the city tribes, which was
employed partly for the defence of Rome itself, and partly, as it consisted largely
of the poorer citizens, for the service of the fleet. This last indeed was become
a matter of urgent necessity; for the Carthaginian fleet was already on the Italian
coast, and had taken a whole convoy of corn-ships, off Cosa, in Etruria, carrying
supplies to the army in Spain; while the Roman ships, both in Sicily and at
Ostia, had not yet been launched after the winter.5  Now all the ships at Ostia
and in the Tiber were sent to sea in haste, and the consul On. Servilius commanded them; whilst the dictator and master of the horse, having added the
two newly raised legions to the consul's army, proceeded through Campania and
U Polybius, III. 87. Livy, XXII. 8.     4 Livy, XXII. 11.
7 Livy, XXII. 9.                       - Livy, XXII. 11.
1 Livy, XXII. 10.




ï~~CHAP XLIII.]

FABIUS FOLLOWS HANNIBAL.

491

Samnium into Apulia, and, with an army greatly superior in numbers, encamped
at the distance of about five or six miles from Hannibal."
Besides the advantage of numbers, the Romans had that of being regularly
and abundantly supplied with provisions. They had no occasion Hannibal ravagesSnnm
to scatter their forces in order to obtain subsistence; but keeping ninmn and enters cam
their army together, and exposing no weak point to fortune, they pana.
followed Hannibal at a certain distance, watched their opportunity to cut off his
detached parties, and above all, by remaining in the field with so imposing an
army, overawed the allies, and checked their disposition to revolt." Thus Hannibal, finding that the Apulians did not join him, recrossed the Apennines, and
moved through the country of the Hirpinians into that of the Caudinian Samnites.
But Beneventum, once a great Samnite city, was now a Latin colony; and its
gates were close shut against the invader.  Hannibal laid waste its territory with
fire and sword, then moved onwards under the south side of the Matese, and
took possession of Telesia, the native city of C. Pontius, but now a decayed and
defenceless town: thence descending the Calor to its junction with the Vulturnus,
and ascending the Vulturnus till he found it easily fordable, he finally crossed it
near Allife, and passing over the hills behind Calatia, descended by Cales into
the midst of the Falernian plain, the glory of Campania.T
Fabius steadily followed him, not descending into the plain, but keeping his
army on the hills above it, and watching all his movements. Again rains onow aim.
the Numidian cavalry were seen scouring the country on every
side; and the smoke of burning houses marked their track. The soldiers in the
Roman army beheld the sight with the greatest impatience: they were burning
for battle, and the master of the horse himself shared and encouraged the general feeling. But Fabius was firm in his resolution; he sent parties to secure
even the pass of Tarracina, lest Hannibal should attempt to advance by the Appian road upon Rome; he garrisoned Casilinum on the enemy's rear; the Vulturnus from Casilinum to the sea barred all retreat southwards; the colony of
Cales stopped the outlet from the plain by the Latin road; while from Cales to
Casilinum the hills formed an unbroken barrier, steep and wooded, the few paths
over which were already secured by the Roman soldiers.9  Thus Fabius thought
that Hannibal was caught as in a pitfall; that his escape was cut off, while his
army, having soon wasted its plunder, could not possibly winter where it was,
without magazines, and without a single town in its possession. For himself, he
had all the resources of Campania and Samnium on his rear; while on his right
the Latin road, secured by the colonies of Cales, Casinum, and Fregellm, kept
his communications with Rome open.
Hannibal, on his part, had no thought of wintering where he was; but he had
carefully husbanded his plunder, that it might supply his winter H.b,  ti  t
consumption, so that it was important to him to carry it off in escape the Roman
safety. He had taken many thousand cattle; and his army be- army.
sides was encumbered with its numerous prisoners, over and above the corn, wine,
oil, and other articles, which had been furnished by the ravage of one of the
richest districts in Italy. Finding that the passes in the hills between Cales and
the Vulturnus were occupied by the enemy, he began to consider how he could
surprise or force his passage without abandoning any of his plunder.  He first
thought of his numerous prisoners; and dreading lest in a night march they
should either escape or overpower their guards and join their countrymen in
attacking him, he commanded them all, to the number it is said of 5000 men, to
be put to the sword. Then he ordered 2000 of the stoutest oxen to be selected
from the plundered cattle, and pieces of split pine wood, or dry vine wood, to be
fastened to their horns. About two hours before midnight the drovers began to
76 Polybius, III. 88.              7 Polybius, III. 90. Livy, XXII. 18.
7 Polybius, III. 90. T(              Livy, XXII. 15.




ï~~492

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIIL

drive them straight to the hills, having first set on fire the bundles of wood about
their heads; while the light infantry following them till they began to run wild,
then made their own way to the hills, scouring the points just above the pass
occupied by the enemy. Hannibal then commenced his march; his African infantry led the way, followed by the cavalry; then came all the baggage; and
the rear was covered by the Spaniards and Gauls. In this order he followed
the road in the defile, by which he was to get out into the upper valley of the
Vulturnus, above Casilinum and the enemy's army.s
He found the way quite clear; for the Romans who had guarded it, seeing the
hills above them illuminated on a sudden with a multitude of movg s.ce.  ing lights, and nothing doubting that Hannibal's army was attempting to break out over the hills in. despair of forcing the road, quitted their position
in haste, and ran towards the heights to interrupt or embarrass his retreat. Meanwhile Fabius, with his main army, confounded at the strangeness of the sight,
and dreading lest Hannibal was tempting him to his ruin as he had tempted Flaminius, kept close within his camp till the morning. Day dawned only to show
him his own troops who had been set to occupy the defile, engaged on the hills
above with Hannibal's light infantry. But presently the Spanish foot were seen
scaling the heights to reinforce the enemy; and the Romans were driven down
to the plain with great loss and confusion; while the Spaniards and the light
troops, having thoroughly done their work, disappeared behind the hills, and
followed their main army.81 Thus completely successful, and leaving his shamed
and baffled enemy behind him, Hannibal no longer thought of returning to Apulia
by the most direct road, but resolved to extend his devastations still further
before the season ended. He mounted the valley of the Vulturnus towards Venafrum, marched from thence into Samnium, crossed the Apennines, and descended into the rich Pelignian plain by Sulmo, which yielded him an ample
harvest of plunder, and thence retracing his steps into Samnium, he finally returned to the neighborhood of his old quarters in Apulia.
The summer was far advanced; Hannibal had overrun the greater part of
His plan for the win- Italy: the meadows of the Clitumnus and the Vulturnus, and the
ter.         forest glades of the high Apennines, had alike seen their cattle
driven away by the invading army; the Falernian plain and the plain of Sulmo
had alike yielded their tribute of wine and oil; but not a single city had as yet
opened its gates to the conqueror, not a single state of Samnium had welcomed
him as its champion, under whom it might revenge its old wrongs against Rome.
Everywhere the aristocratical party had maintained its ascendency, and had repressed all mention of revolt from Rome. Hannibal's great experiment therefore
had hitherto failed. He knew that his single army could not conquer Italy; as
easily might king William's Dutch guards have conquered England: and six
months had brought Hannibal no fairer prospect of aid within the country itself,
than the first week after his landing in Torbay brought to king William. But
among Hannibal's greatest qualities was the patience with which he knew how
to abide his time; if one campaign had failed of its main object, another mujt be
tried; if the fidelity of the Roman allies had been unshaken by the disaster of
Thrasymenus, it must be tried by a defeat yet more fatal. Meantime he would
take undisputed possession of the best winter-quarters in Italy; his men would
be plentifully fed; his invaluable cavalry would have forage in abundance; and
this at no cost to Carthage, but wholly at the expense of the enemy. The point
which he fixed upon to winter at was the very edge of the Apulian plain, where
it joins the mountains: on one side was a boundless expanse of corn, intermixed
with open grass land, burnt up in summer, but in winter fresh and green; whilst
on the other side were the wide pastures of the mountain forests, where his numerous cattle might be turned out till the first snows of autumn fell. These were

0 Polybius, III. 93. Livy, XXII. 16, 17.

81 Polybius, III. 94. Livy, XXII. 18.




ï~~CHA. ALIII.]

UNPOPULARITY OF FABIUS.

493

as yet far distant; for the corn in the plain, although ripe, was still standing;
and the rich harvests of Apulia were to be gathered this year by unwonted
reapers.
Descending from Samnium, Hannibal accordingly appeared before the little
town of Geronium, which was situated somewhat more than twenty
miles northwest of the Latin colony of Luceria, in the immediate  o te  ium.
neighborhood of Larinum.8t The town, refusing to surrender, was taken, and the
inhabitants put to the sword; but the houses and walls were left standing, to
serve as a great magazine for the army; and the soldiers were quartered in a
regularly fortified camp without the town. Here Hannibal posted himself; and,
keeping a third part of his men under arms to guard the camp and to cover his
foragers, he sent out the other two-thirds to gather in all the corn of the surrounding country, or to pasture his cattle on the adjoining mountains. In this
manner the storehouses of Geronium were in a short time filled with corn.
Meanwhile the public mind at Rome was strongly excited against the dictator.
He seemed like a man who, having played a cautious game, at Uuryofai
last makes a false move, and is beaten; his slow defensive system,pop,
unwelcome in itself, seemed rendered contemptible by Hannibal's triumphant
escape from the Falernian plain. But here too Fabius showed a patience worthy
of all honor. Vexed as he must have been at his failure in Campania, he still
felt sure that his system was wise; and again he followed Hannibal into Apulia,
and encamped, as before, on the high grounds in his neighborhood. Certain religious offices called him at this time to Rome; but he charged Minucius to observe his system strictly, and on no account to risk a battle.83
The master of the horse conducted his operations wisely: he advanced his
camp to a projecting ridge of hills, immediately above the plain, HMinuociusa doptsa boldand sending out his cavalry and light troops to cut off Hannibal's oer system.
foragers, obliged the enemy to increase his covering force, and to restrict the
range of his harvesting. On one occasion he cut off a great number of the foragers, and even advanced to attack Hannibal's camp, which, owing to the necessity of detaching so many men all over the country, was left with a very inferior
force to defend it. The return of some of the foraging parties obliged the Romans to retreat; but Minucius was greatly elated, and sent home very encouraging reports of his success.84
The feeling against Fabius could no longer be restrained. Minucius had known
how to manage his system more ably than he had done himself; His authority is mado
such merit at such a crisis deserved to be rewarded; nor was it equal to the dictator's.
fit that the popular party should continue to be deprived of its share in the conduct of the war. Even among his own party Fabius was not universally popular: he had magnified himself and his system somewhat offensively, and had
spoken too harshly of the blunders of former generals. Thus it does not appear
that the aristocracy offered any strong resistance to a bill brought forward by
the tribune M. Metilius, for giving the master of the horse power equal to the
dictator's. The bill was strongly supported by C. Terentius Varro, who had been
prator in the preceding year, and was easily carried.85
The dictator and master of the horse now divided the army between them,
and encamped apart, at more than a mile's distance from each other. He is routed, and FaTheir want of co-operation was thus notorious; and Hannibal was bias  saveshim.
not slow to profit by it. He succeeded in tempting Minucius to an engagement
on his own ground; and having concealed about 5000 men in some ravines and
hollows close by, he called them forth in the midst of the action to fall on the
enemy's rear. The rout of the Trebia was well-nigh repeated; but Fabius was
near enough to come up in time to the rescue; and his fresh legions checked the

Polybius, III. 100. Livy, XXII. 23.
P Polybius, III. 94. Livy, XXII. 18.

1 Polybius, III. 101, 102. Livy, XXII. 84.
1 Polybius, III. 108. Livy, XXII. 25, 26.




ï~~494

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIIL

pursuit of the conquerors, and enabled the broken Romans lo rally.  Still the
loss already sustained was severe; and it was manifest that Fabius had saved his
colleague from total destruction. Minucius acknowledged this generously: he
instantly gave up his equal and separate command, and placed himself and his
army under the dictator's orders.86 The rest of the season passed quietly; and
the dictator and master of the horse resigning their offices as usual at the end of
six months, the army during the winter was put under the command of the consuls; Cn. Servilius having brought home and laid up the fleet, which he had
commanded during the summer, and M. Atilius Regulus having been elected to
fill the place of Flaminius.
Meanwhile the elections for the following year were approaching; and it was
state of feeog at evident that they would be marked by severe party struggles.
Rome.         The mass of the Roman people were impatient of the continuance
of the war in Italy; not only the poorer citizens, wDm it obliged to constant
military service through the winter, and with no prospect of plunder, but still
more perhaps the moneyed classes, whose occupation as farmers of the revenue
was so greatly curtailed by Hannibal's army. Again, the occupiers of domain
lands in remote parts of Italy could get no returns from their property; the
wealthy graziers, who fed their cattle on the domain pastures, saw their stock
carried off to furnish winter provisions for the enemy. Besides, if Hannibal were
allowed to be unassailable in the field, the allies, sooner or later, must be expected to join him; they would not sacrifice every thing for Rome, if Rome could
neither protect them nor herself. The excellence of the Roman infantry was
undisputed: if ith equal numbers they could not conquer Hannibal's veterans,
let their numbers be increased, and they must overwhelm him. These were, no
doubt, the feelings of many of the nobility themselves, as well as of the majority
of the people; but they were imbittered by party animosity: the aristocracy, it
was said, seemed bent on throwing reproach on all generals of the popular party,
as if none but themselves were fit to conduct the war; Minucius himself had
yielded to this spirit by submitting to be commanded by Fabius, when the law
had made him his equal: one consul, at least, must be chosen, who would act
firmly for himself and for the people; and such a man, to whdse merits the bitter hatred of the aristocratical party bore the best testimony, was to be found in
C. Terentius Varro.7
Varro, his enemies said, was a butcher's son; nay, it was added, that he had
A. U. c. s538. A. c. himself been a butcher's boy,88 and had only been enabled by the
1.new  Ecsti:o n odw icthief
ne conslet:.aoftn fortune which his father had left him to throw aside his ignoble
Emilius aunu.  calling, and to aspire to public offices. So Cromwell was called
a brewer; but Varro had been successively elected quaestor, plebeian and curule
edile, and prator, while we are not told that he was ever tribune; and it is
without example in Roman history, that a mere demagogue, of no family, with
no other merits, civil or military, should be raised to such nobility. Varro was
eloquent, it is true; but eloquence alone would scarcely have so recommended
him; and if in his prretorship, as is probable, he had been one of the two home
prietors, he must have possessed a competent knowledge of law. Besides, even
after his defeat at Cannae, he was employed for several years in various important
offices, civil and military; which would never have been the case had he been
the mere factious braggart that historians have painted him. The aristocracy
tried in vain to prevent his election: he was not only returned consul, but he was
returned alone, no other candidate obtaining a sufficient number of votes to entitle him to the suffrage of a tribe.89 Thus he held the comitia for the election
of his colleague; and considering the great influence exercised by the magistrate
so presiding, it is creditable to him, and to the temper of the people generally,
" Polybius, III. 104, 105. Livy, XXI. 28,  s Valerius Maximus, III. 4, 4.
39. Plutarch, Fabius, 18.              09 Livy, XXII. 35.
I Livy, XXII. 84.




ï~~OAP. XLIII.]

HANNIBAL.

495

that the other consul chosen was L. zEmilius Paullus, who was not only a known
partisan of the aristocracy, but having been consul three years before, had been
brought to trial for an alleged misappropriation of the plunder taken in the Illyrian
war, and, although acquitted, was one of the most unpopular men in Rome. Yet
he was known to be a good soldier; and the people, having obtained the election
of Varro, did not object to gratify the aristocracy by accepting the candidate of
their choice.
No less moderate and impartial was the temper shown in the elections of preetors. Two of the four were decidedly of the aristocratical party, New prtors.
M. Marcellus and L. Postumius Albinus; the other two,were also  prt.
men of consular rank, and no way known as opponents of the nobility, P. Furius
Philus and M. Pomponius Matho. The two latter were to have the home pretorships; Marcellus was to command the fleet, and take charge of the southern
coast of Italy; L. Postumius was to watch the frontier of Cisalpine Gaul.
The winter and spring passed without any military events of importance. Servilius and Regulus retained their command as proconsuls for some osion oe armies
time after their successors had come into office; but nothing beyond occasional skirmishes took place between them and the enemy. Hannibal
was at Geronium, maintaining his army on the supplies which he had so carefully
collected in the preceding campaign: the consuls apparently were posted a little
to the southward, receiving their supplies from the country about Canusium, and
immediately from a-large magazine, which they had established at the small town
of Canne, near the Aufidus.90
Never was Hannibal's genius more displayed than during this long period of
inactivity. More than half of his army consisted of Gauls, of all
Wisdom shown by
barbarians the most impatient and uncertain in their humor, whose Hibl during the
fidelity, it was said, could only be secured by an ever open hand; winter.
no man was their friend any longer than he could gorge them with pay or plunder. Those of his soldiers who were not Gauls were either Spaniards or Africans; the Spaniards were the newly conquered subjects of Carthage, strangers
to her ras and language, and accustomed to divide their lives between actual
battle and the most listless bodily indolence; so that, when one of their tribes
first saw the habits of a Roman camp, and observed the centurions walking up
and down before the prmtorium for exercise, the Spaniards thought them mad,
and ran up to guide them to their tents, thinking that he who was not fighting
could do nothing but lie at his ease and enjoy himself.9" Even the Africans were
foreigners to Carthage: they were subjects harshly governed, and had been engaged within the last twenty years in a war of extermination with their masters.
Yet the long inactivity of winter-quarters, trying to the discipline of the best
national armies, was borne patiently by Hannibal's soldiers: there was neither
desertion nor mutiny amongst them; even the fickleness of the Gauls seemed
spell-bound; they remained steadily in their camp in Apulia, neither going home
to their own country, nor over to the enemy. On the contrary, it seems that
fresh bands of Gauls must have joined the Carthaginian army after the battle of
Thrasymenus, and the retreat of the Roman army from Ariminum. For the
Gauls and the Spaniards and the Africans were overpowered by the ascendency
of Hannibal's character: under his guidance they felt themselves invincible: with
such a general the yoke of Carthage might seem to the Africans and Spaniards
the natural dominion of superior beings; in such a champion the Gauls beheld
the appointed instrument of their country's gods to lead them once more to assault the capitol.
Silanus, the Greek historian, was living with Hannibal daily;92 and though not
intrusted with his military and political secrets, he must have seen
and known him as a man; he must have been familiar with his Sia.

0 Polybius, III. 107.
91 Strabo, p. 164.

92 Nepos, Hannib. c. XIII.




ï~~496

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XLII1

habits of life, and must have heard his conversation in those unrestrained moments
when the lightest words of great men display the character of their minds so
strikingly. His work is lost to us; but had it been worthy of his opportunities,
anecdotes from it must have been quoted by other writers, and we should know
what Hannibal was. Then, too, the generals who were his daily companions
would be something more to us than names: we should know Maharbal, the best
cavalry officer of the finest cavalry service in the world: and Hasdrubal, who
managed the commissariat of the army for so many years in an enemy's country;
and Hannibal's young brother, Mago, so full of youthful spirit and enterprise,
who commanded the ambush at the battle of the Trebia. We might learn something, too, of that Hannibal, surnamed the Fighter, who was the general's counsellor, ever prompting him, it was said, to deeds of savage cruelty,"3 but whose
counsels Hannibal would not have listened to, had they been merely cruel, had
they not breathed a spirit of deep devotion to the cause of Carthage, and of
deadly hatred to Rome, such as possessed the heart of Hannibal himself. But
Silanus saw and heard without heeding or recording; and on the tent and camp
of Hannibal there hangs a veil, which the fancy of the poet may penetrate; but
the historian turns away in deep disappointment; for to him it yields neither
sight nor sound.
Spring was come, and well-nigh departing; and in the warm plains of Apulia
the corn was ripening fast, while Hannibal's winter supplies were
Openiog of the com
cain;. Hibatk e now nearly exhausted. He broke up from his camp before Gerocanne.       nium, descended into the Apulian plains, and whilst the Roman
army was still in its winter position, he threw himself on its rear, and surprised its
great magazine at Canne.94 The citadel of Canne was a fortress of some strength;
this, accordingly, he occupied, and placed himself, on the very eve of harvest,
between the Roman army and its expected resources; while he secured to himself
all the corn of southern Apulia. It was only in such low and warm situations
that the corn was nearly ready; the higher country, in the immediate neighborhood of Apulia, is cold and backward; and the Romans were under the necessity
of receiving their supplies from a great distance, or else of retreating, or of offering battle. Under these circumstances the proconsuls sent to Rome, to ask what
they were to do.
The turning point of this question lay in the disposition of the allies. We cannot doubt that Hannibal had been busy during the winter in soundTho Roman army.  ing their feelings; and now it appeared that, if Italy was to be
ravaged by the enemy for a second summer without resistance, their patience
would endure no longer. The Roman government therefore resolved to risk a
battle; but they sent orders to the proconsuls to wait till the consuls should join
them with their newly raised army; for a battle being resolved upon, the senate
hoped to secure success by an overwhelming superiority of numbers. We do not
exactly know the proportion of the new levies to the old soldiers; but when the
two consuls arrived on the scene of action, and took the supreme command of
the whole army, there were no fewer than eight Roman legions under their
orders, with an equal force of allies; so that the army opposed to Hannibal must
have amounted to 90,000 men.95 It was evident that so great a multitude could
not long be fed at a distance from its resources; and thus a speedy engagement
was inevitable.
But the details of the movements by which the two armies were brought in
Varro resolves to bring presence of each other on the banks of the Aufidus, are not easy
on abattle,  to discover. It appears that the Romans, till the arrival of the
new consuls, had not ventured to follow Hannibal closely; for when they did
follow him, it took them two days' march to arrive in his neighborhood, where
they encamped at about six miles distance from him."6 They found him on the

3 Polybius, IX. 24, 5.
4 Polybius, III. 107.

I' Polybius, III. 107.
01 Polybius, III. 110.




ï~~CHAr. XLIII.J

MAN(EUVRES AND SKIRMISHES.

497

left bank of the Aufidus, about eight or nine miles from the sea, and busied,
probably, in collecting the corn from the early district on the coast, the season
being about the middle of June. The country here was so level and open, that
the consul, L. iEmilius, was unwilling to approach the enemy more closely, but
wished to take a position on the hilly ground further from the sea, and to bring
on the action there.9" But Varro, impatient for battle, and having the supreme
command of the whole army alternately with zEmilius every other day, decided
the question irrevocably on the very next day, by interposing himself between
the enemy and the sea, with his left resting on the Aufidus, and his right communicating with the town of Salapia.
From this position.Amilius, when he again took the command in chief, found
it impossible to withdraw. But availing himself of his great supe-,i  crosses tho
riority in numbers, he threw a part of his army across the river, Auddus.
and posted them in a separate camp on the right bank, to have the supplies of
the country south of the Aufidus at command, and to restrain the enemy's parties who might attempt to forage in that direction. When Hannibal saw the
Romans in this situation, he also advanced nearer to them, descending the left
bank of the Aufidus, and encamped over against the main army of the enemy,
with his right resting on the river.
The next day, which, according to the Roman calendar, was the last of the
month Quinctilis, or July, the Roman reckoning being six or seven Preparatory....
weeks in advance of the true season, Hannibal was making his vres and akirm a e.
preparations for battle, and did not stir from his camp; so that Varro, whose
command it was, could not bring on an action. But on the first of Sextilis, or
August, Hannibal being now quite ready, drew out his army in front of his camp
and offered battle..AEmilius, however, remained quiet, resolved not to fight on
such ground, and hoping that Hannibal would soon be obliged to fall back nearer
the hills, when he found that he could no longer forage freely in the country near
the sea." Hannibal, seeing that the enemy did not move, marched back his infantry into his camp, but sent his Numidian cavalry across the river to attack the
Romans on that side, as they were coming down in straggling parties to the bank
to get water. For the Aufidus, though its bed is deep and wide, to hold its
winter floods, is a shallow or a narrow stream in summer, with many points easily
fordable, not by horse only, but by infantry. The watering parties were driven
in with some loss, and the Numidians followed them to the very gates of the
camp, and obliged the Romans, on the right bank, to pass the summer night in
the burning Apulian plain without water.
At daybreak on the next morning, the red ensign, which was the well-known
signal for battle, was seen flying over Varro's head-quarters;99 Hannibaldraws outhis
and he issued orders, it being his day of command, for the main army.
army to cross the river, and form in order of battle on the right bank. Whether
he had any further object in crossing to the right bank, than to enable the soldiers on that side to get water in security, we do not know; but Hannibal, it
seems, thought that the ground on either bank suited him equally; and he too
forded the stream at two separate points, and drew out his army opposite to the
enemy. The strong town of Canusium was scarcely three miles off in his rear;
he had left his camp on the other side of the river; if he were defeated, escape
seemed hopeless. But when he saw the wide, open plain around him, and looked
at his numerous and irresistible cavalry, and knew that his infantry, however
inferior in numbers, were far better and older soldiers than the great mass of
their opponents, he felt that defeat was impossible. In this confidence his spirits
were not cheerful merely, but even mirthful; he rallied one of his officers jestingly, who noticed the overwhelming numbers of the Romans; those near him
SPolybius, III. 110.                  8 Plutarch, Fabius, 15.
' Polybius, III. 111. Livy, XXII. 45.
32




ï~~498

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIII

laughed; and as any feeling at such a moment is contagious, the laugh was
echoed by others; and the soldiers, seeing their great general in such a mood,
were satisfied that he was sure of victory.'0
The Carthaginian army faced the north, so that the early sun shone on their.itposiion.  right flank, while the wind, which blew strong from the south,
but without a drop of rain, swept its clouds of dust over their
backs, and carried them full into the faces of the enemy.'0' On their left, resting
on the river, were the Spanish and Gaulish horse; next in the line, but thrown
back a little, were half of the African infantry armed like the Romans; on their
right, somewhat in advance, were the Gauls and Spaniards, with their companies
intermixed; then came the rest of the African foot, again thrown back like their
comrades; and on the right of the whole line were the Numidian light horsemen.102  The right of the army rested, so far as appears, on nothing; the ground
was open and level; but at some distance were hills overgrown with copsewood,
and furrowed with deep ravines, in which, according to one account of the battle,
a body of horsemen and of light infantry lay in ambush. The rest of the light
troops, and the Balearian slingers, skirmished as usual in front of the whole line.
Meanwhile the masses of the Roman infantry were forming their line opposite.
That of the Roman The sun on their left flashed obliquely on their brazen helmets,
army,         now uncovered for battle, and lit up the waving forest of their red
and black plumes, which rose upright from their helmets a foot and a half
high.
They stood brandishing their formidable pila, covered with their long shields,
and bearing on their right thigh their peculiar and fatal weapon, the heavy
sword, fitted alike to cut and to stab.103  On the right of the line were the Roman legions; on the left the infantry of the allies; while between the Roman
right and the river were the Roman horsemen, all of them of wealthy or noble
families; and on the left, opposed to the Numidians, were the horsemen of the
Italians and of the Latin name. The velites or light infantry covered the front,
and were ready to skirmish with the light troops and slingers of the enemy.
For some reason or other, which is not explained in any account of the battle,
the Roman infantry were formed in columns rather than in line,
drawn up in columns.
drawnpinolum. the files of the maniples containing many more than their ranks.10
This seems an extraordinary tactic to be adopted in a plain by an army inferior
in cavalry, but very superior.-in infantry. Whether the Romans relied on the
river as a protection to their right flank, and their left was covered in some manner which is not mentioned,-one account would lead us to suppose that it
reached nearly to the sea,5-or whether the great proportion of new levies
obliged the Romans to adopt the system of the phalanx, and to place their raw
soldiers in the rear, as incapable of fighting in the front ranks with Hannibal's

300 Plutarch, Fabius, 15. Elrdero; a rvos rWv
rcpi abrav Av pa  oortpou, roivora 'TLeKvo, hs Oavpaarbv avr_ cavtrat rI,r)Oos try 7roo}spv avvayay v vr.rpoawrov S Avvt/3as, " irepov," Errav, "
rtiKwv,.;\nOf or rovro  Oavpaactdrpov."   'Epojivov I ro   ricawvos  " To rolov'  ""Or" Â~ 1
" TOUTS Vr aro  'roeodrcov, ooelr iSv avrOL T'rlKv
Karerat."  FrevophEov & d rao   elf a  aroL  ro
CKrpparos iertTrie yAws rarftcr  cai cari/avov dro
To l A\ov roLs dravrWov id r Ti7rracypt ov drrayyaovre~, oare ISa roXAev rohAv 7vacT rv yA ra,cai [abl' ava&at3rhv avrob  dvaacat rob srrpi 'AvvÂ~-:3av. Toe ro  rIo Kapox ovio sieoat Odr9epos,rapgrr,
A) t ovoes aro roXAo Kai ioapo   ro I araopovovroU TOErtvac yscfv orT to.caL raietv rr  arparnyqi
sraa rT Ktridvvvov.
SLivy, XXII. 46. Plutarch, Fabius, 16.
1Â~02 Polybius, III. 113. Livy, XXII. 46.
Â~s Polybius, III. 114. Livy, XXII. 45.
04 Polybius, III. 118. rotv roXXaIdTov v rO dSo* iv rat  ripacs rob r rdwrov. Raleigh suggests

that " this had been found convenient against
the Carthaginians in the former war. It was
indeed no bad way of resistance against elephants, to make the ranks thick and short, but
the files long, as also to strengthen well the
rear, that it might stand fast compacted as a
wall, under shelter whereof the disordered
troops might rally themselves. Thus much, it
seems, that Terentius had learned of some old
soldiers; and therefore he now ordered his battles accordingly, as meaning to show more skill
than was in his understanding. But the Carthaginians had here no elephants with them
in the field: their advantage was in horse,
against which this manner of imbattailing was
very unprofitable, forasmuch as their charge
is better sustained in front, than upon a long
flank."
105 Appian, VII. 21.  of rI Xadt  iaoOvris ix
rid aXdyeo.




ï~~CnAP. XLIII.]

BATTLE OF CANN1E.

veterans,-it appears at any rate that the Roman infantry, though nearly double the
number of the enemy, yet formed a line of only equal length with Hannibal's.
The skirmishing of the light-armed troops preluded as usual to the battle: the
Balearian slingers slung their stones like hail into the ranks of the Defeat of the Roma
Roman line, and severely wounded the consul.JEmilius himself. cavalry.
Then the Spanish and Gaulish horse charged the Romans front to front, and
maintained a standing fight with them, many leaping off their horses and fighting
on foot, till the Romans, outnumbered and badly armed, without cuirasses, with
light and brittle spears, and with shields made only of ox-hide, were totally
routed, and driven off the field.16 Hasdrubal, who commanded the Gauls and
Spaniards, followed up his work effectually; he chased the Romans along the
river till he had almost destroyed them; and then, riding off to the right, he
came up to aid the Numidians, who, after their manner, had been skirmishing
indecisively with the cavalry of the Italian allies. These, on seeing the Gauls
and Spaniards advancing, broke away and fled; the Numidians, most effective in
pursuing a flying enemy, chased them with unweariable speed, and slaughtered
them unsparingly; while Hasdrubal, to complete his signal services on this day,
charged fiercely upon the rear of the Roman infantry.
He found its huge masses already weltering in helpless confusion, crowded
upon one another, totally disorganized, and fighting each ran as ot o my.
he best could, but struggling on against all hope by mere indom-of the whle army.
itable courage. For the Roman columns on the right and left, finding the Gaulish and Spanish foot advancing in a convex line or wedge, pressed forwards to
assail what seemed the flanks of the enemy's column; so that, being already
drawn up with too narrow a front by their original formation, they now became
compressed still more by their own movements, the right and left converging towards the centre, till the whole army became one dense column, which forced its
way onwards by the weight of its charge, and drove back the Gauls and Spaniards into the rear of their own line. Meanwhile its victorious advance had carried it, like the English column at Fontenoy, into the midst of Hannibal's army;
it had passed between the African infantry on its right and left; and now, whilst
its head was struggling against the 'Gauls and Spaniards, its long flanks were
fiercely assailed by the Africans, who, facing about to the right and left, charged
it home, and threw it into utter disorder. In this state, when they were forced
together into one unwieldy crowd, and already falling by thousands, whilst the
Gauls and Spaniards, now advancing in their turn, were barring further progress
in front, and whilst the Africans were tearing their mass to pieces on both flanks,
Hasdrubal with his victorious Gaulish and Spanish horsemen broke with thundering fury upon their rear. Then followed a butchery such as has no recorded
equal, except the slaughter of the Persians in their camp, when the Greeks forced
it after the battle of Platma. Unable to fight or fly, with no quarter asked or
given, the Romans and Italians fell before the swords of their enemies, till, when
the sun set upon the field, there were left out of that vast multitude no more than
three thousand men alive and unwounded; and these fled in straggling parties,
under cover of the darkness, and found a refuge in the neighboring towns.'7 The
consul zEmilius, the proconsul On. Servilius, the late master of the horse M.
Minucius, two questors, twenty-one military tribunes, and eighty senators, lay
dead amidst the carnage; Varro with seventy horsemen had escaped from the
rout of the allied cavalry on the right of the army, and made his way safely to
Venusia.
But the Roman loss was not yet completed. A large force had been left in
the camp on the left bank of the Aufidus, to attack Hannibal's
camp during the action, which it was supposed that, with his Ct  f t ap.
inferior numbers, he could not leave adequately guarded. But it was defended

Ns Polyb. III. 115. Livy, XXII. 47.

o7 Polybius, III. 116. Livy, XXII, 49.




ï~~500

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XLIV

so obstinately, that the Romans were still besieging it in vain, when Hannibal,
now completely victorious in the battle, crossed the river to its relief. Then the
besiegers fled in their turn to their own camp, and there, cut off from all succor,
they presently surrendered. A few resolute men had forced their way out of
the smaller camp on the right bank, and had escaped to Canusium; the rest who
were in it followed the example of their comrades on the left bank, and surrendered to the conqueror.
Less than six thousand men of Hannibal's army had fallen: no greater price
o  e ae  had he paid for the total destruction of more than eighty thouSofhebattle  sand of the enemy, for the capture of their two camps, for the utter
annihilation, as it seemed, of all their means for offensive warfare. It is no
wonder that the spirits of the Carthaginian officers were elated by this unequalled
victory. Maharbal, seeing what his cavalry had done, said to Hannibal, "Let
me advance instantly with the horse, and do thou follow to support me; in four
days from this time thou shalt sup in the capitol."'t  There are moments when
rashness is wisdom; and it may be that this was one of them. The statue of
the goddess Victory in the capitol may well have trembled in every limb on that
day, and have dropped her wings, as if forever, but Hannibal came not; and if
panic had for one moment unnerved the iron courage of the Roman aristocracy,
on the next their inborn spirit revived; and their resolute will, striving beyond
its present power, created, as is the law of our nature, the power which it required.
CHAPTER XLIV.
PROGRESS OF THE WAR IN ITALY AFTER THE BATTLE OF CANNE---REVOLT
OF CAPUA, AND OF THE PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN ITALY, TO HANNIBALGREAT EXERTIONS OF THE ROMANS-SURPRISE OF TARENTUM-SIEGE OF
CAPUA-HANNIBAL MARCHES ON ROME-REDUCTION AND PUNISHMENT OF
CAPUA.-A. U. C. 538 TO 548.
FROM New Carthage to the plains of Canne, Hannibal's march resembled a
Change in the chara- mighty torrent, which, rushing along irresistible and undivided,
er of the war.  fixes our attention to the one line of its course: all other sights
and sounds in the landscape are forgotten, while we look on the rush of the vast
volume of waters, and listen to their deep and ceaseless roar. Therefore I have
not wished to draw away the reader's attention to other objects, but to keep it
fixed upon the advance of Hannibal. But from Cannme onwards the character
of the scene changes. The single torrent, joined by a hundred lesser streams,
has now swelled into a wide flood, overwhelming the whole valley; and the
principal object of our interest is the one rock, now islanded amid the waters,
and on which they dashed furiously on every side, as though they must needs
sweep it away. But the rock stands unshaken: the waters become feebler; and
their streams are again divided: and the flood shrinks; and the rock rises higher
and higher; and the danger is passed away. In the next part of the second
Punic war, our attention will be mainly fixed on Rome, as it has hitherto been on
Hannibal. But in order to value aright the mightiness of her energy, we must
consider the multitude of her enemies; how all southern Italy, led by Hannibal,
struggled with her face to face; how Sicily and Macedon struck at her from be
4 Livy, XXII. 51.




ï~~CHAP. XLIV.1

MEASURES OF THE SENATE.

501

hind; how Spain supplied arms to her most dangerous enemy. Yet her policy
and her courage were everywhere: Sicily was struck to the earth by one blow;
Macedon obliged to defend himself against his nearer enemies; the arms which
Spain was offering to Hannibal were torn out of his grasp; revolted Italy was
crushed to pieces; and the great enemy, after all his forces were dispersed and
destroyed, was obliged, like Hector, to fight singly under his country's walls, and
to fall like Hector, with the consolation of" having done mighty deeds, to be
famed in after ages."
The Romans, knowing that their army was in presence of the enemy, and that
the consuls had been ordered no longer to decline a battle, were The news of the defeat
for some days in the most intense anxiety. Every tongue was reaches Rome.
repeating some line of old prophecy, or relating some new wonder or portent;
every temple was crowded with supplicants; and incense and sacrifices were
offered on every altar. At last the tidings arrived of the utter destruction of
both the consular armies, and of a slaughter such as Rome had never before known.
Even Livy felt himself unable adequately to paint the grief and consternation of
that day;' and the experience of the bloodiest and most imbittered warfare of
modern times would not help us to conceive it worthily. But one simple fact
speaks eloquently: the whole number of Roman citizens able to bear arms had
amounted at the last census to 270,000; and supposing, as we fairly may, that
the loss of the Romans in the late battle had been equal to that of their allies,
there must have been killed or taken, within the last eighteen months, no fewer
than 60,000, or more than a fifth part of the whole population of citizens abcve
seventeen years of age. It must have been true, without exaggeration, that every
house in Rome was in mourning.
The two home praetors summoned the senate to consult for the defence of the
city. Fabius was no longer dictator; yet the supreme govern- Measures taken by the
ment at this moment was effectually in his hands; for the reso- senate.
lutions which he moved were instantly and unanimously adopted. Light-horsemen were to be sent out to gather tidings of the enemy's movements; the members of the senate, acting as magistrates, were to keep order in the city, to stop
all loud or public lamentatipns, and to take care that all intelligence was conveyed in the first instance to the praetors: above all, the city gates were to be
strictly guarded, that no one might attempt to fly from Rome, but all abide the
common danger together.3 Then the Forum was cleared, and the assemblies of
the people suspended; for at such a moment had any one tribune uttered the
word "peace," the tribes would have caught it up with eagerness, and obliged
the senate to negotiate.
Thus the first moments of panic passed; and Varro's dispatches arrived, informing the senate that he had rallied the wrecks of the army at Ca- Arrival of dispatches
nusium, and that Hannibal was not advancing upon Rome.' Hope from varro.
then began to revive; the meetings of the senate were resumed, and measures
taken for maintaining the war.
lMi. Marcellus, one of the praetors for the year, was at this moment at Ostia,
preparing to sail to Sicily. It was resolved to transfer him at Marcellus is sent into
once to the great scene of action in Apulia; and he was ordered Apulia.
to give up the fleet to his colleague, P. Furius Philus, and to march with the
single legion which he had under his command into Apulia, there to collect the
remains of Varro's army, and to fall back as he best could into Campania, while
the consul returned immediately to Rome.'
In the mean time the scene at Canusium was like the disorder of a ship going
to pieces, when fear makes men desperate, and the instinct of self- varrosman
preservation swallows up every other feeling.  Some young men
1 Livy, XXII. 54.                4 Livy, XXII. 56.
SLivy, Epit. XX.                 * Livy, XXII. 57. Plutarch, Marcellus, 9.
' Livy, XXII. 55.




ï~~502

IIISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIV

of the noblest families, a Metellus being at the head of them, looking upon Rome
as lost, were planning to escape from the ruin, and to fly beyond sea, in the hope
of entering into some foreign service. Such an example at such a moment would
have led the way to a general panic: if the noblest citizens of Rome despaired
of their country, what allied state, or what colony, could be expected to sacrifice themselves in defence of a hopeless cause?  The consul exerted himself to
the utmost to check this spirit, and aided by some firmer spirits amongst the
officers themselves, he succeeded in repressing it.6 He kept his men together,
gave them over to the prmtor Marcellus, on his arrival at Canusium, and prepared instantly to obey the orders of the senate by returning to Rome. The fate
of P. Claudius and L. Junius in the last war might have warned him of the
dangers which threatened a defeated general; he himself was personally hateful
to the prevailing party at Rome; and if the memory of Flaminius was persecuted,
notwithstanding his glorious death, what could he look for, a fugitive general
from that field where his colleague and all his soldiers had perished?  Demosthenes dared not trust himself to the Athenian people after his defeat in.Etolia;
but Varro, with a manlier spirit, returned to bear the obloquy and the punishment
which the popular feeling, excited by party animosity, was so likely to heap on him.
He stopped, as usual, without the city walls, and summoned the senate to meet
him in the Campus Martius.
The senate felt his confidence in them, and answered it nobly. All party feelThe senate thanhim ing was suspended; all popular irritation was subdued; the
butcher's son, the turbulent demagogue, the defeated general,
were all forgotten; only Varro's latest conduct was remembered, that he had
resisted the panic of his officers, and, instead of seeking shelter at the court of a
foreign king, had submitted himself to the judgment of his countrymen. The
senate voted him their thanks, "because he had not despaired of the commonwealth."'
It was resolved to name a dictator; and some writers related that the general
voice of the senate and people offered the dictatorship to Varro
A dictator appointed. himself, but that he positively refused to accept it.' This story
is extremely doubtful; but the dictator actually named was M. Junius Pisa, a
member of a popular family, and who had himself been consul and censor. His
master of the horse was T. Sempronius Gracchus, the first of that noble but illfated name who appears in the Roman annals.9
Already, before the appointment of the dictator, the Roman government had
The senate refuses to shown that its resolution was fixed to carry on the war to the death.
ransom the prisoners. Hannibal had allowed his Roman prisoners to send ten of their
number to Rome to petition that the senate would permit the whole body to be

6 The author would, doubtless, have explained his reasons for ascribing the suppression of this conspiracy to leave Italy to Varro.
By Livy, XXII. 53, by Valerius Maximus, V.
6, 7, by Dion, Fragm. Peiresc. XLIX., it is attributed to Scipio. See also Silius Italicus, X.
426, fol. It is somewhat remarkable that Polybius makes no mention of the fact, either in
the account of the battle of Cannm, or in the
character of Scipio, X. 1-6, where he speaks of
Scipio's early exploits.  According to Livy,
with whose accounts Dion's concurs, the fugitives at Canusium were headed by four tribunes, who voluntarily submitted to the commancd of Scipio and Appius Claudius, two of
their number; and Sciplo, by a characteristic
act of youthful heroism, stifled the plot. Meanwhile Varro is represented to have been at Venusia. Appian's account, too, VII. 26, though
differing as to the order of the events; and
plainly inaccurate-since it makes Varro resign the command to Scipio, instead of Mar
cellus, when he went to Rome-implies that
Scipio distinguished himself at Canusium.
Dion's statement is the more trustworthy, as
he did not join in the cry against Varro, but
speaks with high praise of his conduct after the
defeat.  'Et ri Kavctov iOOdv rdT rÂ~   vraiOa
r ataro, ral roie l T ret toxot  povppc i  Fi
r& v rap6ereav hr84, Tpecrfd~eiovrdt icT  n; 7r,6s
senira$, anepk;ieraine  r6 inT adveeov oUr' eOveca,
ors Karacariee, AhA' ew' lpOt dlavoat wenrcp
plc u v or at eivoi  afvple3epnK6ro, 'rdvra ra irneaeopa
iott 7rapot ral 43oeA vtKa l arreav.  Zonaras
was so careless in abridging his author, that ho
transfers what Dion here says of Varro to
Sciplo.
Livy, XXII. 61, Plutarch, Fabius, 18. See
also Florus, II. 6.
e Valerius Maximus, III. 4, Â~ IV. 5, Â~ 2.
Frontinus, IV. 5, 6. " Honoribus, quum, ei
deferrentur a populo, renuntiavit, dicens, felicioribus, magistratibus reipublice opus esse."
SLivy, XXII. 57.




ï~~CHAP. XLIV.]

POSITION OF THE ROMAN ARMY.

503

ransomed by their friends at the sum of three minm, or 3000 ases for each prisoner. But the senate absolutely forbade the money to be paid, neither choosing
to furnish Hannibal with so large a sum, nor to show any compassion to men who
had allowed themselves to fall alive into the enemy's hands."   The prisoners
therefore were left in hopeless captivity; and the armies which the state required
were to be formed out of other materials. The expedients adopted showed the
urgency of the danger.
When the consuls took the field at the beginning of the campaign, two legions
had been left, as usual, to cover the capital. These were now to Measures to raise
be employed in active service; and with them was a small detach- troops.
ment of troops, which had been drawn from Picenum and the neighborhood of
Ariminum, where their services were become of less importance. The contingents from the allies were not ready; and there was no time to wait for them.
In order, therefore, to enable the dictator to take the field immediately, eight
thousand slaves were enlisted, having expressed their willingness to serve; and
arms were provided by taking down from the temple the spoils won in former
wars.11  The dictator went still further: he offered pardon to criminals and release to debtors, if they were willing to take up arms; and amongst the former
class were some bands of robbers, who then, as in later times, infeted the mountains, and who consented to serve the state on receiving an indemnity for their
past offences."2 With this strange force, amounting, it is said, to about twentyfive thousand men, M. Junius marched into Campania; whilst a new levy of the
oldest and youngest citizens supplied two new legions for the defence of the capital, in the place of those which followed the dictator into the field. M. Junius
fixed his head-quarters at Teanum," on high ground upon the edge of the Falernian plain, with the Latin colony of Cales in his front, and communicating by the
Latin road with Rome.
The dictator was at Teanum, and M. Marcellus with the army of Cannm, whom
we left in Apulia, is described as now lying encamped above Sues- Position of theo oman
sula,'4 that is, on the right bank of the Vulturnus, on the hills army.
which bound the Campanian plain, ten or twelve miles to the east of Capua, on
the right of the Appian road as it ascends the pass of Caudium towards Beneventum. Thus we find the seat of war removed from Apulia to Campania; but
the detail of the intermediate movements is lost; and we must restore the broken
story as well as we can, by tracing Hannibal's operations after the battle of Cannm, which are undoubtedly the key to those of his enemies.
The fidelity of the allies of Rome, which had not been shaken by the defeat of
Thrasymenus, could not resist the fiery trial of Cannm. The Apu- Revolt of the allies;
lians joined the conqueror immediately, and Arpi and Salapia conduct of Hannibal.
opened their gates to him. Bruttium, Lucania, and Samnium were ready to follow the example;" and Hannibal was obliged to divide his army, and send officers into different parts of the country, to receive and protect those who wished
to join him, and to organize their forces for effective co-operation in the field.
Meanwhile he himself remained in Apulia, not perhaps without hope that this
last blow had broken the spirit as well as the power of the enemy, and that they
would listen readily to proposals of peace. With this view he sent a Carthaginian
officer to accompany the deputation of the Roman prisoners to Rome, and ordered him to encourage any disposition on the part of the Romans to open a
negotiation.16 When he found, therefore, on the return of the deputies, that his
officers had not been allowed to enter the city, and that the Romans had refused
to ransom their prisoners, his disappointment betrayed him into acts of the most
o Polybius, VI. 58. Livy, XII. 58-61. Ap-  1S Livy, XXIII. 24.
pian, VII. 28. Cicero dle Off. I. 13, 32. III. 32.  14 Livy, XXII. 14.
Aulus Gellius, VII. 18.                 15 Livy, XXII. 61. Polybius, III. 118. Ap
1 Livy, XXII. 57.                     plan, VII. 31.
12 Livy, XXIII. 14.                   1 Livy, XXII. 58.




ï~~504

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. LXIV

inhuman cruelty. The mass of the prisoners left in his hands he sold for slaves;
and so far he did not overstep the recognized laws of warfare; but many of the
more distinguished of them he put to death; and those who were senators he
obliged to fight as gladiators with each other in the presence of his whole army.
It is added, that brothers were in some instances brought out to fight with their
brothers, and sons with their fathers; but that the prisoners refused so to sin
against nature, and chose rather to suffer the worst torments than to draw their
swords in such horrible combats.7    Hannibal's vow may have justified all these
cruelties in his eyes; but his passions deceived him, and he was provoked to
fury by the resolute spirit which ought to have excited his admiration. To admire the virtue which thwarts our dearest purposes, however natural it may
seem to indifferent spectators, is one of the hardest trials of humanity.
Finding the Romans immovable, Hannibal broke up from his position in Apulia,
Hannibal enters Cam. and moved into Samnium.  The popular party in Compsa opened
pania: revolt of Capua. their gates to him; and he made the place serve as a depot for
his plunder, and for the heavy baggage of his army.'8 His brother Mago was
then ordered to march into Bruttium with a division of the army, and after having received the subniission of the Hirpinians on his way, to embark at one of the
Bruttian ports, and carry the tidings of his success to Carthage."  Hanno, with
another division, was sent into Lucania, to protect the revolt of the Lucanians;Â~
while Hannibal himself, in pursuit of a still greater prize, descended once more
into the plains of Campania. The Pentrian Samnites, partly restrained by the
Latin colony of GEsernia, and partly by the influence of their own countryman,
Num. Decimius of Bovianum, a zealous supporter of the Roman alliance, remained
firm in their adherence to Rome: but the Hirpinians and the Caudinian Samnites
all joined the Carthaginians; and their soldiers no doubt formed part of the army
with which Hannibal invaded Campania."      There all was ready for his reception.
The popular party in Capua were headed by Pacuvius Calavius, a man of the
highest nobility, and married to a daughter of Appius Claudius, but whose ambition led him to aspire to the sovereignty, not of his own country qnly, but,
through Hannibal's aid, of the whole of Italy, Capua succeeding, as he hoped, to
the supremacy now enjoyed by Rome. The aristocratical party were weak and
unpopular, and could offer no opposition to him; while the people, wholly subject to his influence, concluded a treaty with Hannibal, and admitted the Carthaginian general and his army into the city."2 Thus the second city in Italy,
capable, it is said, of raising an army of 30,000 foot and 4000 horse," connected
with Rome by the closest ties, and which for nearly a century had remained true
to its alliance under all dangers, threw itself into the arms of Hannibal, and took
its place at the head of the new coalition of southern Italy, to try the old quarrel
of the Samnite wars once again.
This revolt of Capua, the greatest result, short of the submission of Rome itself,
Marcellua encamps at which could have followed from  the battle of Cannm, drew the
s.essla.       Roman armies towards Campania.      Marcellus had probably fallen
7 Diodorus, XXVI. Exc. de. Virtut. et Vitiis. phant, and killed him, and was then treacherAppian, VII. 28. Zonaras, IX. 2. Valerius ously waylaid and murdered by Hannibal's
Maximus, IX. 2, Ext. 2. But as even Livy does orders, was probably invented with reference
not mention these stories, though they would to this very occasion. The remarks of Polybius
have afforded such a topic for his rhetoric,-nor should make us slow to believe the stories of
does Polybius, either in IX. 24, when speaking Hannibal's cruelties, which so soon became a
of Hannibal's alleged cruelty, or in VI. 58, where theme for the invention of poets and rhetorihe gives the account of the mission of the cap- clans.
tives, and adds that Hannibal, when he heard  H Livy, XXIII. 1.
that the Romans had refused to ransom them,  19 Livy, XXIII. 11.
xarerrXdyrj rb oardrqov KT ai  psya a'vxov rcv av-  2 Livy, XXIII. 87.
I 5v Fv ro &alI3ovAlioc,-there must doubtless        6 Livy, XXII. 61, 24.
be a great deal of exaggeration in them, even  " Livy, XXIII. 2-4.
if they had any foundation at all. The story  " Livy, XXIII. 5. See Niebuhr, Vol. 11.
in Pliny, VIII. 7, that the last survivor of these note 145.
gladiatorial combats had to fight against an ele



ï~~CHAP. XL1V.]

CAUSES WHICH SAVED ROME.

505

back from Canusium by the Appian road through Beneventum, moving by an
interior and shorter line; whilst Hannibal advanced by Compsa upon Abellinum,
descending into the plain of Campania by what is now the pass of Monteforte.
Hannibal's cavalry gave him the whole command of the country; and Marcellus
could do no more than watch his movements from his camp above Suessula, and
wait for some opportunity of impeding his operations in detail.
At this point in the story of:the war, the question arises, how was it possible
for Rome to escape destruction?  Nor is this question merely HowcameitthatRomo
prompted by the thought of Hannibal's great victories in the field, was not destroyedI
and the enormous slaughter of Roman citizens at Thrasymenus and Canneum; it
appears even more perplexing to those who have attentively studied the preceding history of Rome. A single battle, evenly contested and hardly won, had
enabled Pyrrhus to advance into the heart of Latium; the Hernican cities and
the impregnable Prreneste had opened their gates to him; yet Capua was then
faithful to Rome; and Samnium and Lucania, exhausted by long years of unsuocessful warfare, could have yielded him no such succor, as nowv, after fifty years
of peace, they were able to afford to Hannibal. But now, when Hannibal was
received into Capua, the state of Italy seemed to have gone backwards a hundred
years, and to have returned to what it had been after the battle of Lautulm in
the second Samnite war,24 with the immense addition of the genius of Hannibal
and the power of Carthage thrown into the scale of the enemies of Rome. Then,
as now, Capua had revolted, and Campania, Samnium, and Lucania, were banded
together against Rome; but this same confederacy was now supported by all the
resources of Caithage: and at its head in the field of battle was an army of
thirty thousand veterans and victorious soldiers, led by one of the greatest generals whom the world has ever seen. How could it happen that a confederacy
so formidable was only formed to be defeated?-that the revolt of Capua was
the term of Hannibal's progress?-that from this day forwards his great powers
were shown rather in repelling defeat than in commanding victory?-that, instead of besieging Rome, he was soon employed in protecting and relieving Capua?-and that his protection and succors were alike unavailing?
No single cause will explain a result so extraordinary. Rome owed her deliverance principally to the strength of the aristocratical interest causes which saved
throughout Italy,-to her numerous colonies of the Latin name,-  her.
to the scanty numbers of Hannibal's Africans and Spaniards, and to his want of
an efficient artillery. The material of a good artillery must surely have existed
in Capua; but there seem to have been no officers capable of directing it; and
no great general's operations exhibit so striking a contrast of strength and weakness, as may be seen in Hannibal's battles and sieges. And when Cannae had
taught the Romans to avoid pitched battles in the open field, the war became necessarily a series of sieges, where Hannibal's strongest arm, his cavalry, could render little service, while his infantry was in quality not more than equal to the
enemy, and his artillery was decidedly inferior.
With two divisions of his army absent in Lucania and Bruttium, and while
anxiously waiting for the reinforcements which Mago was to pro- iitary measures in
cure from Carthage, Hannibal could not undertake any great offen- Campania.
sive operation after his arrival in Campania. He attempted only to reduce the
remaining cities of the Campanian plain and sea-coast, and especially to dislodge
the Romans from Casilinum, which, lying within three miles of Capua, and commanding the passage of the Vulturnus, not only restrained all his movements, but
was a serious annoyance to Capua, and threatened its territory with continual
incursions. Atilla and Calatia had revolted to him already with Capua: and he
took Nuceria, Alfaterna, and Acerre. The Greek cities on the coast, Neapolis
and Cumi', were firmly attached to Rome, and were too strong to be besieged

2 See Chap. XXXI.




ï~~506

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIV

with success; but Nola lay in the midst of the plain nearly midway between
Capua and Nuceria; and the popular party there, as elsewhere, were ready to
open their gates to Hannibal. He was preparing to appear before the town; but
the aristocracy had time to apprise the Romans of their danger; and Marcellus,
who was then at Casilinum, marched round behind the mountains to escape the
enemy's notice, and descended suddenly upon Nola from the hills which rise
directly above it. He secured the place, repressed the popular party by some
bloody executions, and when Hannibal advanced to the walls, made a sudden
sally, and repulsed him with some loss."  Having done this service, and left the
aristocratical party in absolute possession of the government, he returned again
to the hills, and lay encamped on the edge of the mountain boundary of the
Campanian plain, just above the entrance of the famous pass of Caudium. His
place at Casilinum was to be supplied by the dictator's army from Teanum; but
Hannibal watched his opportunity, and anticipating his enemies this time, laid
regular siege to Casilinum, which was defended by a garrison of about 1000 men.
This garrison had acted the very same part towards the citizens of Casilinum,
Condut of teoo which the Campanians had acted at Rhegium in the war with
of CasiLnun..  Pyrrhus.26 About 500 Latins of Preeneste, and 450 Etruscans of
Perusia, having been levied too late to join the consular armies when they took
the field, were marching after them into Apulia by the Appian road, when they
heard the tidings of the defeat of Cann e. They immediately turned about, and
fell back upon Casilinum, where they established themselves, and for their better
security massacred the Campanian inhabitants, and, abandoning the quarter of
the town which was on the left bank of the Vulturnus, occupied the quarter on
the right bank.2" Marcellus, when he retreated from Apulia with the wreck of
Varro's army, had fixed his head-quarters for a time at Casilinum; the position
being one of great importance, and there being some danger lest the'garrison, while
they kept off Hannibal, should resolve to hold the town for themselves rather
than for the Romans. They were now left to themselves; and dreading Hannibal's vengeance for the massacre of the old inhabitants, they resisted his assaults
desperately, and obliged him to turn the siege into a blockade. This was the
last active operation of the campaign: all the armies now went into winterquarters. The dictator remained at Teanum; Marcellus lay in his mountain
camp above Nola; and Hannibal's army was at Capua.8    Being quartered in
the houses of the city, instead of being encamped by themselves, their discipline,
it is likely, was somewhat impaired by the various temptations thrown in their
way: and as the wealth and enjoyments of Capua at that time were notorious,
the writers who adopted the vulgar declamations against luxury, pretended that
Hannibal's army was ruined by the indulgences of this winter, and that Capua
was the Cannem of Carthage.9
This intermission of active warfare will afford us an opportunity of noticing the
Progress of the war in progress of events elsewhere, which we have hitherto unavoidably
other quarters.  neglected. From the banks of the Iberus Hannibal had made his
way without interruption to Capua; and the countries which he left behind him
sink in like manner from the notice of the historian. We must now see what had
happened in each of them since Hannibal's passage.
It has been mentioned above, that P. Scipio, when he returned from the Rhone
A. U. C. 537. A. C. to Italy, to be ready to meet Hannibal in Cisalpine Gaul, sent his
1. Sucoess of the army into Spain under the command of his brother.3Â~ After his
omans in Spain.  consulship was over, his province of Spain was still continued to
him as proconsul; and he went thither accordingly to take the command. He
found that his brother had already effected much: he had defeated and made
*Livy, XXIII. 14-17. Plutarch, Marcel-  2 Livy, XXIII. 18.
us, 11.                               2 Livy, XXIII. 45. Florus, II. 6. Valerius
6 See Vol. II. p. 898.             Maximus, IX. Ext. 1.
27 Livy, XXIII. 17.                    Above, p. 477.




ï~~CHAP, XLIV.]

TRANQUILLITY OF CISALPINE GAUL.

507

prisoner the Carthaginian general, Hanno, whom Hannibal left to maintain his
latest conquests in Spain, and had driven the Carthaginians beyond the Iberus3'
His own arrival in Spain took place in the summer of the year 537, three or four
months after the battle of Thrasymenus; and although little was done in the
field before the end of the season, the Carthaginian governor of Saguntum was
persuaded to set at liberty all the Spanish hostages left in his custody; and the
Spaniard who had advised this step under the mask of good will to Carthage,
as a means of securing the affections of the Spanish people, had no sooner
received the hostages with orders to take them back to their several homes, than
he delivered them up to the Romans. Thus Scipio enjoyed the whole credit of
restoring them to their friends, and made the Roman name generally popular."
In the following year, Hasdrubal, the son of Hamilcar, having received orders to
march into Italy to co-operate with his brother, was encountered by the Romans
near the Iberus, and defeated;3" so that his invasion of Italy was for the present
effectually prevented.
The importance of this Spanish war cannot be estimated too highly; for, by
disputing the possession of Spain, the Romans, deprived their en- A. c. 538. A.C.
emy of his best nuisery of soldiers, from which otherwise he would 26. lt great iupor.
have been able to raise army after army for the invasion of Italy. tance.
But its importance consisted not so much in the particular events, as in its being
kept up at all; nor is there any thing requiring explanation in the success of
the Romans. Their army had originally consisted of 20,000 men; and P. Scipio
had brought some reinforcements; while Hasdrubal and Hanno in their two
armies had a force not much superior: hence, after the total defeat of Hanno,
Hasdrubal could not meet the Romans with any chance of success. For Spanish levies were now no longer to be depended on, while the Romans were inviting
the nations of Spain to leave the Carthaginians, and come over to them. In this
contest between the two nations, which should most influence the minds of the
Spaniards, the ascendency of the Roman character was clearly shown; and the
natives were drawn, as by an invincible attraction, to the worthier.
While Spain was thus the scene of active warfare, Cisalpine Gaul, after Hannibal's advance into Italy, seems to have sunk back into a state of T,. nquillityofCisalpine
tranquillity, such as it had enjoyed in the first Punic war. It is Gaul.
very remarkable; that the colonies of Placentia and Cremona, so far in advance
of the Roman frontier, and surrounded by hostile tribes, were left unassailed
from the time when Hannibal crossed the Apennines into Etruria. We are only
told that L. Postumius Albinus, one of the prmtors of the year 538, was sent
with an army into Gaul, when Varro and.,Emilius marched into Apulia, with
the express object of compelling the Gauls in Hannibal's service to return to the
defence of their own country.34  What he did in the course of that summer we
know not: at the end of the consular year he was still in his province, and was
elected consul for the year following, with Ti. Sempronius Gracchus. But before his consulship began, early in March apparently, according to the Roman
calendar, he fell into an ambuscade, while advancing into the enemy's country,
and was cut to pieces35 with his whole army. We are told that the Romans
found it utterly impossible to replace the army thus lost, and that it was resolved for the present to leave the Gauls to themselves.36  But it was not so
certain that the Gauls, if unopposed, would leave the Romans to themselves;
and we find that M. Pomponius Matho, who had been city prmtor in 538, was
sent, on the expiration of his office, with proconsular power to Ariminum, and
that he remained on that frontier for two years with an army of two legions,31
while C. Varro with another legion was quartered in Picenum, to support him in
31 Polybius, III. 76.                 3 Livy, XXIII. 24. Polybius, III.118.
2 Polybius, III. 98, 99.              3 Livy, XXIII. 25.
38 Livy, XXIII. 27, 28, 29.           " Livy, XXIV. 10, 44. See Duker's note on
5 Polybius, III. 106.               the former passage.




ï~~508

HISTORY OF ROME.

[ Ahr. XLIV

time of need.38 Still the inaction of the Gauls is extraordinary, the more so as we
find them in arms immediately after the end of the war with Carthage, and
attacking Placentia and Cremona, which they had so long left in peace.39 We
can only suppose that the absence of a large portion of their soldiers, who were
serving in Hannibal's army, crippled the power of the Gauls who were left at
home; and that long experience had taught them that, unless when conducted
by a general of a more civilized nation, they could not carry on war successfully
with the Romans. The older Gaulish chiefs also were often averse to war, when
the younger chiefs were in favor of it;40 and the Romans were likely to be lavish
of presents at a time so critical, to confirm their friends in their peaceful sentiments, and to win over their adversaries. It seems probable that some truce
was concluded, which restrained either the Gauls or Romans from invading each
other's territory; and the Romans were contented not to require the recall of the
Gauls serving with Hannibal; some of whom, we know, continued to be with
him till a much later period. The multitude of the Gauls rejoiced, perhaps, that
they had won thus much from their proud enemy, and were well content that
the war thould be carried on far from their own frontiers, and yet that they
should share in its advantages. But wiser men might regret that better use was
not made of the favorable moment; that no Carthaginian officer had been left
with them to organize their armies and conduct them into the field; that the
Roman encroachments on their soil were still maintained; and than there was no
Gellius Gnatius in northern Italy to rouse the Etruscans and Umbrians to unite
their forces with those of the Gauls on the south of the Apennines, and, while
Hannibal lay triumphant in Capua, to revenge the defeat of Sentinum by a
second victory on the Alia or the Tiber.
Whatever was the cause, the inactivity of the Gauls, after their great victory
nosourees o f the Re- over L. Postumius, might strengthen the arguments of those
main.       Greeks who ascribed the conquests of the Romans to their good
fortune. It was no less timely than the peace with Etruria, concluded at the
very moment when Pyrrhus was advancing upon Rome, or than the quiet of
these same Gauls during the first Punic war. The consequence was, that the
Romans had the whole force of Etruria and Umbria disposable for the contest
in the south; and that any disposition to revolt, which might have existed in
those countries, was unable to show itself in action. Their soldiers served as
allies in the Roman armies, and with the Sabines, Picentians, Vestinians, Frentanians, Marrucinians, Marsians, and Pelignians, together with the cities of the
Latin name, composed the Roman confederacy after the revolt of southern Italy.
That revolt made the drain, both of men and money, press more heavily on the
states which still remained faithful; and the friends of Rome must everywhere
have had the greatest difficulty in persuading their countrymen not to desert a
cause which seemed so ruinous. Under such a pressure, the Roman government plainly told its officers in Sardinia and Sicily, that they must provide for
their armies as they best could, for that they must expect no supplies of ariy kind
from home.4' The propretor of Sicily applied to the never-failing friendship of
Hiero, and obtained from him, almost as the last act of his long life, money
enough to pay his soldiers, and corn for six months' consumption. But the propraetor of Sardinia had no such friend to help him; and he was obliged to get
both corn and money from the people of the province.42 The money, it seems,
like the benevolences of our own government in old times, was nominally a freewill offering of the loyal cities of Sardinia to the Roman people: but the Sardinians knew that it was a gift which they could not help giving; and impatient
of this addition to their former burdens, they applied to Carthage for aid, and
broke out the following year into open revolt.43
3 Livy, XXIII. 82.                     41 Livy, XXIII. 21.
- Livy, XXXI.10.                        42 Livy, XXIII. 21.
4 See, for instance, Caesar, B. G. II. 17.  4 Livy, XXIII. 82.




ï~~CHAP. XLIV.j

DISTRESS OF THE ROMANS.

509

It is not without reason that the Roman government had abandoned its officers
in the provinces to their own resources. Their financial difficulties Their financialiff
were enormous. Large tracts of land, arable, pasture, and forest, celtiocs.
from which the state ordinarily derived a revenue, were in the hands of the
enemy; the number of tax-payers had been greatly diminished by the slaughter
of so many citizens in battle; and in many cases their widows and children would
be unable to cultivate their little property, and would be altogether insolvent.
If the poorer citizens were again obliged, as after the Gaulish invasion, to borrow money of the rich, discontent and misery would have been the sure consequence; and the debtor would regard his creditor as a worse enemy than Hannibal. Accordingly three commissioners were appointed, on the proposition of
the tribune Minucius, like the five commissioners of the year 403, with the express object of facilitating the circulation, and assisting the distressed tax-payer."
Their measures are not recorded; but we may suppose that they acted like the
former commissioners, and allowed the poor citizens to pay their taxes in kind,
when they could not procure money, and did not force them to sell their property, when it must have been sold at a certain loss.5 The war must no doubt
have raised the value of money, and diminished that of land; and the agricultural population, who had to pay a fixed amount of taxation in money, were thus
doubly sufferers. As a mere financial operation, the commissioners' measures
may not have been very profitable; but the government had the wisdom to see
that every thing depended on the unanimity and devotion of all classes to the
cause of their country; and it was worth a great pecuniary sacrifice, even in the
actual financial difficulties, to attach the people heartily to the government, and
to prevent that intolerable evil of a general state of debt, which must speedily
have led to a revolution, and laid Rome prostrate at the feet of Hannibal.
Neither Rome nor Carthage could be said to have the undisputed mastery of
the sea. Roman fleets sometimes visited the coasts of Africa; Eveonts of the naval
and Carthaginian fleets in the same way appeared off the coasts war.
of Italy. Hannibal received supplies from Carthage, which were landed in the
ports of Bruttium; and when the Carthaginians wished to assist the revolt of
the Sardinians, the expedition which they sent, although it suffered much from
bad weather, was neither delayed nor prevented by the enemy.46  On the other
hand, the Romans had gained a naval victory of some importance in Spain;47
and their cruising squadrons in the Ionian Gulf, having the ports of Brundisium
and Tarentum to run to in case of need, were of signal service, as we shall see
hereafter, in intercepting the communications which the king of Macedon was
trying to open with Hannibal.8
Meantime the news of the battle of Canne had been carried to Carthage, as
we have seen, by Hannibal's brother Mago, accompanied with a Reinforcemoents, from
request for reinforcements. Nearly two years before, when he carthage.
first descended from the Alps into Cisalpine Gaul, his Africans and Spaniards
were reduced to no more than 20,000 foot and 6000 horse. The Gauls, who
had joined him since, had indeed more than doubled this number at first; but
three great battles, and many partial actions, besides the unavoidable losses from
sickness during two years of active service, must again have greatly diminished
it; and this force was now to be divided: a part of it was employed in Bruttium, a part in Lucania, leaving an inconsiderable body under Hannibal's own
command. On the other hand, the accession of.the Campanians, Samnites,
Lucanians, and Bruttians supplied him with auxiliary troops in abundance, and
of excellent quality; so that large reinforcements from home were not required,
" Livy, XXIII. 21. Compare VII. 21.  tatorship of Fabius Maximus, was a measure of
45 Salmasius (de Usuris. p. 510) conceives these commissioners.
that the reduction of the as to an ounce, which,  6 Livy, XXIII. 43, 34.
Pliny (XXXIII. 13) says, took place in the die-  Polybius, III. 96.
Livy, XXIIl. 82, 84.




ï~~510

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIP

but only enough for the Africans to form a substantial part of every army employed in the field; and above all, to maintain his superiority in cavalry. It is
said that some of the reinforcements which were voted on Mago's demand, were
afterwards diverted to other services;49 and we do not know what was 'the
amount of force actually sent over to Italy, nor when.it arrived."0  It consisted
chiefly, if not entirely, of cavalry and elephants; for all the elephants which
Hannibal had brought with him into Italy had long since perished; and his
anxiety to obtain others, troublesome and hazardous as it must have been to
transport them from Africa by sea, speaks strongly in favor of their use in war,
which modern writers are perhaps too much inclined to deprec ate.51'
We have no information as to the feelings entertained by Hannibal and the
Feeling of tohe Cam- Campanians towards each other, while the Carthaginians were
P'anian.     wintering in Capua. The treaty of alliance had provided carefully for the independence of the Campanians, that they might not be treated
as Pyrrhus had treated the Tarentines. Capua was to have its own laws and
magistrates; no Campanian was to be compelled to any duty, civil or military,
nor to be in any way subject to the authority cf the Carthaginian officers.52
There must have been something of a Roman party cpposed to the alliance with
Carthage altogether; though the Roman writers mention one man only, Decius
Magius, who was said to have resisted Hannibal to his face with such vehemence, that Hannibal sent him prisoner to Carthage.5  But three hundred Campanian horsemen of the richer classes, who were serving in the Roman army in
Sicily when Capua revolted, went to Rome as soon as their service was over, and
were there received as Roman citizens;54 and others, though unable to resist the
general voice of their countrymen, must have longed in their hearts to return to
the Roman alliance. Of the leaders of the Campanian people we know little:
Pacuvius Calavius, the principal author of the revolt, is never mentioned afterwards; nor do we know the fate of his son Perolla, who, in his zeal for Rome,
wished to assassinate Hannibal at his own father's table, when he made his public entrance into Capua.55 Vibius Virrius is also named as a leading partisan of
the Carthaginians;56 and amid the pictures of the luxury and feebleness of the
Campanians, their cavalry, which was formed entirely out of the wealthiest
classes, is allowed to have been excellent;57 and one brave and practised soldier,
Jubellius Taurea, had acquired a high reputation amongst the Romans when he
served with them, and had attracted the notice and respect of Hannibal.58
During the interval from active warfare afforded by the winter, the Romans
t         took measures for filling up the numerous vacancies which the
ee. Twodictators lapse of five years, and so many disastrous battles, had made in
ate ame.. m.  the numbers of the senate.59  The natural course would have been
to elect censors, to whom the duty of making out the roll of the senate properly
belonged; but the vacancies were so many, and the censor's power in admitting
new citizens, and degrading old ones, was so enormous, that the senate feared,
it seems, to trust to the result of an ordinary election; and resolved that the
censor's business should be performed by the oldest man in point of standing, of
all those who had already been censors, and that he should be appointed dictator for this especial duty, although there was one dictator already for the conduct of the war. The person thus selected was M. Fabius Buteo, who had been
censor six-and-twenty years before, at the end of the first Punic war, and who
49 Livy, XXIII. 18, 82.               Â~ Livy, XXIII. 7, 10.
09 He is represented as having elephants at 04 Livy, XXIII. 4, 7, 81.
the siege of Casilinum. Livy, XXIII. 18. If  05 Livy, XXIII. 8, 9.
tlhis be correct, the reinforcements must already  6 Livy, XXIII. 6.
have joined him.                        Â~ Frontinus, Strateg. IV. 7, 29.
02 See the interesting dissertation on ele-  6 Livy, XXIII. 8, 46, 47. XXVI. 15. Valerius
phants by A. W. Schlegel, in his Indische Bib- Maximus, V. 3. Ex. 1.
2othek, Vol. I. 173, foil.              6 Livy, XXIII. 22.
a  Livy, XXIII. 7.




ï~~CHAP. XLIV.]

ELECTION OF OFFICERS FOR YEAR 539.

511

hal more recently been the chief of the embassy sent to declare war on Carthage
after the destruction of Saguntum. That his appointment might want no legal
formality, C. Varro, the only surviving consul, was sent for home from Apulia
to nominate him, the senate intending to detain Varro in Rome till he should
have presided at the comitia for the' election of the next year's magistrates.
The nomination as usual took place at midnight; and on the following morning
M. Fabius appeared in the Forum with his four-and-twenty lictors, and ascended
the rostra to address the people. Invested with absolute power for six months,
and especially charged with no less a task than the formation, at his discretion,
of that great council which possessed the supreme government of the commonwealth, the noble old man neither shrunk weakly from so heavy a burden, nor
ambitiously abused so vast an authority. He told the people that he would not
strike off the name of a single senator from the list of the senate, and that, in
filling up the vacancies, he would proceed by a defined rule; that he would first
add all those who had held curule offices within the last five years, without
having been admitted as yet into the senate; that in the second place he would
take all who within the same period had been tribunes, ediles, or questors
and thirdly, all those who could show in their houses spoils won in battle from
an enemy, or who had received the wreath of oak for saving the life of a citizen
in battle.  In this manner 177 new senators were placed on the roll; the new
members thus forming a large majority of the whole number of the senaLe,
which amounted only to three hundred. This being done forthwith, the dictator,
as he stood in the rostra, resigned his office, dismissed his lictors, and went down
into the Forum a private man. There he purposely lingered amidst the crowd,
lest the people should leave their business to follow him home; but their admiration was not cooled by this delay; and when he withdrew at the usual hour,
the whole people attended him to his house.60 Such was Fabius Buteo's dictatorship, so wisely fulfilled, so simply and nobly resigned, that the dictatorship of
Fabius Maximus.himself has earned no purer glory.
Varro, it is said, not wishing to be detained in Rome, returned to his army
the next night, without giving the senate notice of his departure.  Election of officers for
The dictator, M. Junius, was therefore requested to repair to Rome year s9.
to hold the comitia; and Ti. Gracchus and M. Marcellus were to come with him
to report on the state of their several armies, and concert measures for the ensuing campaign.6" There is no doubt that the senate determined on the persons to
be proposed at the ensuing elections, and that, if any one else had come forward as a candidate, the dictator who presided would have refused to receive
votes for him. Accordingly the consuls and praetors chosen were all men of
the highest reputation for ability and experience: the consuls were A. U. c. 539. A.C.
L. Postumius, whose defeat and death in Cisalpine Gaul were not 29.
yet known in Rome, and Ti. Gracchus, now master of the horse. The prators
were M. Valerius Levinus, Ap. Claudius Pulcher, a grandson of the famous
censor, Appius the blind, Q. Fulvius Flaccus, old in years, but vigorous in mind
and body, who had already been censor, and twice consul, and Q. Mucius
Scevola.62  When the death of L. Postumius was known, his: place was finally.
filled by no less a person than Q. Fabius Maximus: whilst Marcellus was still to
retain his command with proconsular power, as his activity and energy could ill
be spared at a time so critical."
The officers for the year being thus appointed, it remained to determine their
several provinces, and to provide them with sufficient forces."4 Distributon of povinFabius was to succeed to the army of the dictator, M. Junius; ces and troops.
and his head-quarters were advanced from Teanum to Cales, at the northern extremity of the Falernian plain, about seven English miles from Casilinum and the
SLivy, XXIII. 23.                    63 Livy, XXIII. 31.
61 Livy, XXIII. 24.                   w Livy, XXIII. 31, 32.
* Livy, XXIII. 30.




ï~~512

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIV

Vulturnus, and less than ten from Capua. The other consul, Ti. Sempronius,
was to have no other Roman army than two legions of volunteer slaves, who
were to be raised for the occasion; but both he and his colleague had the usual
contingent of Latin and Italian allies. Gracchus named Sinuessa on the Appian
road, at the point where the Massic hills run out with a bold headland into the
sea, as the place of meeting for his soldiers; and his business was to protect the
towns on the coast, which were still faithful to Rome, such as Cuma and
Neapolis. Marcellus was to command two new Roman legions, and to lie as
before in his camp above Nola; while his old army was sent into Sicily to relieve
the legions there, and enable them to return to Italy, where they formed a fourth
army under the command of M. Valerius Levinus, the prator peregrinus, in
Apulia. The small force which Varro had commanded in Apulia was ordered
to Tarentum, to add to the strength of that important place; while Varro himself was sent with proconsular power into Picenum, to raise soldiers, and to
watch the road along the Adriatic by which the Gauls might have sent reinforcements to Hannibal. Q. Fulvius Flaccus, the praetor urbanus, remained at
Rome to conduct the government, and had no other military command than that
of a small fleet for the defence of the coast on both sides of the Tiber. Of the
other two praetors, Ap. Claudius was to command in Sicily, and Q. Mucius in
Sardinia; and P. Scipio as proconsul still commanded his old army of two
legions in Spain. On the whole, including the volunteer slaves, there appeared
to have been fourteen Roman legions in active service at the beginning of the
year 539, without reckoning the soldiers who served in the fleets; and of these
fourteen legions, nine were employed in Italy. If we suppose that the Latin and
Italian allies bore their usual proportion to the number of Roman soldiers in each
army, we shall have a total of 140,000 men, thus divided: 20,000 in Spain, and
the same number in Sicily; 10,000 in Sardinia; 20,000 under each of the consuls;
20,000 with Marcellus; 20,000 under Lmvinus in Apulia; and 10,000 in Tarentum.
Seventy thousand men were thus in arms, besides the seamen, out of a population of citizens which at the last census before the war had
Extraordinary  cxertions of t he Roman, amounted only to 270,213,65 and which had since been thinned by
mlitary and financial.
litrynd.... SO many disastrous battles. Nor was the drain on the finances of
Rome less extraordinary. The legions in the provinces had indeed been left to
their own resources as to money; but the nine legions serving in Italy must have
been paid regularly; for war could not there be made to support war; and if
the Romans had been left to live at free quarters upon their Italian allies, they
would have driven them to join Hannibal in mere self-defence. Yet the legions
in Italy cost the government in pay, food, and clothing, at the rate of 541,800
denarii a month; and as they were kept on service throughout the year, the
annual expense was 6,501,600 denarii; or in Greek money, reckoning the denarius as equal to the drachma, 1083 Euboic talents. To meet these enormous
demands on the treasury, the government resorted to the simple expedient of
doubling the year's taxes, and calling at once for the payment of one-half of this
amount, leaving the other to be paid at the end of the year.66 It was a struggle
for life and death; and the people were in a mood to refuse no sacrifices, however costly: but the war must have cut off so many sources of wealth, and agriculture itself must have so suffered from the calling away of so many hands from
the cultivation of the land, that we wonder how the money could be found, and
how many of the poorer citizens' families could be provided with daily bread.
In addition to the five regular armies which the Romans brought into the field
othe mary mean   in Italy, an irregular warfare was also going on, we know not to
of thRoman..  what extent; and bands of peasants and slaves were armed in
many parts of the country to act against the revolted Italians, and to ravage
their territory. For instance, a great tract of forest in Bruttium, as we have

5 Livy, Epit. XX.

C Livy, XXIII. 81.




ï~~CHAP. XLIV.]

FALL OF CASILINUM.

513

seen, was the domain of the Roman people; this would be farmed like all the
other revenues; and the publicani who farmed it, or the wealthy citizens who
turned out cattle to pasture in it, would have large bodies of slaves employed as
shepherds, herdsmen, and woodsmen, who, when the Bruttian towns on the coast
revolted, would at once form a guerilla force capable of doing them great mischief. And lastly, besides all these forces, regular and irregular, the Romans
still held most of the principal towns in the south of Italy; because they had
long since converted them into Latin colonies. Brundisium on the Ionian sea,
Pestum on the coast of Lucania, Luceria, Venusia, and Beneventum in the interior, were all so many strong fortresses, garrisoned by soldiers of the Latin name,
in the very heart of the revolted districts;1 whilst the Greek cities of Cume and
Neapolis in Campania, and Rhegium on the straits of Messina, were held for
Rome by their own citizens with a devotion no way inferior to that of the Latin
colonies themselves.68
Against this mass of enemies, the moment that they had learnt to use their
strength, Hannibal, even within six months after the battle of Can- Hannibas
ne, was already contending at a disadvantage. We have seen      niblresorc.
that he had detached two officers with two divisions of his aimy, one into Lucania, the other into Bruttium, to encourage the revolt of those countries, and
then to organize their resources in men and money for the advancement of the
common cause. Most of the Bruttians took up arms immediately as Hannibal's
allies, and put themselves under the command of his officer, Himilcon; but
Petelia, one of their cities, was for some reason or other inflexible in its devotion
to Rome, and endured a siege of eleven months, suffering all extremities of
famine before it surrendered.69 Thus Himilcon must have been still engaged in
besieging it long after the campaign was opened in the neighborhood of Capua.
The Samnites also had taken up arms, and apparently were attached to Hannibal's own army: the return of their whole population of the military age, made
ten years before during the Gaulish invasion, had stated it at 70,000 foot and
7000 horse;" but the Pentrians, the most powerful tribe of their nation, were
still faithful to Rome; and the Samnites, like the Romans themselves, had been
thinned by the slaughter of Thrasymenus and Canni, which they had shared as
their allies. It is vexatious that we have no statement of the amount of Hannibal's old army, any more than of the allies who joined him, at any period of the
war later than the battle of Canne. His reinforcements from home, as we have
seen, were very trifling; while his two divisions in Lucania and Bruttium, and
the garrisons which he had been obliged to leave in some of the revolted towns,
as, for example, at Arpi in Apulia," must have considerably lessened the force
under his own personal command. Yet, with the accession of the Samnites and
Campanians, it was probably much stronger than any one of the Roman armies
opposed to him; quite as strong, indeed, in all likelihood, as was consistent with
the possibility of feeding it.
Before the winter was over, Casilinum fell. The garrison had made a valiant
defence, and yielded at last to famine: they were allowed to ran- Fall of Casinn.
som themselves by paying each man seven ounces of gold for his      ilnum.
life and liberty. The plunder which they had won from the old inhabitants
enabled them to discharge this large sum; and they were then allowed to march
out unhurt, and retire to Cumie. Casilinum again became a Campanian town;
but its important position, at once covering Capua, and securing a passage over
the Vulturnus, induced Hannibal to garrison it with seven hundred soldiers of
his own army."2
7 Livy, XXVII. 10.                   7Â~ Polybius, II. 24, 10.
0 Livy, XXIII. 1, 86, 87. XXIV. 1.   71 Livy, XXIV. 46, 47. Appian, VII. 91.
o Polybius, VII1. Livy, XXII. 61. XXIII.  72 Livy, XXIII. 19, 20.
20, 80. Appian, VII. 28. Valerius Maximus,
Vi. 6. Ext. 2.
33




ï~~514

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIV

The season for active operations was now arrived. The three Roman armies
annibl encamps  of Fabius, Gracchus, and Marcellus, had taken up their positions
Mount Ti at. Roe round Campania; and Hannibal marched out of Capua, and enwered by~",r l camped his army on the mountain above it, on that same Tifata
where the Samnites had so often taken post in old times, when they were preparing to invade the Campanian plain?.3 Tifata did not then exhibit that bare
and parched appearance which it has now; the soil, which has accumulated in
the plain below, so as to have risen several feet above its ancient level, has been
washed down in the course of centuries, and after the destruction of its protecting woods, from the neighboring mountains; and Tifata, in Hannibal's time, furnished grass in abundance for his cattle in its numerous glades, and offered cool
and healthy summer quarters for his men. There he lay waiting for some opportunity of striking a blow against his enemies around him, and eager y watching
the progress of his intrigues with the Tarentines, and his negotiations with the
king of Macedon. A party at Tarentum began to open a correspondence with
him immediately after the battle of Cannme; and since he had been in Campania
he had received an embassy from Philip, king of Macedon, and had concluded
an alliance, offensive and defensive, with ihe ambassadors, who acted with full
powers in their master's name."  Such were his prospects on one side, while, if
he looked westward and southwest, he saw Sardinia in open revolt against
Rome:'6 and in Sicily the death of Hiero at the age of ninety, and the succession
of his grandson Hieronymus, an ambitious and inexperienced youth, were detaching Syracuse also from the Roman alliance. Hannibal had already received
an embassy from Hieronymus, to which he had replied by sending a Carthaginian officer of his own name to Sicily, and two Syracusan brothers, Hippocrates
and Epicydes, who had long served with him in Italy and in Spain, being, in fact,
Carthaginians by their mother's side, and having become naturalized at Carthage,
since Agathocles had banished their grandfather, and their father had married
and settled in his place of exile."  Thus the effect of the battle of Canna seemed
to be shaking the whole fabric of the Roman dominion; their provinces were revolting; their firmest allies were deserting them; while the king of Macedon
himself, the successor of Alexander, was throwing the weight of his power, and
of all his acquired and inherited glory, into the scale of their enemies. Seeing the
fruit of his work thus fast ripening, Hannibal sat quietly on the summit of Tifata,
to break forth like the lightning flash when the storm should be fully gathered.
Thus the summer of 539 was like a breathing-time, in which both parties were
S   looking at each other, and considering each other's resources,
MYeasures' of. Fabius to
cut off H uibal's sup- while they were recovering strength after their past efforts, and
plies.        preparing for a renewal of the struggle. Fabius, with the authority of the senate, issued an order, calling on the inhabitants of all the country which either actually was, or was likely to become, the seat of war, to clear
their corn off the ground, and carry it into the fortified cities, before the first of
June, threatening to lay waste the land, to sell th slaves, and burn the farm
buildings, of any one who should disobey the order.8  In the utter confusion of
the Roman calendar at this period, it is difficult to know whether in any given
year it was in advance of the true time, or behind it; so that we can scarcely
tell whether the corn was only to be got in when ripe without needless delay,
or whether it was to be cut when green, lest Hannibal should use it as forage
for his cavalry. But at any rate, Fabius was now repeating the system which
he had laid down in his dictatorship, and hoped, by wasting the country, to
oblige Hannibal to retreat; for his means of transport were not sufficient for him
to feed his army from a distance: hence, when the resources in his immediate
neighborhood were exhausted, he was obliged to move elsewhere.
7s Livy, XXIII. 86. VII. 29.          7 Livy, XXIII. 82, 84.
'e Livy, XXII. 61. Appian, VII. 32.   77 Livy, XXIII. 4, 6. Polybius, VII. 2.
" Livy, XXIII. 33. Zonaras, IX. 4.    7 Livy, XXIII. 2.




ï~~Cur. XLIV.]

THE ROMAN ARMIES.

515

Meanwhile Gracchus had crossed the Vulturnus near its mouth, and was now
at Liternum, busily employed in exercising and training his hete- Massacre of 2OCa
rogeneous army. The several Campanian cities were accustomed p.ans t a festival by
to hold a joint festival every year at a place called Hamme, only Gracchs.
three miles from Cume.9  These festivals were seasons of general truce, so that
the citizens even of hostile nations met at them safely: the government of Capua
announced to the Cummans, that their chief magistrate and all their senators
would appear at Hamae, as usual, on the day of the solemnity; and they invited
the senate of Cumie to meet them. At the same time they said that an armed
force would be present to repel any interruption from the Romans. Thec Cumneans informed Gracchus of this; and he attacked the Capuans in the night,
when they were in such perfect security, that they had not even fortified a camp,
but were sleeping in the open country, and massacred about 2000 of them,
among whom was Marius Alfius, the supreme magistrate of Capua.     The Romans charge the Capuans with having meditated treachery against the Cumieans,
and say that they were caught in their own snare; but this could only be a suspicion, while the overt acts of violence were their own. Hannibal no sooner heard
of this disaster, than he descended from Tifata, and hastened to Hame, in the
hope of provoking the enemy to battle in the confidence of their late success.
But Gracchus was too wary to be so tempted, and had retreated in good time to
Cumin, where he lay safe within the walls of the towns" It is said that Hannibal, having supplied himself with all things necessary for a siege, attacked the
place in form, and was repulsed with loss, so that he returned defeated to his
camp at Tifata. A consular army defending the walls of a fortified town was
not indeed likely to be beaten in an assault; and neither could a maritime town,
with the sea open, be easily starved; nor could Hannibal linger before it safely,
as Fabius, with a second consular army, was preparing to cross the Vulturnus.
Casilinum being held by the enemy, Fabius was obliged to cross at a higher
point behind the mountains, nearly opposite to Allife; and he strength of theoman
then descended the left bank to the confluence of the Calor with armies.
the Vulturnus, crossed the Calor, and passing between Taburnus and the mountains above Caserta and Maddaloni, stormed the town of Saticula, and joined Marcellus in his camp above Suessula.8  He was again anxious for Nola, where the
popular party were said to be still plotting the surrender of the town to Hannibal: to stop this mischief, he sent Marcellus with his whole army to garrison
Nola, while he himself took his place in the camp above Suessula. Gracchus,
on his side, advanced from Cumin towards Capiua; so that three Roman armies,
amounting in all to about sixty thousand men, were on the left bank of the Vulturnus together; and all, so far as appears, in free communication with each
other..They availed themselves of their numbers and of their position to send
plundering parties out on their rear to overrun the lands of the revolted Samnites
and Hirpinians; and as the best troops of both these nations were with Hannibal
on Tifata, no force was left at home sufficient to check the enemy's incursions.
Accordingly, the complaints of the sufferers were loud, and a deputation was
sent to Hannibal imploring him to protect his allies."
Already Hannibal felt that the Roman generals understood their business, and
had learnt to use their numbers wisely. On ground where his Hannibal receives his
cavalry could act, he would not have feared to engage their three    re.ents
armies together; but when they were amongst mountains, or behind walls, his
cavalry were useless, and he could not venture to attack them: besides, he did
not wish to expose the territory of Capua to their ravages; and therefore he did
not choose lightly to move from Tifata. But the prayers of the Samnites were
urgent: his partisans in Nola might require his aid, or might be able to admit

79 Livy, XXIII. 35.
Livy, XXIII. 36.

* Livy, XXIII. 89.
s2 Livy, XXIII. 41, 42.




ï~~516

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIV

him into the town; and his expected reinforcement of cavalry and elephants from
Carthage had landed safely in Bruttium, and was on its way to join him, which the
position of Fabius and Marcellus might render difficult, if he made no movement to favor, it. He therefore left Tifata, advanced upon Nola, and timed his
operation so well that his reinforcements arrived at the moment when he was
before Nola; and neither Fabius nor Marcellus attempted to prevent their junetion.83
Thus encouraged, and perhaps not aware of the strength of the garrison, HanS  nibal not only overran the territory of Nola, but surrounded the
Advantages gained by
Marcellu. Hannibal town with his soldiers, in the hope of taking it by escalade. Marnarchesinto Apulia.  cellus was alike watchful and bold; he threw open the gates and
made a sudden sally, by which he drove back the enemy within their camp;
and this success, together with his frank' and popular bearing, won him, it is
said, the affections of all parties at Nola, and put a stop to all intrigues within
the walls.84 A more important consequence of this action was the desertion of
above 1200 men, Spanish foot, and Numidian horse, from Hannibal's army to
the Romans;85 as we do not find that their example was followed by others, it is
probable that they were not Hannibal's old soldiers, but some of the troops which
had just joined him, and which could not, as yet, have felt the spell of his personal ascendency.  Still their treason naturally made him uneasy, and would for
the moment excite a general suspicion in the army: the summer too was drawing to a close; and wishing to.relieve Capua from the burden of feeding his
troops, he marched away into Apulia, and fixed his quarters for the winter near
Arpi.  Gracchus, with one consular army, followed him; while Fabius, after
having ravaged the country round Capua, and carried off the green corn, as soon
as it was high enough out of the ground, to his camp above Suessula, to furnish
winter food for his cavalry, 'quartered his own army there for the winter, and
ordered Marcellus to retain a sufficient force to secure Nola, and to send the rest
of his men home to be disbanded."6
Thus the campaign was ended, and Hannibal had not marked it with a victory.
Complete successofthe The Romans had employed their forces so wisely, that they had
Romans inSardinia., forced him to remain mostly on the defensive: and his two offensive operations, against Cumre and against Nola, had both been baffled. In
Sardinia their success had been brilliant and decisive. Mucius, the pretor, fell
ill soon after he arrived in the island; upon which the senate ordered Q. Fabius,
the city praetor, to raise a new legion, and to send it over into Sardinia, under any
officer whom he might think proper to appoint. 'He chose a man, in age, rank,
and character, most resembling himself, T. Manlius Torquatus, who in his first
consulship, twenty years before, had fought against the Sardinians, and obtained
a triumph over them. Manlius' second command in the island was no less brilliant than his first: he totally defeated the united forces of the Sardinians and
Carthaginians, took their principal generals prisoners, reduced the revolted towns
to obedience, levied heavy contributions of corn and money as a punishment of
their rebellion, and then embarked with the troops which he had brought out
with him, only leaving the usual force of a single legion in the island, and returned to Rome to report the complete submission of Sardinia. The money of
his contributions was paid over to the queestors, for the payment of the armies;
the corn was given to the ediles to supply the markets of Rome.B"
Fortune in another quarter served the Romans no less effectually. The Mapnre efbe Mace  cedonian ambassadors, after having concluded their treaty with
Catpture of the Macedo-:
Sambas  aders.Ex- Hannibal at Tifata, made their way back into Bruttium in safety,
edtia..e.  and embarked to return to Greece. But their ship was taken off
the Calabrian coast by the Roman squadron on that station; and the ambassao
eLivy, XXIII. 48.                     ' Livy, XXIII. 46, 48.
8 Livy, XXIII. 44, 45, 46.            8 Livy, XXIII. 84, 41.
1 Livy, XXIII. 46.




ï~~OHAP. XLIV.]

MEASURES TO RAISE MONEY.

517

dors, with all their papers, were sent prisoners to Rome.'9 A vessel which had
been of their company escaped the Romans, and informed the king what had
happened. He was obliged, therefore, to send a second embassy to Hannibal,
as the former treaty had never reached him; and although this second mission
wvent and returned safely, yet the loss of time was irreparable, and nothing could
be done till another year.'9 Meanwhile the Romans, thus timely made aware of
the king's intentions, resolved to find such employment for him at home as should
prevent his invading Italy. M. Valerius Lmevinus was to take the command of the
fleet at Tarentum and Brundisium, and to cross the Ionian Gulf, in order to rouse
the JEtolians, and the barbarian chiefs whose tribes bordered on Philip's western
frontier, and, with such other allies as could be engaged in the cause, to form a
Greek coalition against Macedon."
These events, and the continued successes of their army in Spain, revived the
spirits of the Romans, and encouraged them to make still greater ean.r. of  nosacrifices, in the hope that they would not be made in vain. The mans to raise money
distress of the treasury was at its height: P. Scipio, in announcing -...
his victories, reported that his soldiers and seamen were in a state of utter destitution; that they had no pay, corn, or clothing; and that the two latter articles
must at any rate be supplied from Rome.91 His demands were acknowledged to
be reasonable; but the republic had lost so large a portion of her foreign revenue,
that her chief resource now lay in the taxation of her own people: this had been
doubled in the present year, yet was found inadequate; and to increase it, or
even to continue it at its present amount, was altogether impossible. Accordingly
the city prmtor, Q. Fulvius, addressed the people from the rostra, explained the
distress of the government to them, and appealed to the patriotism of the moneyed
class to assist their country with a loan. Fabius did not mean to hold out an
opportunity to the public creditor of investing his money to advantage, subject
only to the risk of a national bankruptcy: on this Roman loan no interest was to
be paid; the creditors were simply assured that, as soon as the treasury was solvent, their demands should be discharged before all others; in the mean time
their money was totally lost to them. But, on the other hand, opportunities of
investing money profitably must have been greatly diminished by the war; to
lend it to the government was not, therefore, so great a sacrifice.  Still a public
spirit was shown in the ready answer to the prator's appeal, such as merchants
have often honorably displayed in seasons of public danger; mixed up, however
-for when are human motives altogether pure?-with a considerable regard to
personal advantage. Three companies were formed, each, as it seems, composed
of eighteen members and a president, or chairman; and these were to supply
the corn and clothing which the armies might require. But in return they demanded an exemption from military service, whilst they were thus serving the
state with their money; and they also required the government to undertake the
whole sea risk, whether from storms, or from the enemy: whatever articles were
thus lost were to be the loss of the nation, and not of the companies."  It will
be seen hereafter how some of the contractors abused this equitable condition,
and wilfully destroyed cargoes of small value, in order to recover the insurance
upon them from the government. That a citizen should enrich himself by frauds
practised on his country in such a season of distress and danger is sufficiently
monstrous; but the spirit of what is so emphatically called jobbing is inveterate
in human nature; and we: cannot wonder at its existence among Roman citizens,
while Rome was struggling for life or death, when it has been known to find its
way into the prison of Christian martyrs."
Yet neither the ordinary taxation, nor the loan in addition to it, were sufficient
SLivy, XXIII. 88.                     9, Livy, XXIII. 48.
* Livy, XXIII. 89.                    92 Livy, XXIII. 49., Livy, XXIII. 88, 48. XXIV. 10. Zonaras,  "9 See Cyprian, Epp. X. XXII. Ed. Rigalt.
IX. 4.




ï~~518

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CAP. XLIV

for the vast expenditure of the war. The hostility of Macedon had
Property tax.  made it necessary to raise an additional fleet; for the coasts of
Italy must be protected; and Hannibal's free communications with Africa must
be restrained; and now another fleet was required, by the threatening aspect of
affairs in Sicily.  Accordingly a graduated property tax for the occasion was imposed on all citizens whose property amounted to or exceeded 100,000 ases;
that is, they were required to furnish a certain number of their slaves as seamen,
to arm and equip them, and to provide them with dressed provisions for thirty
days, and with pay, in some cases for six months, in others for a whole year.94 The
senators, who were rated higher than all other citizens, were obliged in this manner each to provide eight seamen, with pay for the longer term of the whole year.
Whilst the commonwealth was making these extraordinary efforts, it was of
A.. C. 40. A. cthe last importance that they should not be wasted by incompe214. Fabius holds the tent leaders, either at home or abroad. Gracchus was watching
comitia.       Hannibal in Apulia; so that Fabius went to Rome to hold the comitia., It was not by accident; doubtless, that he had previou y sent home to
fix the day of the meeting, or that his own arrival was so nicely timed, that he
reached Rome when the tribes were actually met in the Campus Martius; thus,
without entering the city, he passed along under the walls, and took his place as
presiding magistrate at the comitia,95 while his lictors still bore the naked axe in
the midst of their fasces, the well-known sign of that absolute power which the
consul enjoyed everywhere out of Rome. Fabius, in concert no doubt with Q.
Fulvius and T. Manlius, and other leading senators, had already determined who
were to be consuls: when the first century, in the free exercise of its choice, gave
its vote in favor of T. Otacilius and M..Emilius Regillus, he at once stopped the
election, and told the people that this was no time to choose ordinary consuls;
that they were electing generals to oppose Hannibal, and should fix upon those
men under whom they would most gladly risk their sons' lives and their own, if
they stood at that moment on the eve of battle. "Wherefore, crier," he con.
cluded," call back the century to give its votes over again."96
Otacilius, who was present, although he had married Fabius' niece, protested
Fabius and Marcellus loudly against this interference with the votes of the people, and
are electeda consuls.  charged Fabius with trying to procure his own re-election.  The
old man had always been so famous for the gentleness of his nature, that he
was commonly known by the name of "the Lamb;""7 but now he acted with th
decision of Q. Fulvius or T. Manlius; he peremptorily ordered Otacilius to be
silent, and bade him remember that his lictors carried the naked axe: the century
was called back, and now gave its voice for Q. Fabius and M. Marcellus. All
the centuries of all the tribes unanimously confirmed this choice.   Q. Fulvius
was also re-elected prietor; and the senate, by a special vote, continued him in
the prmtorship of the city, an office which put him at the head of the home government.   The election of the other three prmtors, it seems, was left free: so the
people, as they could not have Otacilius for their consul, gave him one of the
remaining pratorships, and bestowed the other two on Q. Fabius, the consul's
son, who was then curule edile, and on P. Cornelius Lentulus.
Great as the exertions of the commonwealth had been in the preceding year,
Great exertions of tethey were still greater this year. Ten legions were to be employed
omans armies a- in different parts of Italy, besides the reserve army of the two city
broad.         legions, which was to protect the capital.  Two legions were to
9" Livy, XXIV. 11. Comp. XXVI. 86. lo'xeor aro  scai ityrelAvr ac atperr 7roXAhei o)aXXXIV. 6.                               3etag rTv 7rattscwv rr prevov elovv, Bpaeselos
95 Livy, XXIV. 7.                      Kai 3sar; 5lOX lxf5covr as paOscts, eriosovo a& s
" Livy, XXIV. 8. rots vOcs oe KaTi K550 asTSpLla Tpia0v0g Kai vu* Ovicula, see Aurelius Victor de Vir. Illustr. Op6rtros~ rvoav  xerapa ro8 i rds, 8~,Ayot  '
c. 48. Plutarch, Fabius, c. 1. '0 ii 'Oovtaoea yuav of ro cv eirirov lrrd  dOov~ xsa ra tsyaAd 4vxo
rpaiLet rb rpo(3dretov'  iriOrj ci,drp  rv r rpa6rnra  Ka iAovrr   iv rr   cp61. e KaOopWvra croS.
wa? f3aprrra roil ijOovg rte ratb~b dvro. Tb yap  s Livy, XXIV. 9.




ï~~CHAP. XLIV.]

CAMPAIGN OF 540.

519

hold Sardinia, where the sparks of revolt were probably not altogether extinguished: two were sent to Sicily, with a prospect of no inactive service; and
two were stationed in Cisalpine Gaul, there being some likelihood, we must suppose, that the Gauls would soon require a force in their neighborhood; or possibly the colonies of Placentia and Cremona were thought insecure, if they were
left to their own resources, insulated as they were in the midst of the enemy's
country. Finally, the Scipios still commanded their two legions in Spain; and
the naval service in Sicily, and on the coast of Calabria, required no fewer than a
hundred and fifty ships of war.9
The Italian armies were disposed as follows: Cales, and the camp above Suessula and Nola, were again to be the head-quarters of the two con- Distribution of those in
suls, each of whom was to command a regular consular army of Itly.
two legions.  Gracchus, with proconsular power, was to keep:is own two legions,
and was at present wintering near Hannibal in the north of Apulia. Q. Fabius,
one of the new prietors, was to be ready to enter Apulia with an army of equal
strength, so soon as Gracchus should be called into Lucania and Samnium, to
take part in the active operations of the campaign. C. Varro, with his single
legion, was still to hold Picenum; and M. Lmevinus, also with proconsular power,
was to remain at Brundisium with another single legion.1"' The two city legions
served as a sort of d6p6t, to recruit the armies in the field in case of need; and
there was a large armed population, serving as garrisons in the Latin colonies,
and in other important posts in various parts of the country, the amount of which
it is not possible to estimate. Nor can we calculate the numbers of the guerilla
bands, which were on foot in Lucania, Bruttium, and possibly in Samnium, and
which hindered Hannibal from having the whole resources of those countries at
his disposal.  The Roman party was nowhere probably altogether extinct:
wealthy Lucanians, who were attached to Rome, would muster their slaves and
peasantry, and either by themselves, or getting some Roman officer to head them,
would ravage the lands of the Carthaginian party, and carry on a continued harassing warfare against the towns or districts which had joined Hannibal. Thus
the whole south of Italy was one wide flood of war, the waters were everywhere
dashing and eddying, and running in cross-currents innumerable; whilst the regular armies, like the channels of the rivers, held on their way, distinguishable
amidst the chaos by their greater rapidity and power.
Hannibal watched this mass of war with the closest attention. To make head
against it directly being impossible, his business was to mark his Hannibal marcheos into
opportunities, to strike wherever there was an opening; and campania.
being sure that the enemy would not dare to attack him on his own ground, he
might maintain his army in Italy for an indefinite time, whilst Carthage, availing
herself of the distraction of her enemy's power, renewed her efforts to conquer
Spain and recover Sicily. He hoped ere long to win Tarentum; and, if left to
his own choice, he would probably have moved hither at once, when he broke
up from his winter-quarters: but the weakness or fears of the Campanians hung
with encumbering weight upon him; and an earnest request was sent to him from
Capua, calling on him to hasten to its defence, lest the two consular armies
should besiege it.0' Accordingly he broke up from his winter-quarters at Arpi,
and marched once more into Campania, where he established his army as before
on the summit of Tifata.
The perpetual carelessness and omissions in Livy's narrative, drawn as it is
from various sources, with no pains to make one part correspond Fubius collocts th R9.
with another, render it a work of extreme difficulty to present an man armies around
account of these operations, which shall be at once minute and in- Hnnibal.
telligible. We also miss that notice of chronological details, which is essential to
the history of a complicated campaign. Even the year in which important

es Livy, XXIV. 11.

100 Livy, XXIV. 12, 10.

101 Livy, XXIV. 12.




ï~~520

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XLIV

events happened is sometimes doubtful; yet we want, not to fix the year only,
but the month, that we may arrange each action in its proper order. When
Hannibal set out on his march into Campania, Fabius was still at Rome; but the
two new legions, which were to form his army, were already assembled at Cales;
and Fabius, on hearing of Hannibal's approach, set out instantly to take the coinmand. His old army, which had wintered in the camp above Suessula, had apparently been transferred to his colleague, Marcellus; and a considerable force
had been left at the close of the last campaign to garrison Nola. Fabius, however, wished to have three Roman armies co-operating with each other, as had
been the case the year before; and he sent orders to Gracchus to move forwards
from Apulia, and to occupy Beneventum; while his son Q. Fabius, the praetor,
with a fourth army, was to supply the place of Gracchus at Luceria.102 It
seemed as if Hannibal, having once entered Campania, was to be hemmed in on
every side, and not permitted to escape: but these movements of the Roman
armies induced him to call Hanno to his aid, the officer who commanded in Lucania and Bruttium, and who, with a small force of Numidian cavalry, had an auxiliary army under his orders consisting chiefly of Italian allies. Hanno advanced
accordingly in the direction of Beneventum, to watch ale army of Gracchus, and
if an opportunity offered, to bring it to action.1o3
Mieanwhile Hannibal, having left some of his best troops to naintain his camp
Hannibal offers sacrifice at Tifata, and probably to protect the immediate neighborhood of
at the lake Avernus.  Capua, descended into the plain towards the coast, partly in the
hope of surprising a fortified post which the Romans had lately established at
Puteoli,.and partly to ravage the territory of Cume and Neapolis.  But the
avowed object of his expedition was to offer sacrifice to the powers of the unseen
world, on the banks of the dreaded lake of Avernus.Â~4  That crater of an old
volcano, where the very soil still seemed to breathe out fire, while the unbroken
rim of its basin was covered with the uncleared masses of the native woods, was
the subject of a thousand mysterious stories, and was regarded as one of those
spots where the lower world approached most nearly to the light of day, and
where offerings paid to the gods of the dead were most surely acceptable. Such
worship was a main part of the national religion of the Carthaginians; and Hannibal, whose latest act before he set out on his great expedition, had been a journey to Gades to sacrifice to the god of his fathers, the Hercules of Tyre, visited
the lake of Avernus, it is probable, quite as much in sincere devotion, as in order
to mask his design of attacking Puteoli. Whilst he was engaged in his sacrifice,
five noble citizens of Tarentum came to him, entreating him to lead his army into
their country, and engaging that the city should be surrendered as soon as his
standard should be visible from the walls. He listened to their invitation gladly;
they offered him one of the richest cities in Italy, with an excellent harbor,
equall  convenient for his own communication with Carthage, and for the reception of the fleet of his Macedonian allies, whom he was constantly expecting to
welcome in Italy. He promised that he would soon be at Tarentum; and the
Tarentines returned home to prepare their plans against his arrival."05
With this prospect before him, it is not likely that he would engage in any.He marches against serious enterprise in Campania. Finding that he could not surTarentum,     prise Puteoli, he ravaged the lands of the Cumeans and Neapolitans. According to the ever suspicious stories of the exploits of Marcellus, he
made a third attempt upon Nola, and was a third time repulsed; Marcellus having
called down the army from the camp above Suessula to assist him in defending
the town. Then, says the writer whom Livy copied, despairing of taking a place
which he had so often attacked in vain, he marched off at once towards Tarentum.lo6 The truth probably is, that, finding a complete consular army in Nola, and
'12 Livy, XXIV. 12.             10' Livy, XXIV. 18.
101 Livy, XXIV. 14.              108 Livy, XXIV. 17.
1 Livy, XXIV. 12, 18.




ï~~CHAr. XLIV ]

MARCH AGAINST TARENTUM.

521

having left his light cavalry, and some of the flower of his infantry, in the camp
on Tifata, he had no thought of attacking the town, but returned to Tifata to take
the troops from thence; and having done this, and stayed long enough in Campania
for the Capuans to get in their harvest safely, he set off on his march for Tarentum. None of the Roman armies attempted to stop him, or so much as ventured
to follow him. Fabius and Marcellus took advantage of his absence to besiege
Casilinum with their united forces;o' Gracchus kept wisely out of his reach,
whilst he swept on like a fiery flood, Jlaying waste all before him, from Tifata tb
the shores of the Ionian sea.10' He certainly did not burn or plunder the lands of
his own allies, either in Samnium or Lucania; but his march lay near the Latin
colony of Venusia; and the Lucanians and Samnites in his army would carefully
point out those districts which belonged to their countrymen of the Roman
party; above all, those ample tracts which the Romans had wrested from their
fathers, and which were now farmed by the Roman publicani, or occupied by
Roman citizens. Over all these, no doubt, the African and Numidian horse
poured far and wide; and the fire and sword did their work.
Yet, after all, Hannibal missed his prey. Three days before he reached Tarentum, a Roman officer arrived in the city, whom  M. Valerius but fal
Lrevinus had sent in haste from Brundisium to provide for its de-buti
fence.1"'9 There was probably a small Roman garrison in the citadel, to support
him in case of need; but the aristocratical party in Tarentum itself, as elsewhere, was attached to Rome; and with their aid Livius, the officer whom Laevinus had sent, effectually repressed the opposite party, embodied the population
of the town, and made them keep guard on the walls, and selecting a certain
number of persons whose fidelity he most suspected, sent them off as hostages
to Rome. When the Carthaginian army therefore appeared before the walls,
no movement was made in their favor; and after waiting a few days in vain,
Hannibal was obliged to retreat. His disappointment, however, did not make him
lose his temper; he spared the Tarentine territory, no less when leaving it, than
when he first entered it, in the hope of winning the city; a moderation which
doubtless produced its effect, and confirmed the Tarentines in the belief that his
professions of friendship had been made in honesty. But he carried off all the
corn which he could find in the neighborhood of Metapontum and Heraclea, and
then returned to Apulia, and fixed his quarters for the winter at Salapia. His
cavalry overran all the forest country above Brundisium, and drove off such
numbers of horses which were kept there to pasture, that he was enabled to have
four thousand broken in for the service of his army.'
Meanwhile the Roman consuls in Campania were availing themselves of
his absence, to press the siege of Casilinum. The place was so The Romans take Casiclose to Capua, that it was feared the Capuans would attempt to l u..
relieve it; Marcellus, therefore, with a second consular army, advanced from Nola
to cover the siege. The defence was very obstinate; for there were seven hundred of Hannibal's soldiers in the place, and two thousand Capuans; and Fabius,
it is said, was disposed to raise the siege; but his colleague reminded him of the
loss of reputation, if so small a town were allowed to baffle two consular armies;
and the siege was continued. At last the Capuans offered to Fabius to surrender the town, on condition of being allowed to retire to Capua; and it appears
that he accepted the terms, and that the garrison had begun to march out, when
Marcellus broke in upon them, seized the open gate from which they were issuing, cut them down right and left, and forced his way into the city. Fabius, it is
said, was able to keep his faith to no more than fifty of the garrison, who had
reached his quarters before Marcellus arrived, and whom he sent unharmed to
Capua. The rest of the Capuans and of Hannibal's soldiers were sent prisoners

1e Livy, XXIV. 19.
ISN Livy, XXIV. 20.

1'0 Livy, XXIV. 20.
21 Livy, XXIV. 20.




ï~~522

IISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XLIV

to Rome; and the inhabitants were divided amongst the neighboring cities, to
be kept in custody till the senate shoulddetermine their fate."
After this scandalous act of treachery, Marcellus returned to Nola, and there
Fabius ravages Sap- remained inactive, being confined, it was said, by illness,"' till the
nium.        senate, before the end of the summer, sent him over to Sicily to
meet the danger that was gathering there. Fabius advanced into Samnium,
combining his operations, it seems, with his son, who commanded a pratorian
army in Apulia, and with Gracchus, who was in Lucania, and whose army formed the link between the praetor in Apulia and his father in Samnium. These
three armies were so formidable, that Hanno, the Carthaginian commander in
Lucania, could not maintain his ground, but fell back towards Bruttium, leaving
his allies to their own inadequate means of defence. Accordingly the Romans
ravaged the country far and wide, and took so many towns that they boasted of
having killed or captured 25,000 of the enemy."3 After these expeditions, Fabius, it seems, led back his army to winter-quarters in the camp above Suessula
Gracchus remained in Lucania; and Fabius the praetor wintered at Luceria.
I have endeavored to follow the operations of the main armies on both sides
Grachus defeats Hathroughout the campaign, without noticing those of Gracchus and
no, and enfranchisesthe Hanno in Lucania. But the most important action of the year, if
slaves in his army.
slavesin isarmy.  we believe the Roman accounts, was the victory obtained by Gracchus near Beneventum, when he moved thither out of Apulia to co-operate with
the consuls in Campania, and Hanno was ordered by Hannibal to march to the
same point out of Lucania. Hanno, it is said, had about 17,000 foot, mostly
Bruttians and Lucanians, and 1200 Numidian and Moorish horse; and Gracchus,
encountering him near Beneventum, defeated him with the loss of almost all his
infantry; he himself and his cavalry being the only part of the army that
escaped."' The numbers, as usual, are probably exaggerated immensely; but
there is no reason to doubt that Gracchus gained an important victory; and it
was rendered famous by his giving liberty to the volunteer slaves, by whose
valor it had mainly been won. Some of these had behaved ill in the action, and
were afraid that they should be punished, rather than rewarded; but Gracchus
first set them all free without distinction, and then, sending for those who had
misbehaved, made them severally swear that they would eat and drink standing,
so long as their military service should last, by way of penance for their fault.
Such a sentence, so different from the usual merciless severity of the Roman discipline, added to the general joy of the army; the soldiers marched back to
Beneventum in triumph; and the people poured out to meet them, and entreated
Gracchus that they might invite them all to a public entertainment. Tables
were set out in the streets; and the freed slaves attracted every one's notice by
their white caps, the well-known sign of their enfranchisement, and by the strange
sight of those who, in fulfilment of their penance, ate standing, and waited upon
their worthier comrades. The whole scene delighted the generous and kind
nature of Gracchus: to set free the slave and to relieve the poor appear to have
been hereditary virtues in his family: to him, no less than to his unfortunate de
scendants, beneficence seemed the highest glory. He caused a picture to be
painted, not of his victory over Hanno, but of the feasting of the enfranchised
slaves in the streets of Beneventum, and placed it in the temple of Liberty on
the Aventine, which his father had built and dedicated."'
The battle of Beneventum obliged Hanno to fall back into Lucania, and perl ann retrieve. s, haps as far as the confines of Bruttium. But he soon recruited his...       army, the Lucanians and Bruttians, as well as the Picentines, who
lived on the shores of the gulf of Salerno, being very zealous in the cause; and
"' Livy, XXIV. 19.              11 Livy, XXIV. 14, 15, 16.
11 Livy, XXIV. 20..             Livy, XXIV. 16.
11 Livy, XXIV. 20.




ï~~CHAP. XLIV.]

SEVERE MEASURES OF THE CENSORS.

523

ere.long he revenged his defeat by a signal victory over an army of Lucanians of
the Roman party, whom Gracchus had enlisted to act as an irregular force
against their countrymen of the opposite faction. Still Hanno was not tempted
to risk another battle with a Roman consular army; and when Gracchus advanced
from Beneventum into Lucania, he retired again into Bruttium.
There seems to have been no further dispute with regard to the appointment
of consuls. Fabius and the leading members of the senate appear Comitia for now ofmto have nominated such men as they thought most equal to the cer.
emergency; and no other candidates came forward. Fabius again held the
comitia; and his son, Q. Fabius, who was prator at the time, was elected consul
together with Gracchus. The praetors were entirely changed. Q. Fulvius was
succeeded in the city praetorship by M. Atilius Regulus, who had just resigned
the censorship, and who had already been twice consul; the other three prmtors
were M. Amilius Lepidus, On. Fulvius Centumalus, and P. Sempronius Tuditanus. The two former were men of noble families: Sempronius appears to have
owed his appointment to his resolute conduct at Cannae, when he cut his way
from.he camp through the surrounding enemies, and escaped in safety to
Canusium.117
Thus another year passed over; and although the state of affairs was still
dark, the tide seemed to be on the turn. Hannibal had gained no.. A.C.
A. v. 541. A.C. 273.
new victory; Tarentum had been saved from his hands; and Ca- Pb io spirit soo  by
silinum had been wrested from him. Public spirit was rising tho omans.
daily; and fresh instances of the patriotic devotion which possessed all classes
of the commonwealth were continually occurring. The owners of the slaves
whom Gracchus had enfranchised refused to receive any price for them: the
wealthy citizens who served in the cavalry determined not to take their pay;
and their example was followed by the centurions of the legions. Trust moneys
belonging to minors, or to widows and unmarried women, were deposited in the
treasury; and whatever sums the trustees had occasion to draw for, were paid
by the quaestor in bills on the banking commissioners, or triumviri mensarii: it is
probable that these bills were actually a paper currency, and that they circulated
as money, on the security of the public faith. In the same way we must suppose that the government contracts were also paid in paper; for the censors, we
are told, found the treasury unable to supply the usual sums for public works
and entertainments; there was no money to repair or keep up the temples, or to
provide horses for the games of the circus. Upon this the persons who were in
the habit of contracting for these purposes, came forward in a body to the cen
sors, and begged them to make their contracts as usual, promising not to demand
payment before the end of the war. This must mean, I conceive, that they were
to be paid in orders upon the treasury, which orders were to be converted into
cash, when the present difficulties of the government should be at an end."5
While such was the spirit of the people, any severity exercised by the government towards the timid or the unpatriotic was sure to be generally severe measures of to
acceptable. The censors, M. Atilius Regulus and P. Furius Philus, censors.
summoned all those persons, most of them members of noble, and all of wealthy
families, who had proposed to fly from Italy after the battle of Cannm. L. Metellus, who was said to have been the first author of that proposal, was at this
time questor; but he and all who were concerned in it were degraded from the
equestrian order, and removed from their respective tribes. Two thousand
citizens of lower rank were also removed from their tribes, and deprived of their
political franchise, for having evaded military service during the last four years;
and the senate inflicted an additional punishment by ordering that they should
serve as foot soldiers in Sicily, along with the remains of the army of Canna, and
Livy, XXIV. 20.                       Livy, XXIV.18.
21 Liyy, XXIV. 43.




ï~~524

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CrT. XLIV

should continue to serve so long as the enemy was in Italy."' The case of Metellus seems to have been considered a hard one: in spite of the censor's sentence, he was elected one of the tribunes in the following year. He then impeached the censors before the people; but the other nine tribunes interposed,
and would not allow the trial to proceed. '0  If Metellus had been wronged, the
people had made up for it by electing him tribune; but it was thought a dangerous precedent to subject the censors to a trial for the exercise of their undoubted
prerogative, when there was no reason to suspect the honesty of their motives.
SThe forces to be employed in Italy in the approaching campaign were to conDistribution of the Ro- sist of nine legions, three fewer than in the year before. The conman armies    suls were each to have their two legions, Gracchus in Lucania, and
Fabius in Apulia. M..EmiliuÂ~ was to command two legions also in Apulia,
having his head-quarters at Luceria; Cn. Fulvius with two more was to occupy
the camp above Suessula; and Varro was to remain with his one legion in Picenum.
Two consular armies of two legions each were required in Sicily; one commanded
by Marcellus as proconsul, the other by P. Lentulus as proprietor: two legions
were employed in Cisalpine Gaul under P. Sempronius, and two in Sardinia
under their old commander, Q. Mucius. M. Valerius Levinus retained his single
legion and his fleet, to act against Philip on the eastern side of the Ionian sea;
and P. Scipio and his brother were still continued in their command in Spain."t
Hannibal passed the winter at Salapia, where, the Romans said, was a lady
opening of the cam.- whom he loved, and who became famous from her influence over
paig.         him.22  Whether his passion for her made him careless of every
thing else, or whether he was really taken by surprise, we know not; but the
neighboring town of Arpi was attacked by the consul Fabius, and given up to
him by the inhabitants; and some Spaniards, who formed part of the garrison,
entered into the Roman service.'  Gracchus obtained some slight successes in
Lucania; and some of the Bruttian towns returned to their old alliance with
Rome; but a Roman contractor, T. Pomponius Veientanus, who had been empowered by the government to raise soldiers in Bruttium, and to employ them
in plundering the enemies' lands, was rash enough to venture a regular action
with Hanno, in which he was defeated and made prisoner.24"' This disaster
checked the reaction in Bruttium for the present.
Meanwhile Hannibal's eyes were still fixed upon Tarentum; and thither he
Hannibal lingers near marched again as soon as hlie took the field, leaving Fabius behind
Tr.entm.    him in Apulia. He passed the whole summer in the neighborhood
of Tarentum, and reduced several small towns in the surrounding country: but
his friends in Tarentum made no movement; for they dared not compromise the
safety of their countrymen and relations, who had been carried off as hostages to
Rome. Accordingly the season wore away unmarked by any memorable action.
Hannibal still lingered in the country of the Sallentines, unwilling to give up all
hope of winning the prize he had so long sought; and to lull the suspicions of
the Romans, he gave out that he was confined to his camp by illness, and that
this had prevented his army from returning to its usual winter-quarters in
Apulia.'-5
Matters were in this state, when tidings arrived at Tarentum, that the hostages,
Conspiry to betray it for whose safety their friends had been so anxious, had been all
to Haaniba.   cruelly put to death at Rome for having attempted to escape from
their captivity.'. Released in so shocking a manner from their former hesitation,
and burning to revenge the blood of their friends, Hannibal's partisans no longer
" Livy, XXIV. 18.                    t1s Livy, XXIV. 46, 47?.
o20 Livy, XXIV. 43.                  'm Livy, XXV. 1.
12 Livy, XXIV. 44.                   12 Polybius, VIII. 28. Livy, XXV. 8.
m Appian, VII. 43. Pliny, III. 16. See  " Livy, XXV. 7.
Lucian, Dial. Mortuor. XII. and Hemsterhuis'
rote.




ï~~OCHA. XLIV.]

CONSPIRACY AT TARENTUM.

525

delayed. They communicated secretly with him, arranged the details of their
attempt, and signed a treaty of alliance, by which he bound himself to respect
the independence and liberty of the Tarentines, and only stipulated for the plunder of such houses as were occupied by Roman citizens.'"   Two young men,
Philemenus and Nicon, were the leaders of the enterprise. Philemenus, under
pretence of hunting, had persuaded the officer at one of the gates to allow him
to pass in and out of the town by night without interruption. He was known to
be devoted to his sport; he scarcely ever returned without having caught or
killed some game or other; and by liberally giving away what he had caught, he
won the favor and confidence, not only of the officer of the gate, but also of the
Roman governor himself, M. Livius Macatus, a relation of M. Livius Salinator,
who afterwards defeated Hasdrubal, but a man too indolent and fond of good
cheer to be the governor of a town threatened by Hannibal. So little did Livius
suspect any danger, that on the very day which the conspirators had fixed for
their attempt, and when Hannibal with ten thousand men was advancing upon
the town, he had invited a large party to meet him at the Temple of the Muses
near the market-place, and was engaged from an early hour in festivity.12s
The city of Tarentum formed a triangle, two sides of which were washed by
the water; the outer or western side by the Mediterranean; the ituaon o arnum
Situation of Tarentum
inner or north-eastern side by that remarkable land-locked basin, favorable to the connow called the Little Sea, which has a mouth narrower than the spiratous.
entrance into the Norwegian Fiords, but runs deep into the land, and spreads out
into a wide surface of the calmest water, scarcely ruffled by the hardest gales.
Exactly at the mouth of this basin was a little rocky knoll, forming the apex of
the triangle of the city, and occupied by the citadel: the city itself stood on low
and mostly level ground; and its south-eastern wall, the base of the triangle,
stretched across from the Little Sea to the Mediterranean."9 Thus the citadel
commanded the entrance into the basin, which was the port of the Tarentines;
and it was garrisoned by the Romans, although many of the officers and soldiers
were allowed to lodge in the city. All attempts upon the town by land must be
made then against the south-eastern side, which was separated from the citadel
by the whole length of the city: and there was another circumstance which was
likely to favor a surprise; for the Tarentines, following the direction of an oracle,
as they said, buried their dead within the city walls; and the street of the tombs
was interposed between the gates and the inhabited parts of the town.38  This
the conspirators turned to their own purposes: in this lonely quarter two of their
number, Nicon and Tragiscus, were waiting for Hannibal's arrival without the
gates. As soon as they perceived the signal which was to announce his presence,
they, with a party of their friends, were to surprise the gates from within, and
put the guards to the sword; while others had been left in the city to keep
watch near the museum, and prevent any communication from being conveyed
to the Roman governor.'3'
The evening wore away; the governor's party broke up; and his friends attended him to his house. On their way home they met some of carelesnes of the
the conspirators, who, to lull all suspicion, began to jest with governor.
them, as though themselves going home from a revel, and joining the party
amidst riotous shouts and loud laughter, accompanied the governor to his own
door. He went to rest in joyous and careless mood; his friends were all gone
to their quarters; the noise of revellers returning from their festivities died away
through the city; and when midnight was come, the conspirators alone were
abroad. They now divided into three parties: one was posted near the governor's house, a second secured the approaches to the market-place, and the third
hastened to the quarter of the tombs, to watch for Hannibal's signal.'3"'
2 Polybius, VIII. 26, 27. Livy, XXV. 8.  130 Polybius, VIII. 80.
S2. Polybius, VIII. 28, 29. Livy, XXV. 8, 9.  131 Polybius, VIII. 29, 80. Livy, XXV. 9.
12' Strabo, VI. p. 278.               132 Polybius, VIII. 29.




ï~~526

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIV

They did not watch long in vain; a fire in a particular spot without the walls
Hannibal enters on of Tassured them that Hannibal was at hand. They lit a fire in answer;
the gates,   and presently, as had been agreed upon, the fire without the walls
disappeared. Then the conspirators rushed to the gate of the city, surprised it
with ease, put the guards to the sword, and began to hew asunder the bar by
which the gates were fastened. No sooner was it forced, and the gates opened,
than Hannibal's soldiers were seen ready to enter; so exactly had the time of the
operations been calculated. The cavalry were left without the walls as a reserve; but the infantry, marching in regular column, advanced through the
quarter of the tombs to the inhabited part of the city.'33
Meantime Philcmenus with a thousand Africans had been sent to secure anAnother is opened to other gate by stratagem. The guards were accustomed to let
him by Philemens.  him in at all hours, whenever he returned from his hunting expeditions; and now, when they heard his usual whistle, one of them went to the
gate to admit him. Philemenus called to the guard from without to open the
wicket quickly; for that he and his friends had killed a huge wild boar, and
could scarcely bear the weight any longer. The guard, accustomed to have a
share in the spoil, opened the wicket; and Philemenus and three other conspirators, disguised as countrymen, stepped in, carrying the boar between them.
They instantly killed the poor guard, as he was admiring and feeling their prize;
and then let in about thirty Africans, who were following close behind. With
this force they mastered the gate-house and towers, killed all the guards, and
hewed asunder the bars of the main gates to admit the whole column of Africana,
who marched in on this side also in regular order, and advanced towards the
market-place.34
No sooner had both Hannibal's columns reached their destination, and as it
slaughter of theo Ro- seems without exciting any general alarm, than he detached three
man troops.   bodies of Gaulish soldiers to occupy the principal streets which
led to the market-place. The officers in command of these troops had orders to
kill every Roman who fell in their way; but some of the Tarentine conspirators
were sent with each party to warn their countrymen to go home and remain
quiet, assuring them that no mischief was intended to them. The toils being
thus spread, the prey was now to be enticed into them. Philemenus and his
friends had provided some Roman trumpets; and these were loudly blown,
sounding the well-known call to arms to the Roman soldier. Roused at this sum.
mons, the Romans quartered about the town armed themselves in haste, and
poured into the streets to make their way to the citadel. But they fell in scattered parties into the midst of Hannibal's Gauls, and were cut down one after another. The governor alone had been more fortunate; the alarm had reached
him in time; and being in no condition to offer any resistance,-for he felt, says
Polybius, that the fumes of wine were still overpowering him,-he hastened to
the harbor, and getting on board a boat, was carried safely to the citadel.'35
Day at last dawned, but did not quite clear up the mystery of the night's
alarm to the mass of the inhabitants of Tarentum. They were safe
Hannibal addresses the
Tartines, an d prom. in their houses, unmassacred, unplundered; the only blast of war.. petolothorn.  had been blown by a Roman trumpet; yet Roman soldiers were
lying dead in the streets; and Gauls were spoiling their bodies. Suspense at
length was ended by the voice of the public crier summoning the citizens of Tarentum, in Hannibal's name, to appear without their arms in the market-place;
and by repeated shouts of ' Liberty! Liberty!" uttered by some of their own
countrymen, who ran round the town calling the Carthaginians their deliverers.
The firm partisans of Rome made haste to escape into the citadel, while the muldtitude crowded to the market-place. They found it regularly occupied by Car.

mI Polybius, VIII. 30, 81.
134 Polybius, VIII, 31.

a Polybius, VIII. 832. Livy, XXV. 10.




ï~~CuA. XLIV.]

CAMPAIGN OF 541.

527

thaginian troops; and the great general, of whom they had heard so much, was
preparing to address them. He spoke to them, in Greek apparently, declaring,
as usual, that he was come to free the inhabitants of Italy from the dominion of
Rome. "The Tarentines therefore had nothing to fear; they should go home,
and write each over his door, a Tarentine's house; those words would be a sufficient security; no door so marked should be violated. But the mark must not
be set falsely upon any Roman's quarters; a Tarentine guilty of such treason
would be put to death as an enemy; for all Roman property was the lawful
prize of the soldiers." Accordingly all houses where Romans had been quartered
were given up to be plundered; and the Carthaginian soldiers gained a harvest,
says Polybius, which fully answered their hopes. This can only be explained by
supposing that the Romans were quartered generally in the houses of the wealthier
Tarentines, who were attached to the Roman alliance; and that the plunder was
not the scanty baggage of the legionary soldiers, but the costly furniture of the
richest citizens in the greatest city of southern Italy."'
Thus Tarentum was won; but the citadel on its rocky knoll was still held by
the Romans; and its position at once threatened the town, and He drste T
He drags the Tarentino
shut up the Tarentine fleet useless in the harbor. Hannibal pro- ofleet through the town,
ceeded to sink a ditch, and throw up a wall along the side of the  reuo toAputha.
town towards the citadel, in order to repress the sallies of the garrison. While
engaged in these works he purposely tempted the Romans to a sally, and having
lured them on to some distance from their cover, turned fiercely upon them, and
drove them back with such slaughter, that their effective strength was greatly
reduced. He then hoped to take the citadel: but the garrison was reinforced
by sea from Metapontum, the Romans withdrawing their troops from thence for
this more important service; and a successful night-sally destroyed the besiegers'
works, and obliged them to trust to a blockade. But as this was hopeless, while
the Romans were masters of the sea, Hannibal instructed the Tarentines to drag
their ships overland, through the streets of the city, from the harbor to the outer
sea; and this being effected without difficulty, as the ground was quite level, the
Tarentine fleet became at once effective, and the sea communications of the enemy
were cut off. Having thus, as he hoped, enabled the Tarentines to deal by themselves with the Roman garrison, he left a small force in the town, and returned
with the mass of his troops to his winter-quarters in the country of the Sallentines, or on the edge of Apulia.'
It will be observed that the only events recorded of this year, 541, are the reduction of Arpi by Fabius, the unimportant operations of Grac- what were the Reo.
chus in Lucania, and Hannibal's surprise of Tarentum; which last moodoing
action, however, did not happen till the end of the campaign, about the middle
of the winter. According to Livy, Hannibal had passed the whole summer near
Tarentum; he must therefore have been some months in that neigborhood; and
what was going on elsewhere the while? Gracchus, we are told, was engaged
in Lucania; but where was the consul Fabius, with his father? and what was
done by the four Roman legions, Fabius' consular army, and the prmetorian army
of M..iEmilius, which were both stationed in Apulia? Allowing that Cn. Fulvius, with his two legions in the camp above Suessula, was busied in watching
the Campanians, yet Fabius and.Emilius had nearly forty thousand men at their
disposal; and yet Capua was not besieged; nor was Hannibal impeded in his
attempts upon Tarentum. Is it to be conceived that so large a portion of the
power of Rome, directed by old Fabius himself, can have been totally wasted
during a whole summer, useless alike for attack or defence?
The answer to this question depends upon another point, which is itself not
easy to fix; the true date, namely, of the surprise of Tarentum. chronologicalt doseu
Livy tells us that it was placed by different writers in different ties.

' Polybius, VIII. 33. Livy, XXV. 10.

P V  Polybius, VIII. 84-86. 'ivy, XXV. 11.




ï~~528

HISTORY OF ROME.

[GHAP. XLIV

years; and he himself prefers the later date,'t3 yet does not give it correctly.
For, as Tarentum was surprised in the winter, the doubt must have been, whether
to fix it towards the end of the consulship of Fabius and Gracchus, or of Fulvius
and Appius Claudius: it could never have been placed so early as the consulship of
Fabius and Marcellus. Livy describes it after he has mentioned the comrning into
office of Fulvius and Claudius, as if it belonged to their year; yet he places it
before the opening of the campaign, which implies that it must have occurred in
the preceding winter, whilst Fabius and Gracchus were still in office. Polybius
evidently gave the later date, that is, the year of Fulvius and Appius, but the
end of it: according to him, it followed the death of Gracchus, and the various
events of the summer of 542. And there are some strong reasons for believing
this to be the more probable position. If this were so, we must suppose that
the summer of 541 was passed without any important action, because Hannibal,
after the loss of Arpi, continued to watch the two Roman armies in Apulia; and
that either the fear of losing Tarentum, or the hope of recovering Salapia and
other Apulian towns, detained Fabius in the southeast, and delayed the siege of
Capua.
In the mean time men's minds at Rome were restless and uneasy; and the
Disord.rs  ome.  government had enough to do to prevent their running wild in one
direction or another. The city had suffered from a fire, which
lasted a whole day and two nights, and destroyed all the buildings along the
river, with many of those on the slope of the Capitoline hill, and between it and
the Palatine."'39 The distress thus caused would be great; and the suspicions of
treason and incendiarism, the constant attendants of great fires in large cities,
would be sure to imbitter the actual suffering. At such a time every one would
crave to know what the future had in store for him; and whoever professed to
be acquainted with the secrets of fate found many to believe him. Faith in the
gods of Rome was beginning to be shaken: if they could not, or would not save,
other powers might be more propitious; and sacrifices and prayers to strange
gods were offered in the Forum and Capitol; while prophets, deceiving or deceived, were gathering crowds in every street, making a profit of their neighbors'
curiosity and credulity.140 Nor were these vagabond prophets the only men who
preyed upon the public distress: the wealthy merchants, who had come forward
with patriotic zeal to supply the armies when the treasury was unable to bear
the burden, were now found to be seeking their own base gain out of their pretended liberality. M. Postumius, of Pyrgi, was charged by public rumor with
the grossest frauds: he had demanded to be reimbursed for the loss of stores
furnished by him at sea, when no such loss had occurred; he had loaded old
rotten vessels with cargoes of trifling value; the sailors had purposely sunk the
ships, and had escaped in their boats; and then Postumius magnified the value
of their cargo, and prayed to be indemnified for the loss.'' Even the virtue of
Roman matrons could not stand the contagion of this evil time: more than one
case of shame was brought by the aediles before the judgment of the people."'
Man's spirit failed with woman's modesty: the citizens of the military age were
slow to enlist; and many from the country tribes would not come to Rome when
the consuls summoned them."' All this unsoundness at home may have had its
effect on the operations of the war, and tended to make Fabius more than usually
cautious, as another defeat at such a moment might have extinguished the Roman
name.
Against this weight of evils the senate bore up vigorously. The superstitions
A. U. C. 542. A.C of the people, their worship of strange gods, and their shrinking
12. o Vigorous en from military service, required to be noticed without delay. The
ures of the senate.  city praetor, M. Atilius, issued an edict forbidding all public sacrifices
18 Livy, XXV. 11.                    141 Livy, XXV. 8, 4.
139 Livy, XXIV. 47.                   142 Livy, XXV. 2.
1o Livy, XXV. 1, 12.                 14 Livy, XXV. 5.




ï~~,Jm. XLIV.]

PUNISHMENT OF POSTUMIUS.

529

to strange gods, or with any strange rites. All books of prophecies, all formularies
of prayer or of sacrifice, were to be brought to him before the first of April;
that is, before he went out of office.44  The great ceremonies of the national religion were celebrated with more than usual magnificence; the great games of
the circus were kept up for an additional day; two days were added to the celebration of the games of the commons; and they were further marked by a public entertainment given in the precincts of the temple of Jupiter on the capitol
to all the poorer citizens.'14' A great military effort was to be made the ensuing
campaign; old Q. Fulvius Flaccus, one of the ablest as well as severest men in
Rome, was chosen consul for the third time; and Appius Claudius was elected
as his colleague.'9  The armies, notwithstanding the difficulty of enlisting soldiers, were to be augmented; two extraordinary:commissions, of three members
each, were appointed, one to visit all the country tribes within fifty miles of Rome,
and the other such as were more remote. Every free-born citizen was to be
passed in review; and boys under seventeen were to be enlisted, if they seemed
strong enough to bear arms; but their years of service were to count from their
enlistment; and if they were called out before the military age began, they might
claim their discharge before it ended.4
While dealing thus strictly with the disorders and want of zeal of the multitude, the senate, it might have been supposed, would not spare the Pnishment of Potufraud of the contractor Postumius.   But with that neglect of m'i
equal justice, which is the habitual sin of an aristocracy, they punished the poor,
but were afraid to attack the wealthy; and although the city pretor had made
an official representation of the tricks practised by Postumius, no steps were
taken against him. Amongst the new tribunes, however, were two of the noble
house of the Carvilii, who, indignant at the impunity of so great an offender, resolved to bring him to trial. They at first demanded no other penalty than
that a fine of 200,000 ases should be imposed on him; but when the trial
came on, a large party of the moneyed men broke up the assembly by creating a
riot, and no sentence was passed.   This presumption, however, overshot its
mark; the consuls took up the matter and laid it before the senate: the senate
resolved that the peace of the commonwealth had been violently outraged; and
the tribunes now proceeded against Postumius and the principal authors of the
disturbance capitally.  Bail was demanded of them; but they deserted their
bail, and went into exile; upon which the people, on the motion of the tribunes, ordered that their property should be sold, and themselves outlawed.'48
Thus the balance of justice was struck; and this, doubtless, contributed to
conciliate the poorer citizens, and to make them more ready to bear their part
in the war.
It was resolved that Capua should be besieged without delay. In the pre.
ceding year, 112 noble Capuans had left the city, and come over Resolution to bosiege
to the Romans, stipulating for nothing but their lives and proper- capoa.
ties.' This shows that the aristocratical party in Capua could not be depended
on: if the city were hard pressed, they would not be ready to make any extraordinary sacrifices in its behalf. Hannibal was far away in the farthest corner of
Italy; and as long as the citadel of Tarentum held out, he would be unwilling to
move towards Campania. Even if he should move, four armies were ready to
oppose him; those of the two consuls, of the consul's brother, On. Fulvius, who
was pretor in Apulia, and of another pretor, C. Claudius Nero, who commanded
two legions in the camp above Suessula. Besides this mass of forces, Ti. Gracchus, the consul of the preceding year, still retained his army as proconsul in Lucania, and might be supposed capable of keeping Hanno and the army of Brut,
tium in check.
2 Livy, XXV. 1.                      24 ' Livy, XXV. 5.
145 Livy, XXV. 2.                     14 Livy, XXV. 4.
24 Livy, XXV. 3.                      14 Livy, XXIV. 47.
34




ï~~530

HISTORY OF ROME,

[CHAP. XLIV

It was late in the spring before the consuls took the field. One of them sucThe Companions apply ceeded to the army of the late consul, Fabius; the other took the
to Hnnibal  fosr aid. tWO legions with which On. Fulvius Centumulas had held the
camp above Suessula.uo These armies marching, the one from Apulia, the other
from Campania, met at Bovianum: there, at the back of the Matese, in the country of the Pentrian Samnites, the faithful allies of Rome, the consuls were making preparations for the siege of Capua, and, perhaps, were at the same time
watching the state of affairs in the south, and the movements of Hannibal. The
Campanians suspected that mischief was coming upon them, and sent a deputation to Hannibal praying him to aid them. If they were to stand a siege, it was
important that the city should be well supplied with provisions; and their own
harvest had been so insufficient, owing to the devastation caused by the war,
that they had scarcely enough for their present consumption. Hannibal would
therefore be pleased to order that supplies should be sent to them from the country of his Samnite and Lucanian allies, before their communications were cut off
by the presence of the Roman armies.6'
Hannibal was still near Tarentum, whether hoping to win the town or the citaHe sends Hanno to re- del, the doubtful chronology of this period will not allow us to
toueg thei hon fgl decide. He ordered Hanno, with the army of Bruttium, to move
through  their  negligence.       forward into Samnium; a most delicate operation, if the two consuls were with their armies at Bovianum, and Gracchus in Lucania itself, in the
very line of Hanno's march, and if C. Nero, with two legions more, was lying in
the camp above Suessula. But the army from Suessula had been given to one
of the consuls, and the legions which were to take its place were to be marched
from the coast of Picenum, and perhaps had hardly reached their destination.
The Lucanians themselves seem to have found sufficient employment for Gracchus; and Hanno moved with a rapidity which friends and enemies were alike
unprepared for. He arrived safely in the neighborhood of Beneventum, encamped his army in a strong position about three miles from the town, and dispatched word to the Capuans that they should instantly send off every carriage
and beast of burden in their city, to carry home the corn which he was going to
provide for them. The towns of the Caudine Samnites emptied their magazines
for the purpose, and forwarded all their corn to Hanno's camp. Thus far all
prospered; but the negligence of the Capuans ruined every thing: they had not
carriages enough ready; and Hanno was obliged to wait in his perilous situation,
where every hour's delay was exposing him to destruction.'"'  Beneventum was
a Latin colony, in other words, a strong Roman garrison, watching all his proceedings; from thence, information was sent to the consuls at Bovianum; and
Fulvius with his army instantly set out, and entered Beneventum by night.
There he found that the Capuans with their means of transport were at length
arrived; and all disposable hands had been pressed into the service; that Hanno's camp was crowded with cattle and carriages, and a mixed multitude of unarmed men, and even of women and children; and that a vigorous blow might
win it with all its spoil: the indefatigable general was absent, scouring the country for additional supplies of corn. Fulvius sallied from Beneventum a little
before daybreak, and led his soldiers to assault Hanno's position. Under all disadvantages of surprise and disorder, the Carthaginians resisted so vigorously, that
Fulvius was on the point of calling off his men, when a brave Pelignian officer
threw the standard of his cohort over the enemy's wall, and desperately climbed
the rampart and scaled the wall to recover it. His cohort rushed after him; and
a Roman centurion then set the same example, which was followed with equal
alacrity. Then the Romans broke into the camp on every side, even the wounded
men struggling on with the mass, that they might die within the enemy's ramparts. The slaughter was great, and the prisoners many; but above all, the

Â~ Livy, XXV. 8.

2IC Livy, XXV. 13.:52 Livy, XXV. 18.




ï~~CHAP. XLIV.]

DEATH OF GRA.COHUS

531

whole of the corn which Hanno had collected for the relief of Capua was lost,
and the object of his expedition totally frustrated. He himself, hearing of the
wreck of his army, retreated with speed into Bruttium. '3
Again the Capuans sent to Hannibal requesting him to aid them ere it was too
late. Their negligence had just cost him an army, and had frustrated The capuans again apall his plans for their relief; but, with unmoved temper, he assured ply for aid.
them that he would npt forget them, and sent back 2000 of his invincible cavalry with the deputation, to protect their lands from the enemy's ravages. It
was important to him not to leave the south of Italy till the very last moment;
for since he had taken Tarentum, the neighboring Greek cities of Metapontum,
Heraclea, and Thurii, had joined him; and as he had before won Croton and
Locri, he was now master of the whole coast from the straits of Messana to the
mouth of the Adriatic, with the exception of Rhegium and the citadel of Tarentum. Into the latter the Romans had lately thrown supplies of provisions; and
the garrison was so strong, that Hannibal was unwilling to march into Campania, while such a powerful force of the enemy was eft behind in so favorable
a position."
The consuls meanwhile, not content with their own two armies, and with the
two legions expected, if not yet arrived, in the camp above Sues- De  of
Death  of  Gracchus
sula, sent to Gracchus in Lucania, desiring him to bring up his Centenius raises an arcavalry and light troops to Beneventum, to strengthen them in myinLuai
that kind of force, in which they fully felt their inferiority. But before he could
leave his own province, he was drawn into an ambuscade by the treachery of a
Lucanian in the Roman interest, and perished.5"' His quaestor, Cn. Cornelius,
marched with his cavalry towards Beneventum, according to the consul's orders;
but the infantry, consisting of the slaves whom he had enfranchised, thought that
their services were ended by the death of their deliverer, and immediately dispersed to their homes."56  Thus Lucania was left without either a Roman army
or general; but M. Centenius, an old centurion, distinguished for his strength
and courage, undertook the command there, if the senate would intrust him with
a force equal to a single legion. Perhaps, like T. Pomponius Veientanus, he was
connected with some of the contractors and moneyed men, and owed his appointment as much to their interest as to his own reputation. But he was a brave
and popular soldier; and so many volunteers joined him on his march, hoping to
be enriched by the plunder of Lucania, that he arrived there with a force, it is
said, amounting to near sixteen thousand men. His confidence and that of his
followers was doomed to be wofully disappointed."'
The consuls knew that Hannibal was far away; and they did not know that
any of his cavalry were in Capua. They issued boldly, therefore,
from the Caudine Forks on the great Campanian plain, and scat- pTed Rbyoman aro
tered their forces far and wide to destroy the still green corn. To Capu.
their astonishment the gates of Capua were thrown open; and with the Campanian infantry they recognized the dreaded cavalry of Hannibal. In a moment
their foragers were driven in; and as they hastily formed their legions in order
of battle to cover them, the horsemen broke upon them like a whirlwind, and
drove them with great loss and confusion to their camp."' This sharp lesson
taught them  caution; but their numbers were overwhelming; and their two
armies, encamped before Capua, cut off the communications of the city, and had
the harvest of the whole country in their power.
But ere many days had elapsed, an unwelcome sight was seen on the summit
of Tifata; Hannibal was there once more with his army.    He Hannibal returns,
descended into Capua; two days afterwards he marched out to Tifata.
13 Livy, XXV. 14. Valerius Maximu$, III.     "66 Livy, XXV. 20.
2, 20.                                        15' Livy, XXV. 19.
154 Livy, XXV. 15, Appian, VII. 35.         35 Livy, XXV. 18.
1" Livy, XXV. 16.




ï~~532

HISTORY OF ROME.

[HAP. XLI

battle; again his invincible Numidians struck terror into the Roman line, when
the sudden arrival of On. Cornelius with the cavalry of Graccbus' army broke off
the action; and neither side, it is, said, knowing what this new force might be,
both, as if by common consent, retreated.59 How Hannibal so outstripped Cornelius as to arrive from Tarentum on the scene of action two or three days before
him, who was coming from Lucania, we are not told, and can only conjecture.
But the arrival of this reinforcement, though it had saved the consuls from defeat, did not embolden them to hold their ground: they left their camps as soon
as night came on; Fulvius fell down upon the coast, near Cumae; Appius Claudius retreated in the direction of Lucania.
Few passages in history can offer a parallel to Hannibal's campaigns; but this
confident gathering of the enemies' overflowing numbers round
He enters Capua. the city of his nearest allies, his sudden march, the unlooked-for
appearance of his dreaded veterans, and the instant scattering of the besieging
armies before him, remind us of the deliverance of Dresden in 1813, when Napoleon broke in upon the allies' confident expectations of victory, and drove them
away in signal defeat. And like the allies in that great campaign, the Roman
generals knew their own strength; and though yielding to the shock of their
adversary's surpassing energy and genius, they did not allow themselves to be
scared from their purpose, but began again steadily to draw the toils which he
had once broke through. Great was the joy in Capua, when the people rose in
the morning and saw the Roman camps abandoned: there needs no witness to
tell us with what sincere and deep admiration they followed and gazed on their
deliverer; how confident they felt that, with him for a shield, no harm could
reach them. But almost within sight and hearing of their joy, the stern old
Fulvius was crouching, as it were, in his thicket, watching the moment for a
second spring upon his prey; and when Hannibal'left that rejoicing and admiring
multitude to follow the traces of Appius, he passed through the gates of Capua,
to enter them again no more.
Appius retreated in the direction of Lucania: this is all that is reported of his
Onshis return  e.. march; and then, after a while, having led his enemy in the direcnia he destroys the a- tion which suited his purposes, he turned off by another road, and
my of Centenuns;
my or cete  made his way back to Campania."'t  With such a total absence of
details, it is impossible to fix the line of his march exactly. It was easy for Appius to take the round of the Matese; retiring first by the great road to Beneventum, then turning to his left and regaining his old quarters at Bovianum,
from whence, the instant that Hannibal ceased to follow him, he would move
along under the north side of the Matese to Esernia, and descend again upon
Campania by the valley of the Vulturnus. Hannibal's pursuit was necessarily
stopped as soon as Appius moved northwards from Beneventum: he could not
support his army in the country of the Pentrian Samnites, where every thing was
hostile to him; nor did he like to abandon his line of direct communication with
southern Italy. He had gained a respite for Capua, and had left an auxiliary
force to aid in its defence: meanwhile other objects must not be neglected; and
the fall of the citadel of Tarentum might of itself prevent or raise the siege of
Capua. So he turned off from following Appius, and was marching back to the
south, when he was told that a Roman army was attempting to bar his passage
in Lucania. This was the motley multitude commanded by Centenius, which
had succeeded, as we have seen, to the army of Gracchus. With what mad
hope, or under what false impression, Centenius could have been tempted to rush
upon certain destruction, we know not: but in the number, no less than in the
quality of his troops, he must have been far inferior to his adversary. His men
fought bravely; and he did a centurion's duty well, however he may have failed

l Livy, XXV. 19.

18 Livy, XXV. 19.




ï~~CHAP. XLIV ]

HANNIBAL'S SITUATION.

533

as a general; but he was killed, and nearly fifteen thousand men are said to have
perished with him.T
Thus Lucania was cleared of the Romans; and as the firmest partisan of the
Roman interest among the Lucanians had been the very man who and that of Cn.Fulviu
had betrayed Gracchus to his fate, it is likely that the Carthaginian  Apulia.
party was triumphant through the whole country. Only one Roman army was
left in the south of Italy, the two legions commanded by Cn. Fulvius Flaccus,
the consul's brother, in Apulia. But Cn. Fulvius had nothing of his brother's
ability; he was a man grown old in profligacy; and the discipline of his army
was said to be in the worst condition. Hannibal, hoping to complete his work,
moved at once into Apulia, and found Fulvius in the neighborhood of Herdonea.
The Roman general' met him in the open field without hesitation, and was presently defeated; he himself escaped from the action, but Hannibal had occupied
the principal roads in the rear of the enemy with his cavalry; and the greatest
part of the Roman army was cut to pieces.'62
We naturally ask what result followed from these two great victories; and to
this question we find no recorded answer.  Hannibal, we are told, what were th e results
returned to Tarentum; but finding that the citadel still held out, of these victories.
and could neither be forced nor surprised, and that provisions were still introduced
by sea, a naval blockade in ancient warfare being always inefficient, he marched
off towards Brundisium, on some prospect that the town would be betrayed into
his hands. This hope also failed him; and he remained inactive in Apulia, or in
the country of the Sallentines, during the rest of the year. Meantime the consuls received orders from the senate to collect the wrecks of the two beaten
armies, and to search for the soldiers of Gracchus' army, who had dispersed, as
we have seen, after his death. The city praetor, P. Cornelius, carried on the same
search nearer Rome; and these duties, says Livy, were all performed most carefully and vigorously."3  This is all the information which exists for us in the
remains of the ancient writers; but assuredly this is no military history of a campaign.
It is always to be understood that Hannibal could not remain long in an
enemy's country, from the difficulty of feeding his men, especially Difficultnies of annihis cavalry. But the country round Capua, was not all hostile; bals situation.
Atella and Calatia, in the plain of Campania itself, were still his allies; so were
many of the Caudine Samnites, from whose cities Hanno had collected the corn
early in this year for the relief of Capua. Again, we can conceive how the number of the Roman armies sometimes oppressed him; how he dared not stay long
in one quarter, lest a greater evil should befall him in another. But at this moment three great disasters, the dispersion of the army of Gracchus, and the
destruction of those of Centenius and Fulvius, had cleared the south of Italy of
the Romans; and his friends in Apulia, in Lucania, at Tarentum, and in Bruttium,
could have nothing to fear, had he left them for the time to their own resources.
Why, after defeating Fulvius, did he not retrace his steps towards Campania,
hold the field with the aid of his Campanian and Samnite allies till the end of the
military season, and then winter close at hand, on the shores of the gulf of
Salerno, in the country of his allies, so as to make it impossible for the Romans
either to undertake or to maintain the siege of Capua?
That his not doing this was not his own fault, his extraordinary ability and
energy may sufficiently assure us. But where the hindrance was, Hisprobable reasonsfor
we cannot for certain discover. His army must. have been worn winoring in Apulia.
by its long and rapid march to and from Campania, and by two battles fought
with so short an interval. His wounded must have been numerous; nor can we
tell how such hard service in the heat of summer may have tried the health of

161 Livy, XXV. 19.
162 Livy, XXV. 20, 21.

163s Livy, XXV. 22.




ï~~534

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CuA. XLIV

his soldiers. His horses, too, must have needed rest; and to overstlain the main
arm of his strength would have been fatal. Perhaps, too, great as was Hannibal's
ascendency over his army, there was a point beyond which it could not be tried
with safety. Long marches and hard-fought battles gave the soldier, especially
the Gaul and the Spaniard, what in his eyes was a rightful claim to a season of
rest and enjoyment: the men might have murmured had they not been permitted
to taste some reward of their victories. Besides all these reasons, the necessity
of a second march into Campania may not have seemed urgent: the extent of
Capua was great; if the Roman consuls did encamp before it, still the city was
in no immediate danger; after the winter another advance would again enable
him to throw supplies into the town, and to drive off the Roman armies. So
Capua was left for the present to its own resources, and Hannibal passed the
autumn and winter in Apulia.
Immediately the Roman armies closed again upon their prey. Three grand
The omans surroun d magazines of corn were established, to feed the besieging army
c pua with a double during the winter, one at Casilinum within three miles of Capua;
wall.         another at a fort built.for the purpose at the mouth of the Vulturnus; and a third at Puteoli. Into these two last magazines the corn was conveyed by sea from Ostia, whither it had already been collected from Sardinia and
Etruria.'64  Then the consuls summoned C. Nero from his camp above Suessula;
and the three armies began the great work of surrounding Capua with double
continuous lines, strong enough to repel the besieged on one side, and Hannibal
on the other, when he should again appear in Campania. The inner line was carried round the city, at a distance of about a quarter of a mile from the walls;
the outer line was concentric with it; and the space between the two served for
the cantonments and magazines of the besiegers. The lines, says Appian,'6t looked
like a great city, inclosing a smaller city in the middle; like the famous lines of the
Peloponnesians before Platma. What time was employed in completing them
we know not; they were interrupted by continual sallies of the besieged; and
Jubellius Taurea and the Capuan cavalry were generally too strong for the Roman
horsemen.'86  But their infantry could do nothing against the legions; the besieging army must have amounted nearly to sixty thousand men; and slowly but
surely the imprisoning walls were raised, and their circle completed, shutting out
the last gleams of light from the eyes of the devoted city.
Before the works were closed all round, the consuls, according to the senate's
Teir offer toallowany directions signified to them by the city prmtor, announced to the
of the citiz ns to come Capuans, that whoever chose to come out of the city with his
out safely is rejectedhoecy
A..c.543. A.c. 211. family and property before the ides of March, might do so with
safety, and should be untouched in body or goods.67  It would seem then that
the works were not completed till late in the winter; for we cannot suppose that
the term of grace would have been prolonged to a remote day, especially as the
ides of March were the beginning of the new consular year; and it could not be
known long beforehand whether the present consuls would be continued in their
command or no. The offer was received by the besieged, it is said, with open
scorn; their provisions were as yet abundant, their cavalry excellent; their hope
of aid from Hannibal, as soon as the campaign should open, was confident. But
Fulvius waited his time; nor was his thirst for Capuan blood to be disappointed
by his removal from the siege at the end of the year: it would seem as if the
new consuls were men of no great consideration, appointed probably for that very
reason, that their claims might not interfere with those of their predecessors.
One of them, P. Sulpicius Galba, had filled no curule office previously: the
other, Cn. Fulvius Centumalus, had been prator two years before, but was not
distinguished by any remarkable action. The siege of Capua was still to be con2" Livy, XXV. 22.                    106 Appian, VII. 87. Livy, XXVI. 4.
* VII. 87.                           'm Livy, XXV. 22.




ï~~CiAr. XLIV.]  HANNIBAL TRIES TO RELIEVE CAPUA.

535

ducted by Appius Claudius and Fulvius; and they were ordered not to retire
from their positions till they should have taken the city."6
What was the state of affairs in Capua meantime, we know not. The Roman
stories are little to be credited, which represent all the richer and state ocapa.
nobler citizens as abandoning the government, and leaving the
office of chief magistrate, Meddix Tuticus, to be filled by one Seppius Lesius, a
man of obscure condition, who offered himself as a candidate.169 Neither Vibius
Virrius nor Jubellius Taurea wanted resolution to abide by their country to the
last; and it was expressly said that, down to the latest period of the siege, there
was no Roman party in Capua; no voice was heard to speak of peace or surrender; no citizen had embraced the consul's offers of mercy.'  Even when they
had failed to prevent the completion of the Roman lines, they continued to make
frequent sallies; and the proconsuls could only withstand their cavalry by mixing light-armed foot soldiers amongst the Roman hcrsemen, and thus strengthening that weakest arm in the Roman service. Still, as the blockade was now fully
established, famine must be felt sooner or later: accordingly a Numidian was
sent to implore Hannibal's aid, and succeeded in getting through the Roman
lines, and carrying his message safely to Bruttium.
Hannibal listened to the prayer, and leaving his heavy baggage and the mass
of his army behind, set out with his cavalry and light infantry, and Hannibal comes to its
with thirty-three elephants.'2 Whether his Samnite and Lucanian relief.
allies joined him on the march is not stated; if they did not, and if secrecy and
expedition were deemed of more importance than an addition of force, the troops
which he led with him must have been more like a single corps than a complete
army. Avoiding Beneventum, he descended the valley of the Calor towards the
Vulturnus, stormed a Roman post, which had been built apparently to cut off
the communications of the besieged with the upper valley of the Vulturnus, and
encamped immediately behind the ridge of Tifata. From thence he descended
once more into the plain of Capua, displayed his cavalry before the Roman lines
in the hope of tempting them out to battle, and finding that this did not succeed,
commenced a general assault upon their works.
Unprovided with any artillery, his best hope was, that the Romans might be
allured to make some rash sally: his cavalry advanced by squad- Hannibal attacks the
rons up to the edge of the trench, and discharged showers of mis-  men lines.  t
ally,  and  resolves t
siles into the lines; while his infantry assailed the rampart, and march against ome.
tried to force their way through the palisade which surmounted it. From within,
the lines were attacked by the Campanians and Hannibal's auxiliary garrison;
but the Romans were numerous enough to defend both fronts of their works;
they held their ground steadily, neither yielding nor rashly pursuing; and Hannibal, finding his utmost efforts vain, drew off his army.7' Some resolution must
be taken promptly; his cavalry could not be fed where he was, for the Romans
had previously destroyed or carried away every thing that might serve for forage; nor could he venture to wait till the new consuls should have raised their
legions, and be ready to march from Rome and threaten his rear. One only
hope remained; one attempt might yet be made, which should either raise the
siege of Capua or accomplish a still greater object: Hannibal resolved to march
upon Rome.
A Numidian was again found, who undertook to pass over to the Roman lines
as a deserter, and from thence to make his escape into Capua, bear- He sets out suddenly
ing a letter from Hannibal, which explained his purpose, and con- bynight.
jured the Capuans patiently to abide the issue of his attempt for a little while.'74
When this letter reached Capua, Hannibal was already gone; his camp-fires had
as Livy, XXVI. 1. Frontinus, III. 18, 3.  172 Livy, XXVI. 5.
19 Livy, XXVI. 6.                    173 Polybius, IX. 3. Livy, XXVI. 5.
1o Livy, XXVI. 12.                   174 Polybius, IX. 5. Livy, XXVI. 7.
If Livy, XXVI. 4. Frontinus, IV. 7, 29.




ï~~536

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIV

been seen burning, as usual, all night in his accustomed position on Tifata; but
he had begun his march the preceding evening, immediately after dark, while the
Romans still thought that his army was hanging over their heads, and were looking for a second assault.'15
His army disappeared from the eyes of the Romans behind Tifata; and they
Diffio ltyofmakingout knew not whither he was gone. Even so itis with us at this day;
s le ofmar.  we lose him from Tifata; we find him before Rome; but we know
nothing of his course between. Conflicting and contradictory accounts have made
the truth undiscoverable: what regions of Italy looked with fear or hope on the
march of the great general and his famous soldiers, it is impossible from our existing records to determine. Whether he followed the track of Pyrrhus, and
spread havoc through the lands of the numerous colonies on the Latin road, Cales,
Casinum, Interamna, and Fregellae;17' or whether, to baffle the enemy's pursuit,
and avoid the delay of crossing the Vulturnus, he plunged northwards into the
heart of Samnium,71 astonished the Latin colonists of (Esernia with his unlookedfor passage, crossed the central Apennines into the country of the Pelignians,
and then, turning suddenly to his left, broke down into the land of the Marsians, passing along the glassy waters of Fucinus, and under the ancient walls of
Alba, and scaring the upland glades and quiet streams of the aboriginal Sabines,
with the wild array of his Numidian horsemen; we cannot with any confidence
decide. Yet the agreement of all the stories as to the latter part of his march
seems to point out the line of its beginning. All accounts say that, descending
nearly by the old route of the Gauls, he kept the Tiber on his right, and the
Anio on his left; and that, finally, he crossed the Anio, and encamped at a distance of less than four miles from the walls of Rome."'
Before the sweeping pursuit of his Numidians, crowds of fugitives were seen
Terror in Rome; forti- flying towards the city, while the smoke of burning houses arose
tude of th e senate.  far and wide into the sky. Within the walls the confusion and
terror were at their height: he was come at last, this Hannibal, whom they had
so long dreaded; he had at length dared what even the slaughter of Canna had
not emboldened him to venture; some victory greater even than Canna must
have given him this confidence; the three armies before Capua must be utterly
destroyed; last year he had destroyed or dispersed three other armies, and had
gained possession of the entire south of Italy; and now he had stormed the lines
before Capua, had cut to pieces the whole remaining force of the Roman people,
and was come to Rome to finish his work. So the wives and mothers of Rome
lamented, as they hurried to the temples; and there, prostrate before the gods,
and sweeping the sacred pavement with their unbound hair in the agony of their
fear, they remained pouring forth their prayers for. deliverance. Their sons and
husbands hastened to man the walls and the citadel, and to secure the most important points without the city; whilst the senate, as calm  as their fathers of
old, whom the Gauls massacred when sitting at their own doors, but with the
energy of manly resolution, rather than the resignation of despair, met in the
Forum, and there remained assembled, to direct every magistrate on the instant
how he might best fulfil his duty."'
But God's care watched over the safety of a people whom he had chosen to
Rome ipreserved from work out the purposes of his providence: Rome was not to perish.
an a.ssat.    Two city legions were to be raised, as usual, at the beginning of
the year; and it so happened that the citizens from the country tribes were to meet
at Rome on this very day for the enlistment for one of these legions; while the soldiers of the other, which had been enrolled a short time before, were to appear
at Rome on this same day in arms, having been allowed, as the custom was, to
return home for a few days after their enlistment, to prepare for active service.
1 Polybius, IX. 5.                    178 Polybius, IX. 6. Livy, XXVI. 9. Ap'
"* Livy, XXVI. 9.                   pian, VII. 38.
7 Polybius, IX. 5. PT' Polybius, IX. 6. Livy, XXVI. 9.




ï~~Cn. XLIV.]  THE ROMANS MARCH TO CHECK HANNIBAL.

531

Thus it happened that ten thousand men were brought together at the very moment when they were most needed, and were ready to repel any assault upon
the walls."s" The allies, it seems, were not ordinarily called out to serve with
the two city legions; but on this occasion it is mentioned that the Latin colony of
Alba, having seen Hannibal pass by their walls, and guessing the object of his
march, sent his whole force to assist in the defence of Rome; a zeal which the
Greek writers compared to that of Plateea, whose citizens fought alone by the
side of the Athenians on the day of Marathon.s
To assault the walls of Rome was now hopeless; but the open country was at
Hannibal's mercy, a country which had seen no enemy for near a Hannibal ravages the
hundred and fifty years, cultivated and inhabited in the full secu- country round.
rity of peace. Far and wide it was overrun by Hannibal's soldiers; and the
army appears to have moved about, encamping in one place after another, and
sweeping cattle and prisoners and plunder of every sort, beyond numbering, within
the inclosure of its camp.'82
It was, probably, in the course of these excursions, that Hannibal, at he head
of a large body of cavalry, came close up to the Colline gate, rode He ridesupothe wal
along leisurely under the walls to see all he could of the city, and of Roe.
is said to have cast his javelin into it as in defiance.' 3  From farthest Spain he
had come into Italy; he had wasted the whole country of the Romans and their
allies with fire and sword for more than six years, had slain more of their citizens than were now alive to bear arms against him; and at last he was shutting
them up within their city, and riding freely under their walls, while none dared
meet him in the field. If any thing of disappointment depressed his mind at that
instant; if he felt that Rome's strength was not broken, nor the spirit of her
people quelled, that his own fortune was wavering, and that his last effort had
been made, and made in vain; yet thinking where he was, and of the shame and loss
which his presence was causing to his enemies, he must have wished that his father
could have lived to see that day, and must have thanked the gods of his country
that they had enabled him so fully to perform his vow.
For some time, we know not how long, this devastation of the Roman territory
lasted without opposition. Meanwhile the siege of Capua was not Fulvius returns to
raised; and Fabius, in earnestly dissuading such a confession of Romea ond theRoma
a anstydssaigmarco out to cheek
fear, showed that he could be firm no less than cautious, when Hannibal.
boldness was the highest prudence. But Fulvius, with a small portion of the
besieging army, was recalled to Rome: Fabius had ever acted with him, and was
glad to have the aid of his courage and ability; and when he arrived, and by a
vote of the senate was united with the consuls in the command, the Roman
forces were led out of the city, and encamped, according to Fabius' old policy,
within ten stadia of the enemy, to check his free license of plunder.'4  At the
same time, parties acting on the rear of Hannibal's army had broken down the
bridges over the Anio, his line of retreat, like his advance, being on the right
bank of that river, and not by the Latin road.
Hannibal had purposely waited to allow time for his movement to produce its
intended effect in the raising of the siege 'of Capua. That time,  nnibl retires.
according to his calculations, was now come: the news of his arrival before Rome must have reached the Roman lines before Capua; and the
armies from that quarter, hastening by the Latin road to the defence of their
city, must have left the communication with Capua free. The presence of Fulvius with his army in Latium, which Hannibal would instantly discover, by the
thrice-repeated sounding of the watch, as Hasdrubal found out Nero's arrival in
the camp of Livius near Sena, would confirm him in his expectation that the
other proconsul was on his march with the mass of the army; and he accord"~ Polybius, IX. 6.                  e88 Livy, XXVI. 10. Pliny, XXXIV. 15.
1" Appian, VII. 39.                  18 Livy, XXVI. 8, 9, 10. Polybius, IX. 7.
'0 Polybius, IX. 6.                 Appian, VII. 40.




ï~~538

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIV

ingly commenced his retreat by the Tiburtine road, that he "night not encounter
Appius in front, while the consuls and Fabius were pressing on his rear.
Accordingly, as the bridges were destroyed, he proceeded to effect his pasThe Romans fonllow him sage through the river, and carried over his army under the proat a distance.  tection of his cavalry, although the Romans attacked him during
the passage, and cut off a large part of the plunder which he had collected from
the neighborhood of Rome.'85 He then continued his retreat; and the Romans
followed him, but at a careful distance, and keeping steadily on the higher grounds,
to be safe from the assaults of his dreaded cavalry.'86
In this manner Hannibal marched with the greatest rapidity for five days,
Heo inmarches down into which, if he was moving by the Valerian road, must have brought
Bruttium.     him at least as far as the country of the Marsians, and the shores
of the lake Fucinus.'87 From thence he would again have crossed by the Forca
Carrosa to the plain of the Pelignians, and so retraced his steps through Samnium towards Capua. But at this point he received intelligence that the Roman
armies were still in their lines, that his march upon Rome had therefore failed,
and that his communications with Capua were as hopeless as ever. Instantly he
changed all his plans; and feeling obliged to abandon Capua, the importance of
his operations in the south rose upon him in proportion. Hitherto he had not
thought fit to delay his march for the sake of attacking the army which was pursuing him; but now he resolved to rid himself of this enemy; so. he turned
fiercely upon them, and assaulted their camp in the night. The Romans, surprised and confounded, were driven from it with considerable loss, and took refuge
in a strong position in the mountains. Hannibal then resumed his march, but,
instead of turning short to his right towards Campania, descended towards the
Adriatic and the plains of Apulia, and from thence returned to what was now
the stronghold of his power in Italy, the country of the Bruttians.88s
The citadel of Tarentum still held out against him; but Rhegium, confident in
He misses taking Rhe- its remoteness, had never yet seen his cavalry in its territory, and
gium.         was now less likely than ever to dread his presence, as he had
so lately been heard of in the heart of Italy, and under the walls of Rome.
With a rapid march therefore he hastened to surprise Rhegium. Tidings of his
coming reached the city just in time for the Rhegians to shut their gates against
him; but half their people were in the country, in the full security of peace; and
these all fell into his power.'89 We know not whether he treated them kindly,
as hoping through their means to win Rhegium, as he had won Tarentum; or
whether disappointment was now stronger than hope, and, despairing of drawing
the allies of Rome to his side, he was now as inveterate against them as against
the Romans. He retired from    his fruitless attempt to win Rhegium  only to
receive the tidings of the loss of Capua.
The Romans had patiently waited their time, and were now to reap their reThe Romans press the ward. The consuls were both to command in Apulia with two
sege of Capua.  consular armies; one of them  therefore must have returned to
Rome, to raise the two additional legions which were required. Fulvius hastened back to the lines before Capua. His prey was now in his power; the straitness of the blockade could no longer be endured, and aid from Hannibal was not
to be hoped. It is said that mercy was still promised to any Capuan who
should come over to the Romans before a certain day, but that none availed
themselves of the offer, feeling, says Livy, that their offence was beyond forgiveness.'   This can only mean that they believed the Romans to be as faithless as
they were cruel, and felt sure that every promise of mercy would be evaded or
openly broken. One last attempt was made to summon Hannibal again to their
aid; but the Numidians employed on the service were detected this time in the
1I6 Polybius, IX. 7.                  'e Polybius, IX. 7. Appian, VII. 41--43.
180 Appian, VII. 40.                 189 Polybius, IX. 7.
7 Polybius, IX. 7.                    10o Livy, XXVI. 12.




ï~~CHAP. XLIV.]

PUNISHMENT OF THE CAPUANS.

539

Roman lines, and were sent back torn with stripes, and with their hands cut of
into the city.'9'
No Capuan writer has survived to record the last struggle of his country; and
never were any people less to be believed than the Romans, when The chief &eeetoi o
speaking of their enemies. Yet the greatest man could not have Capu p ion them.
supported the expiring weakness of an unheroic people; and wesevs
hear of no great man in Capua. Some of the principal men in the senate
met, it is said, at the house of one of their number, Vibius Virrius, where a magnificent banquet had been prepared for them; they ate and drank, and when the
feast was over, they all swallowed poison. Then, having done with pleasure and
with life, they took a last leave of each other; they embraced each other, lamenting with many tears their own and their country's calamity; and some remained to be burned together on the same funeral pile, while others went away
to die at their own homes. All were dead before the Romans entered the
city.'",
In the mean while the Capuan government, unable to restrain their starving
people, had been obliged to surrender to the enemy. In modern Surrender of the city.
warfare the surrender of a besieged town involves no extreme
suffering; even in civil wars, justice or vengeance only demands a certain number
of victims, and the mass of the population scarcely feels its condition affected.
But surrender, deditio, according to the Roman laws of war, placed the property,
liberties, and lives of the whole surrendered people at the absolute disposal of the
conquerors; and that not formally, as a right, the enforcement of which were
monstrous, but as one to abate which in any instance was an act of free mercy.
In this sense Capua was surrendered; in the morning after Vibius Virrius' funeral banquet, the gate of Jupiter, which looked towards the Roman head-quarters,
was thrown open; and a Roman legion, with its usual force of cavalry doubled,
marched in to take possession. It was commanded by C. Fulvius, the brother
of the proconsul, who immediately placed guards at all the gates, caused all the
arms in the city to be brought to him, made prisoners of the Carthaginian garrison, and sent all the Capuan senators into the Roman camp, to abide his brother's sentence.
No Roman family has preserved a more uniform character of pride and cruelty
through successive generations than the Claudii; but in the treat- Fuiviuepuetalt the son.
ment of the Capuans, Q. Fulvius was so much the principal act- ators to death.
or, that, according to some of the annals, Appius Claudius was no longer alive,
having been mortally wounded some time before the end of the siege.'9"' His
daughter had been married to a Campanian, and the senators of Capua might
perhaps seem  to him worthier of regard than the commons of Rome. But
whether Appius was living or dead, he was unable to arrest the course of his
colleague's vengeance. The Capuan senators were immediately chained as bondslaves, were commanded to give up all their gold and silver to the qumstors, and
were then sent in custody, five-and-twenty to Cales, and twenty-eight to Teanum. Ere the next night was over, Fulvius, with 2000 chosen horsemen, left
the camp, and arrived at Teanum by daybreak. He took his seat in the Forum,
ordered the magistrates of Teanum to bring forth their prisoners, and saw them
all scourged and beheaded in his presence. Then he rode off to Cales, and repeated the same tragedy there."4
Atilla and Calatia followed the example of Capua, and surrendered at discretion to the Romans. There, also, about twenty senators were severetreatmentofa,
executed, and about three hundred persons of noble birth, in theo cmpanians.
one or other of the three cities, were sent to Rome, and thrown into the Mamertine prison, there to die of starvation and misery, while others met a similar fate
19' ILivy, XXVI. 12.                  2" Livy, XXVI. 15. Valerius Maximus, IIL
"' Livy, XXVI. 14.                   8, 1.
19 Livy, XXVI. 15. Zonaras, IX. 6.




ï~~540

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLIV

in the various allied cities whither they were sent prisoners.':  The besieging
army was then relieved from its long services; part of it was probably sent home,
or transferred to one of the consuls to formhis army in Apulia.  C. Nero, the
propraeor, was sent with about 13,000 men into Spain, where the Roman affairs
were in a most critical state;196 while Q. Fulvius remained still as proconsul in
Capua, exercising the utmost severity of conquest over the remnant of the unfortunate people.
A few months afterwards, on the night of the 18th of March in the following
year, a fire broke out at Rome in several places at once, in the
Deree. about them.  neighborhood of the Forum. The temple of Vesta, and its eternal
fire, the type of the life of the commonwealth, were saved with great difficulty.
This fire was said to be the work of some noble Capuans whose fathers had been
beheaded by Q. Fulvius; they were accused by one of their slaves; and a confession of the charge having been forced from their other slaves by torture, the
young men were put to death.'7' Fulvius made this a pretence for fresh severities against the Capuans; and no doubt it had an influence upon the senate when
the fate of the three revolted cities of Campania was finally decided. As the
Capuans had enjoyed the franchise of Roman citizens, the senate was obliged to
obtain an act of the comitia, empowering them to determine their future condition. A number of decrees were passed accordingly, as after the great Latin
war, distinguishing the punishment of different classes, and even of different individuals. All who had been senators, or held any office, were reduced to utter beggary, their lands being forfeited to Rome, together with the whole Campanian
territory, and their personal property of every kind being ordered to be sold. Some
were sold, besides, for slaves, with their wives and children; and it was especially
ordered that they should be sold at Rome, lest some of their countrymen or neighbors should purchase them for the purpose of restoring their liberty. All who had
been in Capua during the siege were transported beyond the Tiber, and forbidden to possess lands or houses above a certain measure, or out of certain specified
districts; those who had not been in Capua, or in any other revolted city, during
the war, were only transported beyond the Liris; while those who had gone over
to the Romans before Hannibal entered Capua, were removed no further than
across the Vulturnus. In their exiled state, however, they were still to be personally free, but were incapable of enjoying either the Roman franchise or the
Latin.'  The city of Capua, bereaved of all its citizens, was left to be inhabited by that mixed multitude of resident foreigners, freedmen, and half-citizens,
who, as shopkeepers and mechanics, had always formed a large part of the population; and all political organization was strictly denied to them; and they were
placed under the government of a praefect sent thither every year from Rome.99
The Campanian plain, the glory of Italy, and all the domain lands which Capua
had won in former wars, when she was the ally of Rome, as her share of the
spoils of Samnium, were forfeited to the Roman people. In the domain lands
some colonies were planted soon after the war;200 but the Campanian plain was
held in occupation by a number of Roman citizens; and the vectigal, or rent,
which they paid to the state, was for a hundred and fifty years an important part of
the Roman revenue.Â~'   Only two individuals were found deserving of favor, it is
said, among the whole Capuan people: these were two women, one of whom had
daily sacrificed in secret during the siege for the success of the Romans; and
the other had secretly fed some Roman prisoners. These had their property restored to them by a special decree of the senate; and they were desired to
go to Rome and to petition the senate, if they thought proper, for some additional reward.202
111 Livy, XXVI. 16.              2" Livy, XXVI. 16.
1986 Livy, XXVI. 17.             20 Livy, XXVI. 45.
1' Livy, XXVI. 27.               2o0 Cicero, De Leg. Agrar. II. 39.
1s Livy, XXVI. 83, 34.           202 Livy, XXVI, 33, 34.




ï~~)HAP. XLIV.]

CONCLUSION.

541

I have given the settlement of Campania and the fate of the Capuans in detail,
because it seems taken from authentic sources, and is character- Fulviuns is refused a
istic of the stern determination with which the Roman government triumph.
went through its work. It is no less characteristic that when Q. Fulvius applied
for a triumph, after his most important and splendid success, the senate refused
to grant it, because he had only recovered what had belonged to Rome before;
and the mere retrieving of losses, and restoring the dominion of the commonwealth to its former extent, was no subject of extraordinary exultation.203
But although not rewarded by a triumph, the conquest of Capua was one of
the most important services ever rendered by a Roman general Importance of thes ta.
to his country. It did not merely deprive Hannibal of the great- tg of Capua.
est fruit of his greatest victory, and thus seem to undo the work of Cannm; but
its effect was felt far and wide, encouraging the allies of Rome, and striking terror
into her enemies; tempting the cities which had revolted to return without delay
to their allegiance, and filling Hannibal with suspicions of those who were still
true to him, as if they only waited to purchase their pardon by some act of
treachery towards his garrisons. By the recovery of Capua his great experiment seemed decided against him. It appeared impossible, under any circumstances, to rally such a coalition of the Italian states against the Roman power
in Italy, as might be able to overthrow it. We almost ask, with what reasonable hopes could Hannibal from this time forward continue the war? or why
did he not change the seat of it from Southern Italy to Etruria and Cisalpine
Gaul?
But with whatever feelings of disappointment and grief he may have heard of
the fall of Capua, of the ruin of his allies, and the bloody death Hannibal' favorable
of so many of the Capuan senators, and of the brave Jubellius prospects.
Taurea, whom he had personally known and honored, yet the last campaign was
not without many solid grounds of encouragement. Never had the invincible
force of his army been more fully proved. He had overrun half Italy, had
crossed and recrossed the passes of the Apennines, had plunged into the midst
of the Roman allies, and had laid waste the territory of Rome with fire and
sword. Yet no superiority of numbers, no advantage of ground, no knowledge
of the country, had ever emboldened the Romans to meet him in the field, or
even to beset his road, or to obstruct and harass his march. Once only, when he
was thought to be retreating, had they ventured to follow him at a cautious distance; but he had turned upon them in his strength; and the two consuls, and
Q. Fulvius with them, were driven before him as fugitives to the mountains, their
camp stormed, and their legions scattered. It was plain, then, that he might
hold his ground in Italy as long as he pleased, supporting his army at its cost,
and draining the resources of Rome and her allies, year after year, till in mere
exhaustion the Roman commons would probably join the Latin colonies and the
allies in forcing the senate to make peace.
At this very moment Etruria was restless, and required an army of two legions
to keep it quiet:204 the Roman commons, in addition to their heavy Unfavorable cir on.
taxation and military service, had seen their lands laid waste, and ta  io pf tho an.
yet were called upon to bear fresh burdens: and there was a spirit
of discontent working in the Latin colonies, which a little more provocation might
excite to open revolt. Spain, besides, seemed at last to be freed from the enemy;
and the recent defeats and deaths of the two Scipios there held out the hope to
Hannibal, that now at length his brother Hasdrubal, having nothing to detain him
in Spain, might lead a second Carthaginian army into Italy, and establish himself
in Etruria, depriving Rome of the resources of the Etruscan and Umbrian states,
as she had already lost those of half Samnium, of Lucania, Bruttium, and Apulia.

2' Valerius Maximus, II. 8, 4.

20 Livy, XXVI. 1, 28; XXVII. 7. Comp.
XXVII. 21, 22, 24.




ï~~542

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLV,

Then, assailed at once by two sons of Hamilcar, on the north and the south, the
Roman power, which one of them singly had so staggered, must, by the joint
efforts of both, be beaten to the ground and destroyed. With such hopes, and
with no unreasonable confidence, Hannibal consoled himself for the loss of Capua,
and allowed his army, after its severe marching, to rest for the remainder of the
year in Apulia."' And now, as we have brought the war in Italy to this point,
it is time to look abroad, and to observe the course of this mighty contest in
Qpain, in Greece, and in Sicily.
CHAPTER XLV.
PROGRESS OF THE WAR IN SPAIN, SICILY, AND GREECE-OPERATIONS OF 'rTii
SCIPIOS IN SPAIN-THEIR DEFEAT AND DEATH-MACEDON AND GREECEREVOLUTIONS OF SYRACUSE-MARCELLUS IN SICILY-SIEGE OF SYRACUSEARCHIMEDES-SACK OF SYRACUSE, AND REDUCTION OF SICILY-MUTINES,
THE NUMIDIAN, IN SICILY.-A. U. C. 538 TO 543.
WARS must of necessity form a large part of all history; but in most wars the
When warsoughttobe narrative of military operations is without interest for posterity, and
related circnmtanti- should only be given by contemporary writers. It was right for
Thucydides to relate every little expedition of the Peloponnesian
war at length; but modern writers do wrong in following his example; for the
details of petty warfare are unworthy to survive their own generation. And there
are also wars conducted on a great scale, and very important in their consequences, the particulars of which may safely be forgotten. For military events
should only be related circumstantially to after ages, when they either contain a
great lesson in the art of war, or are so striking in their incidents, as to acquire
the interest of a romance, and thus retain their hold on the imaginations and
moral feelings of all ages and countries. Hannibal's campaigns in Italy have this
double claim on our notice: they are a most valuable study for the soldier, whilst
for readers in general they are a varied and eventful story, rich in characters,
scenes, and actions. But the war in Spain, although most important in its results,
and still more the feeble bickerings rather than wars of the decayed states of
Greece, may and ought to be related summarily. A closer attention must be
given to the war in Sicily: there again the military and the general interest of
the story are great; we have the ancient art of defence exhibited it its highest
perfection; we have the immortal names of Syracuse and Archimedes.
There is another reason, however, why we should not give a minute account
Campaign of 54 1 in of the Spanish war: because we really know nothing about it.
Spain.        The Roman annalists, whom Livy has copied here, seem to have
outdone their usual exaggerations in describing the exploits of the two Scipios;
and what is the truth concealed beneath this mass of fiction, we are wholly unable
to discover. Spain, we know, has in later wars been overrun victoriously and
lost again in a single summer; and no one can say how far the Scipios may at
times have penetrated into the heart of the country: but it is certain that in the
first years of their command they made no lasting impression south of the Iberus.
Still their maintaining their ground at all in Spain was of signal service to Rome.

m  Compare Livy, XXVI. 3'.




ï~~CHAr. XLV.]

CAMPAIGN OF 543.

543

The Carthaginians, on the other hand, knew the importance of ex- A.U.C.,. A.C.t.
pelling them; but it appears that in the year 541, they became
engaged in a war with Syphax, one of the kings or chiefs of the Numidians; and
a war in Africa was always so alarming to them, that they recalled Hasdrubal,
Hannibal's brother, from Spain, with a part of their forces employed in that
country, and thus took off the pressure from the Romans at a most critical moment.' The Scipios availed themselves of this relief ably; and now they seemed
to have advanced into the heart of Spain with effect, to have drawn over many
of the Spanish tribes to the Roman alliance, and thus to have obtained large recruits for their own army, which received but slight reinforcements from Rome.
It is said that 20,000 Celtiberians were raised to serve under the Scipios, and
that at the same time 300 noble Spaniards were sent into Italy to detach their
countrymen there from Hannibal's service.2 COn. Scipio, we are told, was greatly
loved and reverenced by the Spaniards;3 and his influence probably attracted the
Celtiberians to the Roman armies; but we know not where he found money to
pay them, as the Roman treasury was in no condition to supply him, and he was
obliged to make war support war. However, careful economy of the plunder
which he may have won from some of the allies of Carthage, assisted perhaps
by loans from some of the Spanish chiefs attached to himself and to Rome, had
enabled him to raise a large army; so that, when Hasdrubal returned from Africa,
apparently late in 542, although there were two other Carthaginian generals in
Spain,4 each commanding a separate army, yet the Roman generals thought
themselves strong enough to act on the offensive; and they concerted a grand
plan for the campaign of 543, by which they hoped to destroy all the armies
opposed to them, and to drive the Carthaginians out of Spain. With this confidence they divided their forces, and having crossed the Iberus, marched each in
pursuit of a separate enemy. On. Scipio was to attack Hasdrubal, while his
brother.was to fall on the other two Carthaginian generals, Hasdrubal the son
of Giscon, and Mago.5
They had wintered, it seems, in the country of their new auxiliaries, or, according to one account, even further to the south, in the valley of Cm   o 5  dthe Btis or Guadalquiver.6 But it is as impossible to disentangle at paind det of t e
the geography of this war as its history. The Carthaginian gen- scipios
erals owed their triumph-and more than this we cannot ascertain-to the ascendency of Hasdrubal's name and personal character; for the Celtiberians, when
brought into his neighborhood, were unable to resist his influence, and abruptly
left the Roman camp, and returned home.' Thus abandoned, and at a great distance from alt their resources, the two Roman generals were suc- A. U. C. 543. A. C.
cessively attacked by the Carthaginians, defeated and killed.8  Of 21.
the wreck of their armies, some fled to the towns of their Spanish allies for refuge,
and were in some instances slain by them, or betrayed to the Carthaginians: a
remnant, which had either been left behind the Iberus before the opening of
the campaign, or had effected its retreat thither, was still held together by
Scipio's lieutenant, T. Fonteius, and by L. Marcius.9  Marcius was only a simple
Roman knight, that is, a man of good fortune, who therefore served, not in the
infantry of the legions, but in the cavalry: he had a natural genius for war, and
was called irregularly, it seems, by the common voice of the soldiers to take the
command; and we need not doubt that by some timely advantages gained over
some of the enemies' parties, he raised the spirits of the men, and preserved the
Roman cause in Spain from utter extinction. But the extravagant fables of his
victories over the victorious Carthaginians, and of his storming their camps,
SAppian, VI. 15. Livy, XXIV. 48.     " Appian, VI. 16.
2 Livy, XXV. 32. XXIV. 49.            7 Livy, XXV. 33.
8 Livy, XXV. 36. Appian, VI. 15.      8 Livy, XXV. 34-36. Appian, VI. 1.
4 Livy, XXV. 32. Appian, VI. 16.      9 Livy, XXV. 36-39.
SLivy, XXV. 32.




ï~~544

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XLV

show too clearly out of what wretched materials the Roman history has to be
written.10
If the defeat of the Scipios took place, as seems probable, early in the year
The Rman are driven 543, that is, a few weeks before the fall of Capua, we may again
to the foot of the Pyr- admire the wonderful disposal of events by which the ruin of the
nees.         Roman cause in Spain was delayed till their affairs in Italy had
passed over their crisis; and were beginning to mend. The Scipios' army was
replaced by that of C. Nero, which the fall of Capua set at liberty:" a year earlier this resource would not have been available. Still the Carthaginians immediately recovered all the states south of the Ebro, which had before revolted,
and the Romans were confined to a narrow strip of coast between the Iberus and
the Pyrenees,2 from which the overwhelming force of their enemies was likely
ere long to drive them. And so it would, had not the external weakness of the
Roman cause been now upheld for the first time by individual genius; so that a
defeated and dispirited army became, in the hands of the young P. Scipio, the
instrument by which all Spain was conquered.
Seventy years before this period, a Greek army under Pyrrhus had shaken the
strange ineffiiency of whole power of Rome: yet the kingdom of Pyrrhus was little more
Macedon,      than a dependency of Macedon, and Pyrrhus had struggled against
the arms of the Macedonain kings vigorously, but without success. Now a
young, warlike, and popular king was seated on the throne of Macedon:13 he
had just concluded a war victoriously with the only state in Greece which
seemed capable of resisting his power. What Pyrrhus had almost done alone,
would surely be easy for Philip to accomplish, with Hannibal and his invincible
army to aid him; and what could Rome have done, if to the irresistible African
cavalry there had been joined a body of heavy-armed Macedonians, and a force
of artillery and engineers such as Greek science alone could furnish? The
strangest and most unaccountable blank in history is the early period of the
Macedonian war, before the.zEtolians became the allies of Rome and a coalition
was formed against Philip in Greece itself. Philip's treaty with Hannibal was
concluded in the year 539, or early enough, at any rate, to allow of his commencing operations in the year 540.14 The.zEtolians concluded their treaty with
Rome in 543, after the fall of Capua.5  More than three precious years seem
to have been utterly wasted; and during all this time M. Valerius Lmvinus,
commanding at Brundisium with a single legion and a small fleet, was allowed
to paralyze the whole power of Macedon.6
The cause of this is to be found in that selfish attention to separate objects
arising from Philip's which has so often been the ruin of coalitions. Philip's object, or
elfishness.   rather that of Demetrius of Pharos, whose influence appears
plainly in all this war with Rome, was to undo the work of the late Roman victories in Illyria, and to wrest the western coast of Epirus from their dominion.
In his treaty with Hannibal, Philip had especially stipulated that the Romans
should not be allowed to retain their control over Corcyra, Apollonia, Epidamnus, Pharus, Dimalla or Dimalus, the country of the Parthinians, and Atintania;7
places which in the Illyrian wars had either submitted to, or been conquered by
the Romans. Philip does not appear to have understood that all these were to
be reconquered most surely in Italy; that it was easier to crush Levinus at
Brundisium, than to repel him from Epirus; more prudent to march against him
1o Livy, XXV. 89. According to one ac-  2 Appian, VI. 17.
cofnt, 37,000 men were slain on the Carthagin-  1 Philip was not more than seventeen years
ian sido. Valerius Antias returned 17,000 old in the archonship of Ariston, A. U. C. 584.
killed, and 4330 prisoners. Appian (XI. 17) Polybius, IV. 5. For his popular and warlike
substitutes Marcellus by mistake for Marcius, character see Polybius, IV. 77, 82, 1.
but says he did nothing brilliant, so that the  '4 Livy, XXIII. 338, 89. Above, p. 514.
Carthaginian power increased, and spread al-  1 Livy, XXVI. 24.
most over the whole of Spain.            1 Livy, XXIV. 10, 44. XXV. 8. XXVI. 24.
" Livy, XXVI. 17.                      '7 Polybius, VII. 9.




ï~~OAP. XLV.]

SICILY.

545

at the head of the Greeks of Italy, than to let him come to the aid of the Greeks
on the coast of Illyria. Thus he trifled away his strength in petty enterprises,
and those not always successful, till the Romans found the time come to carry on
the war against him in earnest; and they were not apt either to neglect their
opportunities or to misuse them.
Philip was personally brave, and could on occasion show no common activity
and energy.   But he had not that steadiness of purpose, without He wastes his time o
which energy in political affairs is worthless. Thus he was lightly petty objects.
deterred from an enterprise by dangers which he was not afraid of, but rather
did not care to encounter. The naval power of Greece had long since sunk to
nothing; Philip had no regular navy, and the small vessels which he could collect were no match for the Roman quinqueremes; so that a descent upon Italy
appeared hazardous, while various schemes opened upon him nearer home,
which his own temper, or the interests of his advisers, led him to prefer. Hence,
he effected but little during three years.  He neither took Epidamnus, nor Apollonia, nor Corcyra; but he won Lissus, and the strong fortress which served as
its citadel;18 and he seems also to have conquered Dimalus or Dimallus, and to
have enlarged his dominion more or less nominally with the countries of the
Parthinians and Atintanians, of which the sovereignty had belonged to the Romans.19  From all this Hannibal derived no benefit, and Rome sustained no serious injury.
In the year of Rome 491, in the second year of the first Punic war, Hiero,
ing of Syracuse, had made peace with the Romans, and had be- Hiero's faithful friendcome their ally.20  Forty-seven years had passed away since, when ship to the Romans:
the tidings of the battle of Cannes arrived at Syracuse, and seemed his death;
to announce that a great part of Sicily was again to change its masters, and to
be subjected once more to the Carthaginian dominion. But Hiero, although
about ninety years of age, did not waver. Far from courting the friendship of
Carthage, he increased his exertions in behalf of Rome: he supplied the Roman
army in Sicily with money and corn at a time when all supplies from home had
failed;21 and about a year afterwards, when a fleet was prepared to meet the
hostile designs of Philip of Macedon, Hiero again sent 50,000 medimni of wheat
and barley to provision it.22 This must nearly have been his last A. U. c. 539. A. C.
public act.  Towards the close of the year 539, after a life of 215,
ninety years, and a reign of fifty-four, but still retaining all his faculties, sound
in mind and vigorous in body, Hiero died.3
He had enjoyed and deserved the constant affection of his people, and had
seen his kingdom flourishing more and more under his government, preceded by that of hie
One only thing had marred the completeness of his fortune: his son Gelon.
son Gelon had died before him, with whom he had lived in the most perfect.
harmony, and who had ever rendered him the most devoted and loving obedience.24 He had still two daughters, Damarata and Heraclea, who were married
to two eminent Syracusans, Andranodorus and Zoippus; and he had one grandson, a boy of about fifteen, the son of Gelon, Hieronymus.25
It is the most difficult problem in an hereditary monarchy, how to educate the
heir to the throne, when the circumstances of his condition, so   iseedebyh
He is succeeded by hisÂ~
much more powerful than any instruction, are apt to train him for grand o Hieronymu s.
evil far more surely than the lessons of the wisest teachers can his chracter.
train him for good. In the ancient world, moreover, there was no fear of God
to sober the mind, which was raised above all fear or respect for man; and if the
philosophers spoke of the superiority of virtue and wisdom over all the gifts of
SPolybius, VIII. 15, 16.                    2 Livy XXIII. 388.
y' In Livy, XXIX. 12, we find these attacked  23 Poly ius, VII. 8.
by the Romans, as being subject to Macedon.   24 Polybius, VII. 8.
2 See p. 427.                               2 Livy, XXIV. 4.
* Livy, XXIII. 22. See above, p. 508.
35




ï~~54G

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLV

fortune, their own example, when they were seen to sue for the king's favor, and
to dread his anger, no less than ordinary men, made their doctrines regarded
either as folly or hypocrisy. Hieronymus at fifteen becaine king of Syracuse; a
child in understanding, but with passions precociously vigorous, because he had
such large means of indulging them; insolent, licentious, and cruel, yet withal
so thoughtless and so mere a slave of every impulse, that he was sure to be the
instrument of his own ruin.
We have already noticed his early communication with Hannibal, and the
He joins the Cartha- arrival of Hippocrates and Epicydes at Syracuse, Syracusans by
gini.ns,     extraction, but born at Carthage, and by education and franchise
Carthaginians, whom Hannibal had sent to Hieronymus to confirm him in his
alienation from Rome."6 They won the youth's ear by telling him of Hannibal's
marches and victories; for in those days events that were two or three years old
were still news to foreigners; common fame had reported the general facts, but
the details could only be gathered accidentally; and Hieronymus listened eagerly
to Hippocrates and Epicydes, when they told him stories of their crossing the
Rhone, of their passage of the Alps and Apennines, of the slaughter of the Romans at Thrasymenus, and of their late unequalled victory at Cannze, of all
which they had themselves been eye-witnesses."  And when they saw Hieronymus possessed with a vague longing that he too might achieve such great deeds,
they asked him who had such claims as he to be king of all Sicily. His mother
was the daughter of Pyrrhus; his father was Hiero's son; with this double title
to the love and homage of all Sicilians, he should not be contented to divide the
island either with Rome or Carthage: by his timely aid to Hannibal he might
secure it wholly to himself. The youth accordingly insisted that the sovereignty
of all Sicily should be ceded to him as the price of his alliance with Carthage;
and the Carthaginians were well content to humor him, knowing that if they
could drive the Romans out of the islands, they had little to fear from the claims
of Hieronymus."8
Appius Claudius, the Roman prmetor in Sicily, aware of what was going on,
and deserts the Reo- sent some of his officers to Syracuse, to warn the king not to break..an.       off his grandfather's long friendship with Rome, but to renew the
old alliance in his own name.'  Hieronymus called his council together, and Hippocrates and Epicydes were present. His native subjects, afraid to oppose his
known feelings, said nothing; but three of his council, who came from old Greece,
conjured him not to abandon his alliance with Rome. Andranodorus alone, his
uncle and guardian, urged him to seize the moment, and become sovereign of all
Sicily. He listened, and then, turning to Hippocrates and Epycides, asked them,
"And what think you?"   " We think," they answered, " with Andranodorus."
"Then," said he, "the question is decided; we will no longer be dependent on
Rome."   He then called in the Roman ambassadors, and told them that "he was
willing to renew his grandfather's league with Rome, if they would repay him all
the money and corn with which Hiero had at various times supplied them; if
they would restore the costly presents which he had given them, especially the
golden statue of Victory, which he had sent to them only three years since, after
their defeat at Thrasymenus; and, finally, if they would share the island with
him equally, ceding all to the east of the river Himeras."3Â~ The Romans considered this answer as a mockery, and went away without thinking it worthy of
a serious reply. Accordingly, from this moment Hieronymus conceived himself
to be at war with Rome: he began to raise and arm soldiers, and to form magazines; and the Carthaginians, according to their treaty with him, prepared to
send over a fleet and army to Sicily.
Meanwhile his desertion of the Roman alliance was most unwelcome to a strong
" Polybius, VII. 34. Livy, XXIV. 6. See  2 Polybius, VII. 4. Livy, XXIV. 6.
above, p. 514.                         2 Polybius, VII. 5. Livy, XXIV. 6.
27 Polybius, VII. 4.                   Polybius, VII. 5. See Livy, XXII. T7.




ï~~COAne. XLV.]

INSURRECTION AT SYRACUSE.

547

party in Syracuse. A conspiracy had already been formed against ne is murdereda bya
his life, which was ascribed, whether truly or not, to the intrigues conspiracy.
of this party;31 and now that he had actually joined the Carthaginians, they became more bitter against him; and a second conspiracy was formed with better
success.  He had taken the field to attack the cities in the Roman part of the
island. Hippocrates and Epicydes were already in the enemy's country; and
the king, with the main body of his army, was on his march to support them,
and had just entered the town of Leontini.32 The road, which was also the principal street of the city, lay through a narrow gorge, with abrupt cliffs on each
side; and the houses ran along in a row, nestling under the western cliff, and
facing towards the small river Lissus, which flowed through the gorge between
the town and the eastern cliff.33 An empty house in this street had been occupied by the conspirators: when the king came opposite to it, one of their number, who was one of the king's guards, and close to his person, stopped just behind him, as if something had caught his foot; and whilst he seemed trying to
get free, he checked the advance of the following multitude, and left the king to
go on a few steps unattended. At that moment the conspirators rushed out of
the house and murdered him. So sudden was the act, that his guards could not
save him: seeing him dead, they were seized with a panic and dispersed. The
murderers hastened, some into the market-place of Leontini, to raise the cry of
liberty there, and others to Syracuse, to anticipate the king's friends, and secure
the city for themselves and the Romans.4
Their tidings, however, had flown before them; and Andranodorus, the king's
uncle, had already secured the island of Ortygia, the oldest part Insurrection at Syraof Syracuse, in which was the citadel, and where Hiero and Hie- "."
ronymus had resided.35 The assassins arrived just at nightfall, displaying the
bloody robe of Hieronymus, and the diadem which they had torn from his head,
and calling the people to rise in the name of liberty. This call was obeyed: all
the city, except the island, was presently in their power; and in the island itself
a strong building, which was used as a great corn magazine for the supply of
the whole city, was no sooner seized by those whom Andranodorus had sent to
occupy it, than they offered to deliver it up to the opposite party.36
The general feeling being thus manifested, Andranodorus yielded to it. He
surrendered the keys of the citadel and of the treasury; and in Murdec of Andranodo.
return he and Themistus, who had married a sister of Hieronymus, cus and Themistus,
were elected among the captains-general of the commonwealth, to whom, according to the old Syracusan constitution, the executive government was to be
committed. But their colleagues were mostly chosen from the assassins of Hieronymus; and between such opposites there could be no real union. Suspicions
and informations of plots were not long wanting. An actor told the majority of
the captains-general, that Andranodorus and Themistus were conspiring to massacre them and the other leaders of their party, and to re-establish the tyranny:
the charge was made out to the satisfaction of those who were so well disposed
to believe it: they stationed soldiers at the doors of the council-chamber; and
as soon as Andranodorus and Themistus entered, the soldiers rushed in and murdered them."   The members of the council decided that they were rightfully
slain; but the multitude were inclined to believe them less guilty than their murderers, and beset the council, calling for vengeance. They were persuaded, however, to hear what the perpetrators of the deed could say in its defence; and
Sopater, one of the captains-general, who was concerned both in the recent murder and in that of Hieronymus, arose to justify himself and his party. The tyrannies in the ancient world were so hateful, that they were put by common
s' Polybius, VII. 2. Livy, XXIV. 5.   35 Livy, XXIV. 21.
32 Livy, XXIV. 7.                    36 Livy, XXIV. 21, 22.
3 Polybius, VII. 6.                    7 Livy, XXIV. 23, 24.
3 Livy, XXIV. 7.




ï~~548

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAr. XLV

feeling out of the pale of ordinary law: when Sopater accused Andranodorus and
Themistus of having been the real authors of all the outrages committed by the
boy Hieronymus; when he inveighed against their treacherous submission tc
their country's laws, and against their ingratitude in plotting the deaths of those
who had so nobly forgiven all their past offences; and when he said, finally, that
they had been instigated to all these crimes by their wives, that Hiero's daughter and grand-daughter could not condescend to live in a private station; there
arose a cry from some, probably of their own tutored partisans, which the whole
multitude, in fear or in passion, immediately echoed, "Death to the whole race
of the tyrants; not one of them shall be suffered to live.""3
They who had purposely roused the multitude to fury, were instantly ready
and of nil the descend- to secure it for their own bloody ends. The captains-general proants of Hiero.  posed a decree for the execution of every person of the race of
the tyrants; and the instant it was passed, they sent parties of soldiers to carry
it into effect. Thus the wives of Andranodorus and Themistus were butchered:
but there was another daughter of Hiero, the wife of Zoippus, who was so far
from sharing in the tyranny of Hieronymus, that when sent by him as his ambassador to Egypt, he had chosen to live there in exile. His innocent wife, with
her two young maiden daughters, were included in the general proscription.
They took refuge at the altar of their household gods, but in vain: the mother
was dragged from her sanctuary and murdered; the daughters fled wildly into
the outer court of the palace, in the hope 6f escaping into the street, and appealing to the humanity of the passers-by; but they were pursued and cut down by
repeated wounds. Ere the deed was done, a messenger came to say that the
people had revoked their sentence; which seems to show that the captainsgeneral had taken advantage of some expressions of violence, and had done in
the people's name what the people had nver in earnest agreed to. At any rate,
their rage was now loud against their bloody government; 'and they insisted on
having a free election of captains-general to supply the places of Andranodorus
and Themistus; a demand which implies that some preceding resolutions or votes
of the popular assembly had been passed under undue influence."
The party which favored the Roman alliance had done all that wickedness
The Carthaginianparty could to make themselves odious. The reaction against them was
malies.      natural; yet the same foreign policy which these butchers supported, 'bad been steadily pursued by the wise and moderate Hiero. Every party
in that corrupt city of Syracuse wore an aspect of evil: the partisans of Carthage were in nothing better than those of Rome. When Hieronymus had been
murdered, Hippocrates and Epicydes were at the moment deserted by their soldiers, and returned to Syracuse as private individuals. There they applied to
the government for an escort to convey them back to Hannibal in safety: but
the escortwas not provided immediately; and in the interval they perceived that
they could serve Hannibal better by remaining in Sicily. They found many
amongst the mercenary soldiers of the late king, and amongst the poorer citizens,
who readily listened to them, when they accused the captains-general of selling
the independence of Syracuse to Rome; and their party was so strengthened by
the atrocities of the government, that, when the election was held to choose two
new captains-general in the place of Andranodorus and Themistus, Hippocrates
and Epicydes were nominated and triumphantly elected.4Â~ Again, therefore, the
government was divided within itself; and Hippocrates and Epicydes had been
taught by the former conduct of their colleagues that one party or the other must
perish.
The Roman party had immediately suspended hostilities with Rome, obtained
a truce from Appius Claudius renewable every ten days, and sent ambassadors tc

se Livy, XXIV. 25.
* Livy, XXIV. 26.

SLivy, XXIV. 28, 27.




ï~~CHAP. XLV.]

MARCELLUS ARRIVES IN SICILY.

549

him to solicit the revival of Hiero's treaty. A Roman fleet of a
The Romans fleet saili
hundred ships was lying off the coast a little to the north of Syr- to the mouth of the
acuse, which the Romans, on the first suspicion of the defection of arbor.
Hieronymus, had manned by the most extraordinary exertions, and sent to
Sicily. On the other hand, Himilco, with a small Carthaginian fleet, was at Pachynus, Rome and Carthage each anxiously watching the course of events in
Syracuse, and each being ready to support its party there. Matters were nicely
balanced; and the Roman fleet, in the hope of turning the scale, sailed to Syracuse, and stationed itself at the mouth of the great harbor.41
Strengthened by this powerful aid, the Roman party triumphed; even moderate men not wishing to provoke an enemy who was already at their The Rom party be.
gates. The old league with Rome was renewed, with the stipu- comes the more, powerlation, that whatever cities in Sicily had been subject to king Hiero
should now in like manner be under the dominion of the Syracusan people. It
appears that, since the murder of Hieronymus, his kingdom had gone to pieces,
many of the towns, and Leontini in particular, asserting their independence.
These were, like Syracuse, in a state of hostility against Rome, owing to Hieronymus' revolt; but they had no intention of submitting again to the Syracusan
dominion. Still, When the Romans threatened them, they sent to Syracuse for
aid; and as the Syracusan treaty with Rome was not yet ratified or made public,
the government could not decline their request. Hippocrates accordingly was
sent to Leontini, with a small army, consisting chiefly of deserters from the Roman fleet: for, in the exigency of the time, the fleet had been manned by h'aves
furnished by private families in a certain proportion, according to their census;
and the men thus provided, being mostly unused to the sea, and forced into the
service, deserted in unusually large numbers, insomuch that there were two
thousand of them in the party which Hippocrates led to the defence of Leontini.42
This auxiliary force did good service; and Appius Claudius, who commanded
the Roman army, was obliged to stand on the defensive. Mean- arcells arrives, in
while M. Marcellus had arrived in Sicily, having been sent over eidly ofLe  i, the
thither, as we have seen, after the close of the campaign in Italy, ian party.
to take the supreme command. As the negotiations with Syracuse were now
concluded, Marcellus required that Hippocrates should be recalled from Leontini,
and that both he and Epicydes should be banished from Sicily.' Epicydes upon
this, feeling that his personal safety was risked by remaining longer at Syracuse,
went also to Leontini; and both he and his brother inveighed loudly against the
Roman party who were in possession of the government; they had betrayed
their country to Rome, and were endeavoring, with the help of the Romans, to
enslave the other cities of Sicily, and to subject them to their own dominion.
Accordingly, when some officers arrived from Syracuse, requiring the Leontines
to submit, and announcing to Hippocrates and Epicydes their sentence of expulsion from Sicily, they were answered, that the Leontines would not acknowledge
the Syracusan government, nor were they bound by its treaties. This answer
being reported to Syracuse, the leaders of the Roman party called upon Marcellus to fulfil his agreement with them, and to reduce Leontini to submission.4"
That city was now the refuge and centre of the popular party in Sicily, as
Samos had been in Greece, when the four hundred usurped the government of
Athens; and Hippocrates and Epicydes looked upon their army as the true representative of the Syracusan people, just as Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus, and the
Athenian fleet at Samos, regarded themselves, during the tyranny of the aristocratical party at home, as the true people of Athens.
But, as we have noticed more than once before, nothing could less resemble

4 Livy, XXIV. 27.
42 Livy, XXIV, 28, 29.

0 Livy, XXIV. 29.




ï~~550

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLY

morelm takes Leon, the slowness and feebleness of Sparta than the tremendous energy
tim; his crueltiesthere of Rome. The prmaetor's army in Sicily at the beginning of the
year consisted of two legions; and it is probable that Marcellus had brought
one at least of the two legions which had formed his consular army. With this
powerful force Marcellus instantly attacked Leontini, and stormed it; and in addition to the usual carnage on the sack of a town, he scourged and in cold blood
beheaded two thousand of the Roman deserters, whom he found bearing arms in
the army of Hippocrates; Hippocrates and his brother escaping only with a
handful of men, and taking refuge in the neighboring town of Herbessus.44
For nearly thirty years war had been altogether unknown in Sicily; fifty years
excite'general indigna- had passed since a hostile army had made war in the territory of
Lion.        Syracuse. All men therefore were struck with horror at the fate
of Leontini: if.Etna had rolled down his lava flood upon the town, its destruction would scarcely have been more sudden and terrible. But with horror indignation was largely mingled: the bloodiness of the Romans in the sack of
towns went far beyond the ordinary practice of the Greeks; the Syracusan
government had betrayed their countrymen of Leontini to barbarians more cruel
than the Mamertines.
The tidings spread far and wide, and met a Syracusan army, which two of
The Syracusan army the captains-general, Sosis and Dinomenes, both of them assassins
refoses to march,  of Hieronymus, and devoted to the cause of Rome, were leading
out to co-operate with Marcellus. The soldiers, full of grief and fury, refused
to advance a step further: their blood, they said, would be sold to the Romans,
like that of their brethren at Leontini. The generals were obliged to lead them
back to Megara, within a few miles of Syracuse: then hearing that Hippocrates
and Epicydes were at Herbessus, and dreading their influence at a moment
like this, they led their troops to attack the town where they had taken refuge.45
Hippocrates and his brother threw open the gates of Herbessus, and came out
and to actagainst Hp. to meet them. At the head of the Syracusan army marched six
pocrates and Epicydes. hundred Cretans, old soldiers in Hiero's service, whom he had
sent over into Italy to act as light troops in the Roman army against Hannibal's
barbarians, but who had been taken prisoners at Thrasymenus, and with the
other allies or auxiliaries of Rome had been sent home by Hannibal unhurt.
They now saw Hippocrates and Epicydes coming towards them with no hostile
array, but holding out branches of olive tufted here and there with wool, the
well-known signs of a suppliant. They heard them praying to be saved from the
treachery of the Syracusan generals, who were pledged to deliver up all foreign
soldiers serving in Sicily to the vengeance of the Romans. The Cretans felt that
the cause of Hippocrates and Epicydes was their own, and swore to protect them.
In vain did Sosis and Dinomenes ride forward to the head of the column, and
trying what could be done by authority, order the instant arrest of the two suppliants. They were driven off with threats; the feeling began to spread through
the army; and the Syracusan generals had no resource but to march back to
Megara, leaving the Cretan auxiliaries, it seems, with Hippocrates and Epicydes
in a state of open revolt.46
Meantime the Cretans sent out parties to beset the roads leading to Leontini;
Triumph of the popuar and a letter was intercepted, addressed by the Syracusan generals
party n Syracuse.  to Marcellus, congratulating him on his exploit at Leontini, and
urging him to complete his work by the extermination of every foreign soldier in
the service of Syracuse. Hippocrates took care that the purport of this letter
should be quickly made known to the army at Megara; and he followed closely
with the Cretans to watch the result. The army broke out into mutiny: Sosis
and Dinomenes, protesting in vain that the letter was a mere forgery of the

" Livy, XXIV. 80.
4 Livy, XXIV. 80.

I  Livy, XXIV. 80, 31.




ï~~CHAP. XLV.]

DISSENSIONS IN SYRACUSE.

551

enemy, were obliged to escape for their lives to Syracuse: even the Syracusar
soldiers were accused of sharing in their generals' treason, and were for a time in
great danger from the fury of the foreigners, their comrades. But Hippocrates
and Epicydes prevented this mischief, and being received as leaders by the whole
army, set out forthwith for Syracuse. They sent a soldier before them, most
probably a native Syracusan, who had escaped from the sack of Leontini, and
could tell his countrymen as an eye-witness what acts of bloodshed, outrage,
and rapine the Romans had committed there. Even in moderate men, who for
Hiero's sake were well inclined to Rome, the horrors of Leontini overpowered all
other thoughts and feelings: within Syracuse and without, all followed one
common impulse. When Hippocrates and Epicydes arrived at the gates, the
citizens threw them open: the captains-general in vain endeavored to close them;
they fled to Achradina, the lower part of the city, with such of the Syracusan
soldiers as still adhered to them, whilst the stream of the hostile army burst
down the slope of Epipokle, and, swelled by all the popular party, the foreign
soldiers, and the old guards of Hiero and Hieronymus, came sweeping after them
with irresistible might. Achradina was carried in an instant; some of the captains-general were massacred; Sosis escaped to add the betrayal of his country
hereafter to his multiplied crimes. The confusion raged wild and wide; slaves
were set free; prisoners were let loose; and amidst the horrors of a violent
revolution, under whatever name effected, the popular party, the party friendly
to Carthage, and adverse to aristocracy and to Rome, obtained the sovereignty
of Syracuse.47
Sosis, now in his turn a fugitive, escaped to Leontini, and told Marcellus of the
violence done to the friends of Rome. The fiery old man, as ve- A.. C. 541. A..
A.U. C. 541.  A. C.
hement at sixty against his country's enemies, as when he slew the 213. Marcellnusbesiege.
Gaulish king in single combat in his first consulship, immediately Syracuse,
moved his army upon Syracuse. He encamped by the temple of Olympian
Jupiter, on the right bank of the Anapus, where two solitary pillars still remain,
and serve as a sea-mark to guide ships into the great harbor. Appius Claudius
with the fleet beset the city by sea; and Marcellus did not doubt that in the
wide extent of the Syracusan walls some unguarded spot would be found, and
that the punishment of Leontini would soon be effaced by a more memorable example, of vengeance.48
Thus was commenced the last siege of Syracuse; a siege not inferior in interest to the two others which it had already undergone, from the
Athenians, and from  the Carthaginians. It should be remem- byland and by sea;
bered that the city walls now embraced the whole surface of Epipolme, terminating, like the lines of Genoa, in an angle formed by the converging sides of the
hill or inclined table-land, at the point where it becomes no more than a narrow
ridge, stretching inland, and connecting itself with the hills of the interior. The
Romans made their land attack on the south front of the walls, while their fleet,
unable, as it seems, to enter the great harbor, carried on its assaults against the
sea-wall of Achradina.
The land attack was committed to Appius Claudius, while Marcellus in person
conducted the operations of the fleet. The Roman army is spoken is baffled by Archieof as large, but no details of its force are given: it cannot have des.
been less than twenty thousand men, and was probably more numerous. No
force in Sicily, whether of Syracusans or Carthaginians, could have resisted it in
the field; and it had lately stormed the walls of Leontini as easily, to use the
Homeric comparison, as a child tramples out the towers and castles which he has
scratched upon the sand of the sea-shore. But at Syracuse it was checked by
an artillery such as the Romans had never encountered before, and which, had
Hannibal possessed it, would long since have enabled him to bring the war to a

47 Livy, XXIV. 31, 32.

A8 Livy, XXIV. 33.




ï~~552

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAT. XLY

triumphant issue. An old man of seventy-four, a relation and friend of king
Hiero, long known as one of the ablest astronomers and mathematicians of his
age, now proved that his science was no less practical than deep; and amid all
the crimes and violence of contending factions, he alone won the pure glory of
defending his country successfully against a foreign enemy. This old man was
Archimedes.49"
Many years before, at Hiero's request, he had contrived the engines which
His extraordinary en- were now used so effectively.0  Marcellus brought up his ships
ginesto defendthecity, against the sea-wall of Achradina, and endeavored by a constant
discharge of stones and arrows to clear the walls of their defenders, so that his
men might apply their ladders, and mount to the assault. These ladders rested
on two ships lashed together broadside to broadside, and worked as one by their
outside oars; and when the two ships were brought close up under the wall, one
end of the ladder was raised by ropes passing through blocks affixed to the two
mast-heads of the two vessels, and was then let go, till it rested on the top of the
wall. But Archimedes had supplied the ramparts with an artillery so powerful,
that it overwhelmed the Romans before they could get within the range which
their missiles could reach; and when they came closer, they found that all the
lower part of the wall was loopholed; and their men were struck down with fatal
aim by an enemy whom they could not see, and who shot his arrows in perfect
security. If they still persevered, and attempted to fix their ladders, on a sudden
they saw long poles thrust out from the top of the wall, like the arms of a giant;
and enormous stones, or huge masses of lead, were dropped from these upon
them, by which their ladders were crushed to pieces, and their ships were almost
sunk. At other times machines like cranes, or such as are used at the turnpikes
in Germany, and in the market-gardens round London, to draw water, were thrust
out over the wall; and the end of the lever, with an iron grapple affixed to it,
was lowered upon the Roman ships. As soon as the grapple had taken hold,
the other end of the lever was lowered by heavy weights, and the ship raised
out of the water, till it was made almost to stand upon its stern; then the grapple was suddenly let go, and the ship dropped into the sea with a violence which
either upset it, or filled it with water. With equal power was the assault on the
land side repelled; and the Roman soldiers, bold as they were, were so daunted
by these strange and irresistible devices, that if they saw so much as a rope or
a stick hanging or projecting from the wall, they would turn about and run away,
crying, "that Archimedes was going to set one of his engines at work against
them." Their attempts, indeed, were a mere amusement to the enemy, till Marcellus, in despair, put a stop to his attacks; and it was resolved merely to blockade the town, and to wait for the effect of famine upon the crowded population
within."5
Thus far, keeping our eyes fixed upon Syracuse only, we can give a clear and
Diicutiosin the histo- probable account of the course of events. But when we would
ry of the Sicilian war. extend our view further, and connect the war in Sicily with that
t Italy, and give the relative dates of the actions performed in the several countries involved in this great contest, we see the wretched character of our materials, and must acknowledge that, in order to give a comprehensive picture of the
whole war, we have to supply, by inference or conjecture, what no actual testimony has recorded. We do not know for certain when Marcellus came into
Sicily, when he began the siege of Syracuse, or how long the blockade was continued. We read of Roman and Carthaginian fleets appearing and disappearing
at different times in the Sicilian seas; but.of the naval operations on either side
we can give no connected report. Other difficulties present themselves, of no
great importance, but perplexing because they shake our confidence in the narra
* Livy, XXIV. 84. Polybius, VIII. 7.
W Plutarch, Marcellus, 14.

" Polybius, VIII. 6-9. Livy, XXIV. 84.
Plutarch, Marcellus, 15-17.




ï~~OHAP. XLV. j

WAR IN SICILY.

553

ive which contains them.  So easy is it to transcribe the ancient writers; so
hard to restore the reality of those events of which they themselves had no clear
conception.            n
The first attacks pon Syracuse are certainly misplaced by Livy, when he
classes them among the events of the year 540.52   The Sicilian
war belongs to the year following, to the consulship of Q. Fabius, Chronolog of the war.
the dictator's son, and of Ti. Gracchus. Even when this is set right, it is difficult to reconcile Polybius' statement,53 "that the blockade of Syracuse lasted
eight months," with the account which places the capture of the city in the au=
tumn of 542. Instead of eight months, the blockade would seem to have lasted
for more than twelve: nor is there any other solution of this difficulty, than to
suppose that the blockade was not persevered in to the end, and was in fact
given up as useless, as the assaults had been before. I notice these points, because the narrative which follows is uncertain and unsatisfactory, and no care can
make it otherwise.
The year 541 saw the whole stress of the war directed upon Sicily. Little or
nothing, if we can trust our accounts, was done in Italy; there was sicily becomes the
a pause also in the operations in Spain; but throughout Sicily the main seat of war.
contest was raging furiously.  Four Roman officers were employed there: P.
Cornelius Lentulus held the old Roman province, that is, the western part of the
island; and his head-quarters ipre at Lilybaeum: T. Otacilius hai  he command
of the fleet:54 Appius Claudius and Marcellus carried on the war in the kingdom
of Syracuse; the latter certainly as proconsul; the former as proprator, or possibly only as the lieutenant, legatus, of the proconsul. Marcellus, however, as
proconsul, must have had the supreme command over the island; and all its resources must have been at his disposal; so that the fleet which he conducted in
person at the siege of Syracuse, was probably a part of that committed to T.
Otacilius, Otacilius himself either serving under the proconsul, or possibly remaining still at Lilyb eum. It is remarkable that, although he is said to have had
the command of the fleet continued to him for five successive years,"5 yet his
name never occurs as taking an active part in the siege of Syracuse; and how
he employed himself we know not. Nor is it less singular that he should have
retained his naval command year after year, though he was so meanly esteemed
by the most influential men in Rome, that his election to the consulship was twice
stopped in the most decided manner, first by Q. Fabius in 540, and again by T.
Manlius Torquatus in 544.56 But the clue to this; as to other things which belong to the living knowledge of these times, is altogether lost.
While the whole of Sicily was become the scene of war, an army of nine or
ten thousand old soldiers was purposely kept inactive by the Ro- Wise conduct of the
man government, and was not even allowed to take part in any seateo towards the fuactive operations. These were the remains of the army of Canna, gitivos from Canns.
and a number of citizens who had evaded their military service: as we have seen
they had been all sent to Sicily in disgrace, not to be recalled till the end of the
war.5   Now, however, that there was active service required in Sicily itself,
these condemned soldiers petitioned Marcellus that they might be employed in
the field, and have some opportunity of retrieving their character. This petition
was presented to him at the end of the first year's campaign in Sicily, and was
referred by him to the senate. The answer was remarkable: "The senate could
see no reason for intrusting the service of the commonwealth to men who had
abandoned their comrades at Cannam, while they were fighting to the death: but
if M. Claudius thought differently, he might use his discretion; provided always
that none of these soldiers should receive any honorary exemption or reward,
" Livy, XXIV. 84.                      * Livy, XXII. 82. XXIV. 10, 44. XXV a
0 Polybius, VIII. 9.                  XXVI. 1.
5 Livy, XXIV. 10.                      as Livy, XXIV. 9. XXVI. 22.
7 Livy, XXIII. 25. See above, p. 528.




ï~~554

HISTORY OF ROME.

CHAP. XLY

however they might distinguish themselves, nor be allowed to return to Italy
till the enemy had quitted it."53' Here was shown the consummate policy of the
Roman government, in holding out so high a standard of military duty, while,
without appearing to yield to circumstances, they took care not to push their
severity so far as to hurt themselves. Occasions might arise, when the services
of these disgraced soldiers could not be dispensed with; in such a case Marcellus
might employ them. Yet even then their penalty was not wholly remitted; it
was grace enough to let them serve their country at all; nothing that they could
do was more than their bounden duty of gratitude for the mercy shown them;
they could not deserve exemption or reward. It was the glory and happiness of
Rome that her soldiers could bear such severity. Sicily was full of mercenary
troops, whose swords were hired by foreigners to fight their battles; and if these
disgraced Romans had chosen to offer their services to Carthage, they might have
enjoyed wealth and honors, with full vengeance on their unforgiving country.
Greek soldiers at this time would have done so: the proudest of the nobility of
France in the sixteenth century did not scruple to revenge his private wrongs by
treason. But these ten thousand Romans, although their case was not only hard,
but grievously unjust, inasmuch as their rich and noble countrymen, who had
escaped like them from Cannm, had received no punishment, still bowed with entire submission to their country's severity, and felt that nothing could tempt them
to forfeit the privilege of being Romans.
We must not suppose, however, that these men were useless, even while they
Use of these troops.  were kept at a distance from the actual field of war. As soon as
Syracuse became the enemy of Rome, it was certain that the Carthaginians would renew the struggle of the first Punic war for the dominion of
Sicily; and the Roman province, from its neighborhood to Carthage, was especially exposed to invasion. Lilybmum, therefore, and Drepanum, Eryx, and Panormus, required strong garrisons for their security; and the soldiers of Canne, by
forming these garrisons, set other troops at liberty who must otherwise have been
withdrawn from active warfare. As it was, these towns were never attacked;
and the keys of Sicily, Lilybeum at one end of the island, and Messana at the
other, remained throughout in the hands of the Romans.
Yet the example of Syracuse produced a very general effect. The cities
Efforts of the Cortha-_ which had belonged to Hiero's kingdom mostly followed it, ung aiosia Si ily.  less where the Romans secured them in time with sufficient garrisons. Himilconi, the Carthaginian commander, who had been sent over to
Pachynus with a small fleet to watch the course of events, sailed back to Carthage, as soon as the Carthaginian party had gained possession of Syracuse, and
urged the government to increase its armaments in Sicily."9 Hannibal wrote from
Italy to the same effect; for Sicily had been his father's battle-field for five
years; he had clung to it till the last moment; and his son was no less sensible
of its importance. Accordingly, Himilcon was supplied with an army, notwithstanding the pressure of the Numidian war in Africa, and landing on the south coast
of Sicily, he presently reduced Heraclea, Minoa, and Agrigentum, and encouraged
many of the smaller towns in the interior of the island to declare for Carthage.
Hippocrates broke out of Syracuse and joined him. Marcellus, who had left his
camp to quell the growing spirit of revolt among the Sicilian cities, was obliged
to fall back again; and the enemy, pursuing him closely, encamped on the banks
of the Anapus. Meanwhile a Carthaginian fleet ran over to Syracuse, and entered the great harbor; its object being apparently to provision the place, and
thus render the Roman blockade nugatory.60
It was clear that Marcellus could not make head against a Carthaginian army
Dificulties o f theo Ro supported by Syracuse and half the other cities of Sicily,.n..        The fleet also was unequal to the service required of it; many

11 Livy, XXV. 5-7.

ba Livy, XXIV. 35.

LL  Livy, XXIV. 85, 86.




ï~~Our. XLV.]

REVOLT OF THE SICILIANS.

55,

ships had probably been destroyed by Archimedes; Lilyburn could not be left
unguarded, and some ships were necessarily kept there; and in the general revolt of the Sicilian cities, the Roman army could not always depend on being
supplied by land, and would require corn to be brought sometimes from a distance by sea. Besides, the reinforcements which Marcellus so needed must be
sent in ships and embarked at Ostia; for Hannibal's army cut off all communication by the usual line, through Lucania to Rhegium, and over the strait to Messana. Thirty ships therefore had to sail back to Rome, to take on board a legion
and transport it to Panormus; from whence, by a circuitous route along the
south coast of the island, the fleet accompanying it all the way, it reached Marcellus' head-quarters safely. And now the Romans again had the superiority by
sea; but by land Himilcon was still master of the field; and the Roman garrison at Murgantia, a little to the north of Syracuse, was betrayed by the inhabitants into his hands.61
This example was no doubt likely to be followed, and should have increased
the vigilance of the Roman garrisons. But it was laid hold of by M.ssacre of theinhabL. Pinarius, the governor of Enna, as a pretence for repeating the itants ofEona.
crime of the Campanians at Rhegium, and of the Prmnestines more recently at
Casilinum. Standing in the centre of Sicily on the top of a high mountain platform, and fenced by precipitous cliffs on almost every side, Enna was a stronghold nearly impregnable, except by treachery from within; and whatever became
of the Roman cause in Sicily, the holders of Enna might hope to retain it, as the
Mamertines had kept Messana. Accordingly Pinarius, having previously prepared
his soldiers for what was to be done, on a signal given ordered them to fall
upon the people of Enna, when assembled in the theatre, and massacred them
without distinction. The plunder of the town Pinarius and his soldiers kept to
themselves, with the consent of Marcellus, who allowed the necessity of the times
to be an apology for the deed.2
The Romans alleged that the people of Enna were only caught in their own
snare; that they had invited Hippocrates and Himilcon to at- Ret of the st iln
tack the city, and had vainly tried to persuade Pinarius to  orgive ees cintern bothem the keys of the gates, that they might admit the enemy to
destroy the garrison. But the Sicilians saw that, if the people of Enna had
meditated treachery, the Romans had practised it: a whole people had been
butchered, their city plundered, and their wives and children made slaves, when
they were peaceably met in the theatre in their regular assembly; and this new
outrage, added to the sack of Leontini, led to an almost general revolt. Marcellus having collected some corn from the rich plains of Leontini, carried it to the
camp before Syracuse, and made his dispositions for his winter-quarters. Appius Claudius went home to stand for the consulship, and was succeeded in his
command by T. Quinctius Crispinus, a brave soldier, who was afterwards Marcellus' colleague as consul, and received his death-wound by his side, when
Marcellus was killed by Hannibal's ambush. Crispinus lay encamped near the
sea, not far from the temple of Olympian Jupiter, and also commanded the naval force employed in the siege; while Marcellus, with the other part of the
army, chose a position on the northern side of Syracuse, between the city and
the peninsula of Thapsus, apparently for the purpose of keeping up his communications with Leontini.6 As to the blockade of Syracuse, it was in fact virtually
raised; all the southern roads were left open; and as a large part of the Roman
fleet was again called away either to Lilybreum or elsewhere, supplies of all sorts
were freely introduced into the town by sea from Carthage.
The events of the winter were not encouraging to the Romans. Hannibal had
taken Tarentum; and the Tarentine fleet was employed in besieg- A. U. c. 542. A. C
ing the Roman garrison, which still held the citadel. Thus the 32. Intr- igues f th
R    -a   arisne                                        Roman party in Syra
Roman naval force was still further divided, as it was necessary 00se.

61 Livy, XXIV. 36.

a Livy, XXIV. 87-39.

" Livy, XXIV. 8D.




ï~~556

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAe. XLV.

to convey supplies by sea to the garrison; so that, when spring returned, Marcellus was at a loss what to attempt, and had almost resolved to break up from
Syracuse altogether, and to carry the war to the other end of Sicily. But Sosis,
and other Syracusans of the Roman party, were intriguing actively with their
countrymen within the city; and although one conspiracy, in which eighty persons
were concerned, was detected by Epicydes, and the conspirators all put to death,
yet the hopes they had held out of obtaining easy terms from the Romans were
not forgotten; and the lawlessness of the Roman deserters, and of the other foreign soldiers, made many of the Syracusans long for a return of the happy times
under Hiero, when Rome and Syracuse were friends4
Thus the spring wore away; and the summer had come, and had reached its
The Sy racsans senda prime, and yet the war in Sicily seemed to slumber: for the
to solictai from.a- greater part of the cities which had revolted to Carthage were
cedon.        undisturbed by the Romans; yet the Carthaginians were not strong
enough to assail the heart of the Roman province, and to besiege Drepanum or
Lilybaeum. In this state of things, the Syracusans turned their eyes to Greece,
and thought that the king of Macedon, who was the open enemy of Rome, and
the covenanted ally of Carthage, might serve his own cause no less than theirs
by leaving his ignoble warfare on the coast of Epirus, and crossing the Ionian
sea to deliver Syracuse. Damippus, a Lacedaemonian, and one of the counsellors of Hieronymus and of Hiero, was accordingly chosen as ambassador, and put
to sea on his mission to solicit the aid of king Philip.6
Again the fortune of Rome interposed to delay the interference of Macedon in
The R preparethe contest. The ship which was conveying Damippus was taken
to scale the walls at by the Romans on the voyage.  The Syracusans valued him
We fetival of Diana,..
t  v or i.... highly, and opened a negotiation with Marcellus to ransom him.
The conferences were held between Syracuse and the Roman camp; and a Roman soldier, it is said, was struck with the lowness of the wall in one particular
place, and having counted the rows of stones, and so computed the whole height,
reported to Marcellus that it might be scaled with ladders of ordinary length.
Marcellus listened to the suggestion; but the low point was for that very reason
more carefully guarded, because it seemed to invite attack; he therefore thought
the attempt too hazardous, unless occasion should favor it.66 But the great festival of Diana was at hand, a three days' solemnity, celebrated with all honors
to the guardian goddess of Syracuse. It was a season of universal feasting;
and wine was distributed largely among the multitude, that the neighborhood of
the Roman army might not seem to have banished all mirth and enjoyment.
One vast revel prevailed through the city; Marcellus, informed of all this by
deserters, got his ladders ready; and soon after dark two cohorts were marched
in silence and in a long thin column to the foot of the wall, preceded by the
soldiers of one maniple, who carried the ladders, and were to lead the way to
the assault.
The spot selected for this attempt was in the wall which ran along the northThey gal  possession of ern edge of Epipolm, where the ground was steep, and where apychean a Neaois; parently there was no gate, or regular approach to the city. But
the vast lines of Syracuse inclosed a wide space of uninhabited ground; the
new quarters of Tyche and Neapolis, which had been added to the original town
since the great Athenian siege, were still far from reaching the top of the hill;
and what was called the quarter of Epipole only occupied a small part of the
sloping ground known in earlier times by that name. Thus, when the Romans
scaled the northern line, they found that all was quiet and lonely; nor was there
any one to spread the alarm, except the soldiers who garrisoned the several
to waers of the wall itself. These however, heavy with wine, and dreaming of no

s4 Livy, XXV. 23.
10 Livy, XXV. 23.

" Livy, XXV. 23. Plutarch,1 Marcellus, 18.
Polybius, Vol. V. p. 82, 383.




ï~~CHAP. XLV.]

SIEGE OF SYRACUSE.

557

danger, were presently surprised and killed; and the assailants, thus clearing
their way as they went, swept the whole line of the wall on their right, following
it up the slope of the hill towards the angle formed at the summit by the meeting of the northern line with the southern. Here was the regular entrance into
Syracuse from the 1 and side; and this point, being the key of the whole fortified inclosure, was secured by the strong work called Hexapylon, or the Six
Gates; probably from the number of barriers which must be passed before the
lines could be fully entered. To this point the storming party made their way
in the darkness, not blindly, however, nor uncertainly, for a Syracusan was guiding them,-that very Sosis,67 who had been one of the assassins of Hieronymus,
and one of the murderers of Hiero's daughters, and who, when he was one of
the captains-general of Syracuse, must have become acquainted with all the secrets
of the fortifications. Sosis led the two Roman cohorts towards Hexapylon: from
that commanding height a fire-signal was thrown up, to announce the success of
their attempt; and the loud and sudden blast of the Roman trumpets from the
top of the walls called the Romans to come to the support of their friends, and
told the bewildered Syracusans that the key of their lines was in the hands of
the enemy."
Ladders were now set, and the wall was scaled in all directions; for the main
gates of Hexapylon could not be forced till the next morning; and nd take the Hexapy.
the only passage immediately opened was a small side-gate at no Ion.
great distance from them. But when daylight came, Hexapylon was entirely
taken, and the main entrance to the city was cleared; so that Marcellus marched
in with his whole army, and took possession of the summit of the slope of
Epipole.
From that high ground he saw Syracuse at his feet, and, he doubted not, in
his power. Two quarters of the city, the new town as it was
Marcellus looking down
called, and Tyche, were open to his first advance; their only for- on Syracuse, sed
tification being the general inclosure of the lines, which he had tears..
already carried. Below, just overhanging the sea, or floating on its waters, lay
Achradina and the island of Ortygia, fenced by their own separate walls, which
till the time of the first Dionysius had been the limit of Syracuse, the walls
which the great Athenian armament had besieged in vain. Nearer on the right,
and running so deeply into the lahd, that it seemed almost to reach the foot of
the heights on which he stood, lay the still basin of the great harbor, its broad
surface half hidden by th hulls of a hundred Carthaginian ships; while further
on the right was the camp of his lieutenant, T. Crispinus, crowning the rising
ground beyond the Anapus, close by the temple of Olympian Jupiter. So striking was the view on every side, and so surpassing was the glory of his conquest,
that Marcellus, old as he was, was quite overcome by it: unable to contain the
feelings of that moment, he burst into tears.69
A deputation from the inhabitants of Tyche and Neapolis approached him,
bearing the ensigns of suppliants, and imploring him to save them His troops plnderthe
from fire and massacre. He granted their prayer, but at the captureda parts of the
price of every article of their property, which was to be given up city.
to the Roman soldiers as plunder. At a regular signal the army was let loose
upon the houses of Tyche and Neapolis, with no other restriction than that of
offering no personal violence. How far such a command would be heeded in
such a season of license, we can only conjecture. The Roman writers extol the
humanity of Marcellus; but the Syracusans regarded him as a merciless spoiler,
who had wished to take the town by assault, rather than by a voluntary surrender, that he might have a pretence for seizing its plunder.2Â~ Such a prize, indeed, had never before been won by a Roman army; even the wealth of Taren

0' Livy, XXVI. 21.
G Livy, XXV. 24.    Plutarch, Marcellus, 18.

m Livy, XXV. 24.
70 Livy, XXVI. 80.




ï~~558

HISTORY OF ROME,

[Chap. XL"

turn was not to be compared with that of Syracuse. But as yet the appetites oi
the Roman soldiers were fleshed rather than satisfied; less than half of Syracuse
was in their power; and a fresh siege was necessary to win the spoils of Achradina and Ortygia. Still what they had already gained gave Marcellus large
means of corruption; the fort of Euryalus, on the summit of Epipolem, near Hexapylon, which might have caused him serious annoyance on his rear while engaged in attacking Achradina, was surrendered to him by its governor, Philodemus, an Argive; and the Romans set eagerly to work to' complete their conquest. Having formed three camps before Achradina, they hoped soon to starve
the remaining quarters of the city into a surrender."
Epicydes meanwhile showed a courage and activity worthy of one who had
The Carthaginian army learned war under Hannibal. A squadron of the Carthaginian fleet
tte eptin  to relieve put to sea one stormy night, when the Roman blockading ships
Syracuse, ias destroyed
by afever.    were driven off from the mouth of the harbor, and ran across to
Carthage to request fresh succors. These were prepared with the greatest expedition: while Hippocrates and Himilcon, with their combined Carthaginian and
Sicilian armies, came from the western end of the island to attack the Roman
army on the land side. They encamped on the shore of the harbor, between
the mouth of the Anapus and the city, and assaulted the camp of Crispinus,
while Epicydes sailed from Achradina to attack Marcellus. But Roman soldiers
fighting behind fortifications were invincible; their lines at Capua in the following
year repelled Hannibal himself; and now their positions before Syracuse were
maintained with equal success against Hippocrates and -Epicydes.  Still the
Carthaginian army remained in its camp on the shore of the harbor, partly in the
hope of striking some blow against the enemy, but more to overawe the remains
of the Roman party in Syracuse, which the distress of the siege, and the calamities of Neapolis and Tyche, must have rendered numerous and active. Meanwhile the summer advanced; the weather became hotter and hotter; and the
usual malaria fevers began to prevail in both armies, and also in Syracuse. But
the air here, as at Rome, is much more unhealthy without the city than within;
above all, the marshy ground by the Anapus, where the Carthaginian army lay,
as almost pestilential; and the ordinary summer fevers in this situation soon
assumed a character of extreme malignity. The Sicilians immediately moved
their quarters, and withdrew into the neighboring cities; but the Carthaginians
remained on the ground, till their whole army was effectually destroyed. Hippocrates and Himilcon both perished with their soldiers.72
The Romans suffered less; for Marcellus had quartered his men in the houses
Their fleet fas i. of Neapolis and Tyche; and the high buildings and narrow streets
ike attempt.  of the ancient towns kept off the sun, and allowed both the sick
and the healthy to breathe and move in a cooler atmosphere. Still the deaths
were numerous; and as the terror of Archimedes and his artillery restrained the
Romans from any attempts to batter or scale the walls, they had nothing to trust
to save famine or treason. But Bomilcar was on his way from Carthage with
130 ships of war, and a convoy of seven hundred storeships, laden with supplies
of every description: he had reached the Sicilian coast near Agrigentum, when
prevailing easterly winds checked his further advance, and he could not reach
Pachynus. Alarmed at this most unseasonable delay, and fearing lest the fleet
should return to Africa in despair, Epicydes himself left Syracuse, and went to
meet it, and to hasten its advance. The storeships, which were worked by sails,
were obliged to remain at Heraclea; but Epicydes prevailed on Bomilcar to
bring on his ships of war to Pachynus, where the Roman fleet, though inferior
in numbers, was waiting to intercept his progress. The east winds at length
abated, and Bomilcar stood out to sea to double Pachynus. But when the Roman fleet advanced against him, he suddenly changed his plans, it is said; and

71 Livy, XXV. 25.

72 Livy, XXV. 26.




ï~~CHAP. XLV.]

SIEGE OF SYRACUSE.

559

having dispatched orders to the storeships at Heraclea to return immediately to
Africa, he himself, instead of engaging the Romans, or making for Syracuse,
passed along the eastern coast of Sicily, without stopping, and continued his
course till he reached Tarentum.3
Here again the story in its present state greatly needs explanation. It is true
that Hannibal was very anxious at this time to reduce the citadel  o quit the city
Eplcyd s es ui  pteiy,
of Tarentum; and he probably required a fleet to co-operate with Ewich become. pry
him, in order to cut off the garrison's supplies by sea. But Bo- to oanarchy.
milcar had been sent out especially to throw succors into Syracuse; and we cannot conceive his abandoning this object on a sudden, without any intelligible
reason. The probability is, that the easterly winds still kept the storeships at
Heraclea; and if they could not reach Syracuse, nothing was to be gained by a
naval battle. And then, as the service at Tarentum was urgent, he thought it
best to go thither, and to send back the convoy to Africa, rather than wait inactive on the Sicilian coast, till the wind became favorable. After all, Syracuse
did not fall for want of provisions: the havoc caused by sickness, both in the
city and in the Carthaginian camp on the Anapus, must have greatly reduced the
number of consumers, and made the actual supply available for a longer period.
It seems to have been a worse mischief than the conduct of Bomilcar, that Epicydes himself, as if despairing of fortune, withdrew to Agrigentum, instead of
returning to Syracuse; for from the moment of his departure the city seems to
have been abandoned to anarchy. At first the remains of the Sicilian army,
which now occupied two towns in the interior, not far from Syracuse, began to
negotiate with Marcellus, and persuaded the Syracusans to rise on the generals
left in command by Epicydes, and to put them to death. New captains-generals
were then appointed, probably for the Roman party; and they began to treat
with Marcellus for the surrender of Syracuse, and for the general settlement of
the war in Sicily.74
Marcellus listened to them readily: but his army was longing for the plunder
of Achradina and Ortygia; and he knew not how to disappoint Insurrection of theiethem: for we may be sure that no pay was issued at this period co naries in the city;
to any Roman army serving out of Italy; in the provinces, war was by fair
means or foul to support war. Meanwhile the miserable state of affairs in Syracuse was furthering the wish of the Roman soldiers. A besieged city, with no
efficient government, and full of foreign mercenaries, whom there was no native
force to restrain, was like a wreck in mutiny: utter weakness and furious convulsions were met in the same body. The Roman deserters first excited the
tumult, and persuaded all the foreign soldiers to join them; a new outbreak of
violence followed; the Syracusan captains-general were massacred in their turn;
and the foreign soldiers were again triumphant. Three officers, each with a district of his own, were appointed to command in Achradina, and three more in
Ortygia.15
The foreign soldiers now held the fate of Syracuse in their hands; and they
began to consider that they might make their terms with the Ro- who betray it to the
mans, although the Roman deserters could not. Their blood was Romans.
not called for by the inflexible law of military discipline; by a timely treachery
they might earn not impunity merely, but reward. So thought Mericus, a Spaniard, who had the charge of a part of the sea-wall of Achradina. Accordingly
he made his bargain with Marcellus, and admitted a party of Roman soldiers by
night at one of the gates which opened towards the harbor. As soon as morning
dawned, Marcellus made a general assault on the land front of Achradina; the
garrison of Ortygia hastened to join in the defence; and the Romans then sent
boats full of men round into the great harbor, and, effecting a landing under the

73 Livy, XXV. 27.
14 Livy, XXV. 28.

" Livy, XXV. 29.




ï~~560

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Car. XLV

walls, carried the island with little difficulty. Meanwhile Mericus had openly
joined the Roman party, whom he had admitted into Achradina; and Marcellus,
having his prey in his power, called off his soldiers from the assault, lest the
royal treasures, which were kept in Ortygia, should be plundered in the general
sack of the town."6
In the respite thus gained, the Roman deserters found an opportunity to escape
Srcse is taken  out of Syracuse. Whether they forced their way out, or whether
plundered. Archimedes the soldiers, hungry for plunder, and not wishing to encounter the
in.      resistance of desperate men, obliged Marcellus to connive at their
escape, we know not: but with them all wish or power to hold out longer vanished from Syracuse; and a deputation from Achradina came once more to Marcellus, praying for nothing beyond the lives and personal freedom of the citizens
and their families. This, it seems, was granted; but as soon as Marcellus had
sent his quaestor to secure the royal treasures in Ortygia, the soldiers were let
loose upon the city to plunder it at their discretion. They did not merely plunder, however: blood was shed unsparingly, partly by the mere violence of the
soldiers, partly by the axes of the lictors, as the punishment of rebellion against
the majesty of Rome. Amidst the horrors of the sack of the city, Archimedes
was slain."  The stories of his death vary; and which, if any of them, is the true
one, we cannot determine. But Marcellus, who made it his glory to carry all
the finest works of art from the temples of Syracuse to Rome," would no doubt
have been glad to have seen Archimedes walking amongst the prisoners at his
triumph. He is said to have shown kindness to the relations of Archimedes for
his sake;"' and if this be true, he earned a glory which few Romans ever deserved,
that of honoring merit in an enemy.
Old as Archimedes was, the Roman soldier's sword dealt kindly with him, in
Miserable r condition of cutting short his scanty term of remaining life, and saving him from
theo syrusans.  beholding the misery of his country. It was a wretched sight to
see the condition of Syracuse when the sack was over, and what was called a
state of peace and safety had returned. Every house was laid bare, every temple stript; and the empty pedestals showed how sweeping the spoiler's work had
been. The Syracusans beheld their captive gods carried to the Roman quarters,
or put on shipboard to be conveyed to Rome; the care with which they were
handled, lest the conqueror's triumph should lose its most precious ornaments,
only adding to the grief and indignation of the conquered. Those fathers and
mothers, who were so happy as to gather all their children safe around them
when the plunder was over, had escaped the sword, indeed, and they and their
sons and daughters were not yet sold as slaves; but their only choice was still
between slavery or death.  They had lost every thing. What food was still
remaining in the besieged city, the sack had either carried off or destroyed; and
if food had been at hand, they had no money to buy it. And this came upon
them after a heavy visitation of sickness; when the body, reduced by that weakening malaria fever, needed all tender care and comfort to restore it, instead of
being harassed by alarm and anxiety, and exposed to destitution and starvation.
Many therefore sold themselves to the Roman soldiers, to escape dying by hunger; and the family circle, which the sack of the city had spared, was again
broken up forever. Those who, being unmarried and childless, had given no
hostages to fortune, and who might yet hope to live in personal freedom, were
only the more able to feel the ruin and degradation of their country.80 Syracuse,
who had led captive the hosts of Athens, and seen the invading armies of Carthage melt away by disease under her walls, till scarce any remained to flySyracuse, where Dionysius had reigned, which Timoleon had freed, which Hiero
78 Livy, XXV. 80.                     7e Livy, XXV. 40. Polybius, IX. 10. Cicero,
" Livy, XXV. 31. Plutarch, Marcellus, 19. in Verrem, IV. 54.
Valerius Maximus, VIII. 7, 7.           79 Livy, XXV. 81. Plutarch, Marcellus, 19.
"0 Diodorus, XXVI. Fragm. Mai.




ï~~CHAP. XLV.]

MUTINES.

561

had cherished and sheltered under his long paternal rule-was now become subject to barbarians, whom she had helped in their utmost need,.and who were
repaying the unshaken friendship of Hiero with the plunder of his city and the
subjugation of his people. If there was yet a keener pang to be felt by every
noble Syracusan, it was to behold their countrymen, who had fought in the Roman army, returning in triumph, establishing themselves in the empty houses ot
the slaughtered defenders of their country, and insulting the general misery by
displaying the rewards of their treason. Among these was Sosis, assassin, murderer, and traitor, who was looking forward to the triumph of Marcellus, as one
to whom the shame of his country was his glory, and her ruin the making of his
fortune.8
Syracuse had fallen; and the cities in the (astern part of Sicily had no other
hope now, than to obtain pardon, if it might be, from Rome, by cuely of..
immediate submission. But it was too late: they were treated as
conquered enemies;82 that is to say, Marcellus put to death those of their citizens who were most obnoxious, and imposed such forfeitures of land on the cities,
and such terms of submission for the time to come, as he judged expedient. It
became the fashion afterwards to extol his humanity, and even his refinement,3
because he showed his taste for the works of Greek art by carrying the statues
of the Syracusan temples to Rome. But his admiration of Greek art did not
make him treat the Greeks themselves with less severity; and the Sicilians taxed
him with perfidy as well as cruelty, and regarded him as the merciless oppressor
of their country.84
Meantime Hannibal's comprehensive view had not lost sight of Sicily. When
he heard of the havoc caused by the epidemic sickness, and of the Hannibal sends MtiHannibal sends Mutideath of Hippocrates, he sent over another of his officers to share nes to Sioily; his ewith Epicydes, and with the general who came from Carthage, in ceases.
the command of the war. This was Mutines, or Myttonus, a half-caste Carthaginian, excluded on that account from civil honors;85 but Hannibal's camp recognized no such distinctions; and brave and able men, whatever was their race or
condition, were sure to be employed and rewarded there. Muti- A. Uv. c. 543. A. c.
nes proved the unerring judgment of Hannibal in his choice of "'officers.  His arrival in Sicily was equivalent to an army: being put at the
head of the Numidian cavalry then serving under Epicydes and Hanno, he overran the whole island, encouraging the allies of Carthage, harassing those of Rome,
and defying pursuit or resistance by the rapidity and skill of his movements.
He renewed the system of warfare which Hamilcar had maintained so long in
the last war; and having the strong place of Agrigentum to retire to in case of
need, he perplexed the Roman generals not a little. Marcellus was obliged to
take the field, and march from Syracuse westward as far as the Himera, where
the enemy's army lay encamped. But he met with a rough reception; the Numidian cavalry crossed the river, and came swarming round his camp, insulting
and annoying his soldiers on guard, and confining his whole army to their
intrenchments; and when on the next day, impatient of this annoyance, he offered
battle in the field, Mutines and his Numidians broke in upon his lines with such
fury, that he was fain to retreat with all speed, and seek the shelter of his camp
again. It appears that other arms were then tried with better success: the Numidians were tampered with; their irregular habits and impatient tempers made
them at all times difficult to manage; and a party of them having left the Carthaginian camp in disgust, Mutines went after them to pacify and win them back
to their duty, earnestly conjuring Hanno and Epicydes not to venture a battle
till he should return. But Hanno was jealous of Hannibal's officers; and holding his own commission directly from the government of Carthage, he could not
s' Livy, XXVI. 21.                    * Livy, XXVI. 29-32. Plutarch, Marcellus,
SLivy, XXV. 40.                     23.
8 Cicero, in Verrem, IV. 52-59.       " Livy, XXV. 40. Polybius, IX. 22.
36




ï~~562

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLV

bear to be restrained by a half-caste soldier, sent to Sicily from Hannibal's camp,
by the mere authority of the general. His rank probably gave him a casting
vote, when only one other commander was present, so that Epicydes in vain protested against his imprudence."  A battle was ventured; and not only was the
genius of Mutines wanting, but the Numidians whom he had left with Hanno,
thinking their commander insulted, would take no active part in the action, and
Hanno was defeated with loss.
Marcellus, rejoiced at having thus retrieved his honor, had no mind to risk
Blarceilus returns to another encounter with Mutines: he forthwith retreated to SyrRome.        acuse;87 and as the term of his command was now expired, his
thoughts were all turned to Rome, and to his expected triumph. He left Sicily
after the fall of Capua, towards the end of the summer of 543, and about a year
after the conquest of Syracuse; but he was not allowed to carry his army home
with him; and M. Cornelius Cethegus, one of the praetors, who succeeded him
in his command, found that his province was far from being in a state of peace.
The Carthaginians had reinforced their army: Mutines, with his Numidians, was
A. U. C. 544. A. C. scouring the whole country; the soldiers were discontented be210.         cause they had not been permitted to return home; and the Sicilians were driven desperate by the oppressions which Marcellus had commanded
or winked at, and were ready to break out in revolt again."
In fact, it appears that in the year 544, nearly two years after the fall of SyrLmvinus is sent to S i. acuse, there were as many as sixty-six towns in Sicily in a state
eity.        of revolt from Rome, and in alliance with Carthage."  So greatly
had Mutines restored the Carthaginian cause, that it was thought necessary to
send one of the consuls over with a consular army, to bring the war to an end.
Accordingly, M. Valerius Levinus, who had been employed for the last three or
four years on the coast of Epirus, conducting the war against Philip, and who
was chosen consul with Marcellus in the year 544, carried over a regular consular army into Sicily; while L. Cincius, one of the new praetors, and probably
the same man who is known as one of the earliest Roman historians, took the
command of the old province, and of the soldiers of Cannae who were still quartered there.Â~  The army with which Marcellus had won Syracuse was now at
last disbanded, and the men were allowed to return home with as much of their
plunder as they had not spent or wasted: but four legions were even now employed in Sicily, besides a fleet of one hundred ships; and yet Mutines and his
Numidians were overrunning all parts of the island, and the end of the war
seemed as distant as ever.
Levinus advanced towards Agrigentum, with small hope, however, of taking
utines is insulted by the place; for Mutines sallied whenever he would, and carried.s.e,. ato teo. back his plunder in safety whenever he would: whilst the neighmans.         borhood of Carthage made relief by sea always within calculation,
whatever naval force the Romans might employ in the blockade. In this state
of things, Lmvinus to his astonishment received a secret communication from Mutines, offering to put Agrigentum into his power. The half-caste African, the
officer of Hannibal, the sole stay of the Carthaginian cause in Sicily, was on all
these accounts odious to Hanno; and it is likely that Mutines did not bear his
glory meekly, and that he expressed the scorn which Hannibal's soldier was
likely to feel for the pride and incapacity of the general sent out by the government at home, and probably by the party opposed to Hannibal, and afraid of his
glory. But whatever was the secret of the quarrel, its effects were public
enough: Hanno ventured to deprive Mutines of his command. The Numidians,
however, would obey no other leader, while him they would obey in every thing;
and at his bidding they rose in open mutiny, took possession of one of the gates
6 Livy, XXV. 40.                     * Livy, XXVI. 40.
87 Livy, XXV. 41.                    9 Livy, XXVI. 28.
" Livy, XXVI. 21.




ï~~CHAP. XLV.]

DEPLORABLE CONDITION OF SICILY.

563

of the town, and let in the Romans. Hanno and Epicydes had just time to fly
to the harbor, to hasten on board a ship, and escape to Carthage; but their soldiers, surprised and panic-struck, were cut to pieces with little resistance; and
Levinus won Agrigentum.      He treated it more severely than Marcellus had
dealt with Syracuse; after executing the principal citizens, he sold all the rest
for slaves, and sent the money which he received for them to Rome.2
This blow was decisive. Twenty other towns, which still held with the Carthaginians, were presently betrayed to the Romans, either by their LAvinus accomplishes
garrisons, or by some of their own citizens; six were stormed by the conquestofSicly,
the Roman army; and the remainder, to the number of forty, then submitted at
discretion. The consul dealt out his rewards to the traitors who had betrayed
their country; and his lictors scourged and beheaded the brave men who had
persevered the longest in their resistance: thus at last he was able to report to
the senate that the war in Sicily was at an end.
Four thousand adventurers of all descriptions, who in the troubled state of Sicily
had taken possession of the town of Agathyrna on the north coast and reduces it to onire
of the island, and were maintaining themselves there by robbery, submission.
Lsevinus carried over into Italy at the close of the year, and landed them at
Rhegium, to be employed in a plundering warfare in Bruttium. Having thus
cleared the island of all open disturbers of its peace, he obliged the Sicilians, says
Livy, to turn their attention to agriculture, that its fruitful soil might grow corn
to supply the wants of Italy and of Rome."2 And he assured the senate, at the
end of the year, that the work was thoroughly done; that not a single Carthaginian was left in Sicily; that the towns were repeopled by the return of their
peaceable inhabitants, and the land was again cultivated; that he had laid the
foundation of a state of things equally happy for the Sicilians and for Rome.93
So Levinus said; and so he probably believed.  But with the return of peace
to the island, there came a host of Italian and Roman speculators; Deplorable condition of
who, in the general distress of the Sicilians, bought up large tracts Sicily.
of land at a low price, or became the occupiers of estates which had belonged to
Sicilians of the Carthaginian party, and had been forfeited to Rome after the execution or flight of their owners. The Sicilians of the Roman party followed the
example, and became rich out of the distress of their countrymen. Slaves were
to be had cheap; and corn was likely to find a sure market, whilst Italy was suffering from the ravages of war. Accordingly, Sicily was crowded with slaves,
employed to grow corn for the great landed proprietors, whether Sicilian or
Italian, and so ill-fed by their masters, that they soon began to provide for
themselves by robbery. The poorer Sicilians were the sufferers from this evil;
and as the masters were well content that their slaves should be maintained at
the expense of others, they were at no pains to restrain their outrages. Thus,
although nominally at peace, though full of wealthy proprietors, and though exporting corn largely every year, yet Sicily was teeming with evils, which, seventy
or eighty years after, broke out in the horrible atrocities of the Servile War.94
as Livy, XXVI. 40.                     ' Diodorus, XXXIV. Excerpt. Photii, p. 525,
a Livy, XXVI. 40.                     &c. and Excerpt. Valesii, p. 599. Florus, III.,m Livy, XXVII. 5.                    19.




ï~~564

CHAPTER XLVI.
STATE OF ITALY-DISTRESS OF THE PEOPLE-TWELVE COLONIES REFUSE TO
SUPPORT THE WAR-EIGHTEEN COLONIES OFFER ALL THEIR RESOURCES TO
THE ROMANS-EVENTS OF THE WAR-DEATH OF MARCELLUS-FABIUS RECOVERS TARENTUM-MARCH OF HASDRUBAL INTO ITALY-HE REACHES THE
COAST OF THE ADRIATIC-GREAT MARCH OF C. NERO FROM APULIA TO
OPPOSE HIM-BATTLE OF THE METAURUS, AND DEATH OF HASDRUBAL.A. U. C. 543 TO A. U. C. 547.
IN following the war in Sicily to its conclusion we have a little anticipated the
A. U. C. 543. A. c. course of our narrative; for we have been speaking of the consulos211.tilitie ssionftr totk- ship of M. Levinus, whilst our account of the war in Italy has not
ing ofCapua.  advanced beyond the middle of the preceding year. The latter
part of the year 543 was marked, however, by no military actions of consequence;
so great an event as the fall of Capua having, as was natural, produced a pause,
during which both parties had to shape their future plans according to the altered
state of their affairs and of their prospects.
Hannibal on his side had retired, as we have seen, into Apulia, after his unHannibal abandons the successful attempt upon Rhegium, and there allowed his soldiers
west of Itay.  to enjoy an interval of rest. The terrible example of Capua shook
the resolution of his Italian allies, and made them consider whether a timely submission to Rome might not be their wisest policy; nay, it became a question
whether their pardon might not be secured by betraying Hannibal's garrisons,
and returning to their duty not empty-handed. Hannibal therefore neither dared
to risk his soldiers by dispersing them about in small and distant towns; nor
could he undertake, even if he kept his army together, to cover the wide extent
of country which had revolted to him at different periods of the war. His men
would be worn out by a succession of flying marches; and after all, the Roman
armies were so numerous, that he would always be in danger of arriving too late
at the point attacked. Accordingly he found it necessary to abandon many
places altogether; and from some he obliged the inhabitants to migrate, and
made them remove within the limits which he still hoped to protect. In this
manner, it is probable, the western side of Italy, from the edge of Campania to
Bruttium, was at once left to its fate; including what had been the territory of
the Capuans on the shores of the Gulf of Salernum, the country of the Picentians, and Lucania; while Apulia and Bruttium were carefully defended. But
in evacuating the towns which they could not keep, and still more in the compelled migrations of the inhabitants, Hannibal's soldiers committed many excesses; property was plundered, and blood was shed; and thus the minds of
the Italians were still more generally alienated.'
We have seen that, immediately after the fall of Capua, C. Nero, with a part
Movement, of othe Re- of the troops which had been employed on the blockade, had been
man ar.. is.  sent off to Spain.2  Q. Fulvius remained at Capua, with another
part, amounting to a complete consular army;3 and some were probably sent
home. The two consuls marched into Apulia, which was to be their province;4
but no active operations took place during the remainder of the season; and at
the end of the year P. Sulpicius was ordered to pass over into Epirus, and sueSceed M. Levinus in the command of the war against Philip. The home administration was left in the hands of C. Calpurnius Piso, the city praetor.
About the time that the two consuls took the command in Apulia, M. Corne
I Livy, XXV1. 38.
SLivy, XXVI. 17.

SLivy, XXVI. 28.
SLivy, XXVI. 22.




ï~~CHAP. XLVI.]

ELECTION OF CONSULS.

565

lius Cethegus, who had obtained that province as prmtor at the
Marcellus is unable to
beginning of the year, was sent over to Sicily to command the ohtain a triumph; his
army there, Marcellus having just left the island to return to splendidovtio.
Rome. Marcellus was anxious to obtain a triumph for his conquest of Syracuse:
but the war in Sicily was still raging; and Mutines was in full activity. The
senate therefore would not grant a triumph for an imperfect victory, but allowed
Marcellus the honor of the smaller triumph or ovation. He was highly dissatisfied at this, and consoled himself by going up in triumphal procession to the temple of Jupiter on the highest summit of the Alban hills, and offering sacrifice
there, a ceremony which by virtue of his imperium he could lawfully perform:
he might go in procession where he pleased, and sacrifice where he pleased, except
within the limits of Rome itself. On theday after his triumph on the hill of Alba,
he entered Rome with the ceremony of an ovation, walking on foot according to the
rule, instead of being drawn in a chariot in kingly state, as in the proper triumph.
But the show was unusually splendid: for a great picture of Syracuse with all its
fortifications was displayed, and with it some of the very artillery which Archimedes had made so famous in his defence of them; besides an unwonted display of
the works of art of a more peaceful kind, the spoils of Hiero's palace, and of the
temples in his city, silver and bronze figures, embroidered carpets and coverings
of couches, and, above all, some of the finest pictures and statues. Men also observed the traitor Sosis walking in the procession, with a coronet of gold on his
head, as a benefactor of the Roman people: he was further to be rewarded with
the Roman franchise, with a house at his own choice out of those belonging to
the Syracusans who had remained true to their country, and with five hundred
jugera of land, which had either been theirs, or part of the royal domain.
At the end of the year Cn. Fulvius was summoned to Rome from Apulia to
preside at the consular comitia. On the day of the election, the A..c. 544. A.
first century of the Veturian tribe, which had obtained the first 2o.ucComitia noble
conduct  of  Manliusvoice by lot, gave its votes in favor of T. Manlius Torquatus and Mar o lusand L.vinu
T. Otacilius Crassus. As the voice of the tribe first called was are eected conss.
generally followed by the rest, Manlius, who was present, was immediately greeted
by the congratulations of his friends: but, instead of accepting them, he made
his way to the consul's seat, and requested him to call back the century which
had just voted, and allow him to say a few words. The century was summoned
again, all men wondering what was about to happen. Manlius had been consul
five-and-twenty years before, in the memorable year when the temple of Janus
was shut in token of the ratification of peace with Carthage; twenty years had
passed since he was censor; and though his vigor of body and mind was still
great, he was an old man, and age had made him nearly blind. " I am unfit to
command," he said; "for I can only see through the eyes of others. This is no
time for incompetent generals; let the century make a better choice."  But the
century answered unanimously, "that they could not make a better; that they
again named Manlius and Otacilius consuls."  "Your tempers and my rule," said
the old man, " will never suit. Give your votes over again; and remember that
the Carthaginians are in Italy, and that their general is Hannibal."  A murmur
of admiration burst from all around, and the voters of the century were moved.
They were the younger men of their tribe; and they besought the consul to summon the century of their elders, that they might be guided by their counsel.
Fulvius accordingly summoned the century of elders of the Veturian tribe; and
the two centuries retired to confer on the question. The elders recommended
that Fabius and Marcellus should be chosen; or, if a new consul were desirable,
that they should take one of these, and with him elect M. Lmevinus, who for some
years past had done good service in conducting the war against Philip. Their
advice was adopted, and the century gave its votes now in favor of Marcellus

1 Livy, XXVI. 21.




ï~~566

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHA. XLPL

and Lrevinus. All the other centuries confirmed their choice; and thus T. Otacilius was for the second time, by an extraordinary interference with the votes
of the centuries, deprived of the consulship, to which some uncommonly amiable
qualities, or some peculiar influence, had twice recommended him, in spite of his
deficient ability."
He probably never knew of this second disappointment; for scarcely was the
election over, when news arrived from Sicily of his death.' Cn. Fulvius returned to his army in Apulia; and as M. Laevinus was still absent in Epirus,
Marcellus on the usual day, the ides of March, entered upon the consulship alone.
Q. Fulvius was still at Capua; but Q. Fabius and T. Manlius were at Rome;
and their counsels, together with those of Marcellus, were of the greatest influence in the senate, and probably directed the government.
There was need for all their ability and all their firmness, for never had the
Aamigpostu.fposture of affairs been more alarming. Hannibal's unconquered
Roma affa i.. Pa- and unconquerable army, although it had not saved Capua, had
triotic  propoaition  of
ie n:s.lf dev~iotio wasted Italy more widely than ever in the last campaign; and it
of the senators: their
example followed by had struck particularly at countries which had hitherto escaped
the whole people.  its ravages, the valleys of the Sabines, and the country of the
thirty-five tribes themselves, up to the very gates of Rome. Many of the citizens had not only lost their standing crops, but their cattle had been carried off,
and their houses burned to the ground." Actual scarcity was added to other
causes of distress; insomuch that the modius of wheat rose to nearly three
denarii, which, in a plentiful season eight years afterwards, was sold at four ases,
or the fourth part of one denarius.9 The people were becoming unable to bear
further burdens; and some of the Latin colonies, which had hitherto been the
firmest support of the commonwealth, were suspected to be not only unable, but
unwilling. It was probably to meet the urgent necessity of the case that the
armies were somewhat reduced this year, four legions, it seems, being disbanded."   But this fruit of the fall of Capua was in part neutralized by the
necessity of raising fresh seamen; for unless the commonwealth maintained its
naval superiority, Sicily would be lost, and Philip might be expected on the
coasts of Italy; and the supply of corn which was looked for from Egypt in the
failure of all nearer resources, would become very precarious1 Accordingly a
tax was imposed, requiring all persons to provide a certain number of seamen, in
proportion to the returns of their property at the last census, with pay and provisions for thirty days. But our own tax of ship-money did not excite more opposition, though on different grounds. The people complained aloud: crowds
gathered in the Forum, and declared that no power could force from them what
they had not got; that the consuls might sell their goods, and lay hold on their
persons, if they chose; but they had no means of payment."  The consuls-for
Lievinus was by this time returned home from Macedonia-with that dignity
which the Roman government never forgot for an instant, issued an order, giving
the defaulters three days to consider their determination; thus seeming to grant
as an indulgence, what necessity obliged them to yield. Meanwhile they summoned the senate; and when every one was equally convinced of the necessity
of procuring seamen, and the impossibility of carrying through the tax, Lrevinus,
in his colleague's name and his own, proceeded to address the senators. He told
them that, before they could call on the people to make sacrifices, they must
set the example. "Let each senator," he said, "keep his gold ring, and the
rings of his wife and children: let him keep the golden bulla worn by his sons
under age, and one ounce of gold for ornaments for his wife, and an ounce for
each of his daughters. All the rest of the gold which we possess, let us offer
Â~Livy, XXVI. 22.                     21 Livy XXVI. 28.
' Livy, XXVI. 23.                    2i Polytius IX. 10.
S Livy, XXVI. 26.                     * Livy, XXVI. 86.
' Polybius, IX. 44. Livy, XXXI. 5.




ï~~OHAP. XLVI.]  SEVERITY OF FULVIUS AND MARCELLUS.

567

for the public service. Next, let all of us who have borne curule offices, reserve
the silver used in the harness of our war-horses; and let all others, including
those just mentioned, keep one pound of silver, enough for the plate needful in
sacrifices, the small vessel to hold the salt, and the small plate or basin for the
libation; and let us each keep five thousand ases of copper money. With these
exceptions, let us devote all our silver and copper to our country's use, as we
have devoted all our gold. And let us do this without any vote of the senate,
of our own free gift, as individual senators, and carry our contributions at once
to the three commissioners for the currency. Be sure that first the equestrian
order, and then the mass of the people, will follow our example."  He spoke to
hearers who so thoroughly shared his spirit, that they voted their thanks to the
consuls for this suggestion. The senate instantly broke up; "he senators hastened
home, and thence came crowding to the Forum, their slaves bearing all their stores
of copper, and silver, and gold, each man being anxious to have his contribution
recorded first; so that, Livy says, neither were there commissioners enough to
receive all the gifts that were brought, nor clerks enough to record them. The
example, as the consuls knew, was irresistible; the equestrian order and the commons poured in their contributions with equal zeal; and no tax could have supplied the treasury so plentifully as this free-will offering of the whole people.'3
There is no doubt that the money thus contributed was to be repaid to the
contributors, when the republic should see better days; but the value of the.e sacri.
sacrifice consisted in this, that, while the prospect of payment was fes..
distant and uncertain, the whole profit of the money in the mean time way lost:
for the Roman state creditors received no interest on their loans. Therefore it
was at their own cost mainly, and not at the cost of posterity, that the Romans
maintained their great struggle; and from our admiration of their firmness and
heroic devotion to their country's cause, nothing is in this case to be abated.
Nor is it less striking, that the senate at this very moment listened to accusations brought by vanquished enemies against their conquerors, and  omplaintsofthesverComplaints of the severthese conquerors men of the highest name and greatest influence ity of Fwvi.sand Mar.
in the commonwealth, Marcellus and Q. Fulvius. When Lmvinus cellus.
passed through Capua on his way to Rome, he was beset by a multitude of the
Capuans, who complained of the intolerable misery of their condition under the
dominion of Q. Fulvius, and besought him to take them with him to Rome, that
they might implore the mercy of the senate. Fulvius made them swear that they
would return to Capua within five days after they received their answer, telling
Levinus that he dared not let them go at liberty; for if any Capuan escaped
from the city, he instantly became a brigand, and scoured the country, burning,
robbing, and murdering all that fell in his way; even at Rome, Levinus would
find the traces of Capuan treason, for the late destructive fire in the city was
their work. So a deputation of Campanians, thus hardly allowed to go, followed
Levinus towards Rome; and when he approached the city, a similar deputation
of Sicilians came out to meet him, with like complaints against Marcellus.'4
The provinces assigned to the consuls were this year to be the conduct of the
war with Hannibal, and Sicily; and Sicily fell by lot to Marcellus. Siciliansentre
The Sicilians entreat
The Sicilians present were thrown into despair when this was an- that Marcellus may not
nounced to them: they put on mourning and beset the senate- be soot intoSicily.
house, weeping and bewailing their hard fate, and saying that it would be better
for their island to be sunk in the sea, or overwhelmed with the lava floods of.Etna, than given up to the vengeance of Marcellus. Their feeling met with
much sympathy in the senate; and this was made so intelligible, that Marcellus,
without waiting for any resolution on the subject, came to an agreement with his
colleague, and they exchanged their provinces.15
This having been settled, the Sicilians were admitted into the senate, and

13 Livy, XXVI. 86.

14 Livy, XXVI. 27.

1 Livy, XXVL 29.




ï~~568

IIISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLVI

Their complaint is brought forward their complaint. It turned principally on the crucohearytheenateof; elty of making them responsible for the acts, first of Hieronymus,
arceilus.    and then of a mercenary soldiery which they had no means of resisting; while the long and tried friendship of Hiero, proved by the Romans in
the utmost extremity of their fortune, had been forgotten. Marcellus insisted
that the deputation should remain in the senate, and hear his statement,-answer
he would not call it, and far less defence, as if a Roman consul could plead to
the accusationsofauset of vanquished Greeks,-but his statement of their offences,
which had justly brought on all that they had suffered. He said that they had
acted as enemies, had rejected his frequent offers of peace, and had resisted his
attacks with all possible obstinacy, instead of doing as Sosis, whom they called a
traitor, had done, and surrendering their city into his hands. He then left the
senate-house together with the Sicilians, and went to the Capitol to carry on the
enlistment of the newly raised legions.'6
There was a strong feeling in the senate that Syracuse had been cruelly used;
ecree of the senate and old T. Manlius expressed this as became him, especially urging
Marcellus becomes the the unworthy return which had been made to the country of Hiero
pat ons ofSyrac.e. for all his fidelity to Rome. But a sense of Marcellus' signal services, and of the urgency of the times, prevailed; and a resolution was passed confirming all that he had done, but declaring that for the time to come the senate
would consult the welfare of the Syracusans, and would commend them especially
to the care of Lmvinus.  A deputation of two senators was then sent to the consul to invite him to return to the senate; the Syracusans were called in, and the
decree was read. Then the Syracusan deputies threw themselves at the feet of
Marcellus, imploring him to forgive all that they had said against him, to receive
them under his protection, and to become the patronus of their city."  He gave
them a gracious answer, and accepted the office; and from that time forward the
Syracusans found it their best policy to extol the clemency of Marcellus; and
later writers echoed their language, not knowing, or not remembering, that these
expressions of forced praise were their own strongest refutation.
The Campanian deputation was heard with less favor; but still it was heard;
severe treatment of tohe and the senate took their complaint into consideration. But in this
Campanian.   case no mercy was shown; and it was now that those severe decrees were passed, fixing the future fate of the Campanian people, which I
have already mentioned by anticipation, at the end of the story of the siege of
Capua..
The military history of this year is again difficult to comprehend, owing to the
opening of the cam- omissions and incoherence in Livy's narrative. Two armies, as we
pago;thearmy ofFu- have seen, were employed against Hannibal: that of Cn. Fulvius,
vius is destroyed  byei
Hannibal.    the consul of the preceding year, in Apulia; and that of Marcellus
in Samnium. Where Hannibal had passed the winter, or the end of the preceding summer, we know not; not a word being said of his movements after his ineffectual attempt upon Rhegium, till we hear of his march against Fulvius. We
may suppose, however, that he had wintered in Apulia; and we are told that,
Salapia having been betrayed to the Romans, and a detachment of Numidians
having been cut off in it, Hannibal again retreated into Bruttium.9  With two
armies opposed to him, it was of importance not to let either of them advance to
attack Tarentum and the towns on the coast, while he was engaged with the
other. He was obliged therefore to abandon his garrisons in Samnium and
Apulia to their own resources, and kept his army well in hand, ready to strike a
blow whenever opportunity should offer.  As usual, he received perfect information of the enemy's proceedings through his secret emissaries; and having
earned that Fulvius was in the neighborhood of Herdonea,.trying to win the

$ Livy, XXVI. 30,1.                                  I
7 Livy, XXVI. 32.

L.  Above, p. 540, foll. Livy, XXVI. 88.
Livy, XXVII. 1.




ï~~CHAP. XLYI.]

ALARMING NEWS FROM AFRICA.

509

place, and that, relying on his distance from the Carthaginian army, he was not sufficiently on his guard, Hannibal conceived the hope of destroying this army by an
unexpected attack. Again the details are given variously; but the result was,
that Hannibal's attempt was completely successful. The army of Fulvius was
destroyed, and the proconsul killed; and Hannibal, having set fire to Herdonea,
and executed those citizens who had been in correspondence with the enemy, sent
away the rest of the population into Bruttium, and himself crossed the mountains
into Lucania, to look after the army of Marcellus.0
Marcellus, on the news of his colleague's defeat, left Samnium, and advanced
into Lucania: his object now was to watch Hannibal closely, lest Macellus adopts ties
he should again resume the offensive; all attempts to recover policyof Fabius.
more towns in Samnium or elsewhere must for the time be abandoned. And
this service he performed with great ability and resolution, never leaving Hannibal at rest, and taking care not to fall into any ambush, but unable, notwithstanding the idle stories of his victories, to do any thing sore than keep his enemy in
sight, as Fabius had done in his first dictatorship. Thus the rest of the season
passed away unmarked by any thing of importance: Marcellus wintered apparently at Venusia; Hannibal in his old quarters, in the warm plains near
the sea.2'
In spite, therefore, of the reduction of Capua, the Roman affairs in Italy had
made no progress. On the contrary, another army had been to- Advantages gained b
tally destroyed; and the war, with all its burdens, seemed inter- t1hRomans out of
minable. But in other quarters this year had been more success-ty.
ful: Lrevinus had ended the war in Sicily, and the resources of that island were
now at the disposal of the Romans; while the Carthaginian fleets had no point
nearer than Carthage itself to carry on their operations, whether to the annoyance of the enemy's coasts, 'or the relief of their own garrisons at Tarentum,
and along the southern coast of Italy. In addition to this, the alliance which
Levinus had concluded with the Â~Etolians before he quitted Epirus, had left a
far easier task to his successor, P. Sulpicius, and removed all danger of Philip's
co-operating with Hannibal. Meanwhile Lrevinus was summoned home to hold
the comitia, Marcellus being too busily employed with Hannibal to leave his
army; and accordingly he crossed over directly from Lilybaum or Panormus to
Ostia, accompanied by the African, Mutines, who was now to receive the reward
of his desertion, in being made a citizen of Rome by a decree of the people."
Before his departure from Sicily, Loevinus had sent the greater part of his
fleet over to Africa, partly to make plundering descents on the Alarming news from
coast, but chiefly to collect information as to the condition and Africa.
plans of the enemy. Messalla, who had succeeded to T. Otacilius in the command:f the fleet, accomplished this expedition in less than a fortnight; and the
information which he collected was so important, that, finding Laevinus was gone
to Rome, he forwarded it to him without delay. Its substance bore, that the
Carthaginians were collecting troops with great diligence, to be sent over into
Spain; and that the general report was, that these soldiers were to form the
army of Hasdrubal, Hannibal's brother, and were to be led by him immediately
into Italy. This intelligence so alarmed the senate, that they would not detain
the consul to hold the comitia, but ordered him to name a dictator for that purpose, and then to return immediately to his province."3
With all the patriotism of the Romans, it was not possible that personal ambition and jealousy should be wholly extinct among them; and the A.U.c.i45. A.C.20.
influence exercised at the present crisis by Q. Fabius, and his pref- A dictator appointedto
hold the comitia Fabius
erence of Q. Fulvius and Marcellus to all other commanders, was and aFulviuaschosen -
no doubt regarded by some as excessive and overbearing. The a'l'

so Livy, XXVII. 1.
21 Livy, XXVII. 2, 4, 12-14, 20.

2 Livy, XXVII. 5.
2 Livy, XXVII. 5.




ï~~570

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLV1

magistrate who presided at the comitia enjoyed so great a power over the elections, that the choice of the dictator on this occasion was of some consequence;
and Levinus intended to name the commander of his fleet, M. Messala, not without some view, possibly, to his own re-election, if the comitia were held under
the auspices of a man not entirely devoted to Fabius and Fulvius. But when he
declared his intention to the senate, it was objected that a person out of Italy
could not be named dictator; and the consul was ordered to take the choice of
the people, and to name whomsoever the people should fix upon. Indignant at
this interference with his rights as consul, Lmvinus refused to submit the question
to the people, and forbade the prator, L. Manlius Acidinus, to do so. This, however, availed him nothing; for the tiribunes called the assembly, and the people
resolved that the dictator to be named should be Q. Fulvius. Levinus probably
expected this, and, as his last resource, had left Rome secretly on the night before the decision, that he might not be compelled to go through the form of
naming his rival dictator. Here was a new difficulty, for the dictator could only
be named by one of the consuls: so it was necessary to apply to Marcellus; and
he nominated,Q. Fulvius immediately."4  The old man left Capua forthwith, and
proceeded to Rome to hold the comitia, at which the century first called gave its
votes in favor of Fulvius himself and Fabius. This, no doubt, had been preconcerted: but two of the tribunes shared the feelings of Levinus, and objected to
such a monopoly of office in the hands of two or three men; they also complained
of the precedent of allowing the magistrate presiding at the election to be himself
elected. Fulvius, with no false modesty, or what in our notions would be real
delicacy, maintained that the choice of the century was good, and justified by
precedents; and at last the question was submitted by common consent to the
senate. The senate determined that, under actual circumstances, it was important that the ablest men and most tried generals should be at the head of affairs;
and they therefore approved of the election. Accordingly Fabius and Fulvius were
once more appointed consuls; the former for the fifth time, the latter for the fourth.25
Thus was the great object gained of employing the three most tried generals
of the republic, Fabius, Fulvius, and Marcellus, against Hannibal
Plan for the campaign. in the approaching campaign. Each was to command a full consular army, Marcellus retaining that which he now had, with the title of proconsul; and the plan of operations was, that, while Marcellus occupied Hannibal on
the side of Apulia, a grand movement should be made against Tarentum and the
other towns held by the enemy on the southern coast. Fabius was to attack
Tarentum, while Fulvius was to reduce the garrisons still retained by Hannibal
in Lucania,6 and then to advance into Bruttium; and that band of adventurers
from Sicily, which Levinus had sent over to Rhegium to do some service in that
quarter, was to attempt the siege of Caulon, or Caulonia. Every exertion was
to be made to destroy Hannibal's power in the south, before his brother could
arrive in Italy to effect a diversion in the north.27  Lmvinus, it seems, paid the
penalty of his opposition to Fulvius' election, in being deprived of his consular
army, which he was ordered to send over to Italy to be commanded by Fulvius
himself; and he and the propretor, L. Cincius,:were left to defend Sicily with
the old soldiers of Cannme, and the remains of the defeated armies of the two
Fulvii, the praetor and the proconsul, which had been condemned to the same
banishment, together with the forces which they had themselves raised within
the island, partly native Sicilians, and. partly Numidians, who had come over to
the Romans with Mutines.28  With these resources, and with a fleet of seventy
ships, Sicily was firmly held; and Lrevinus, it is said, was able in the course of
the year to send supplies of corn to Rome, and also to the army of Fabius before Tarentum.29
2Livy, XXVII. 5.                         Livy, XXVII. 12.
5Livy, XXVII. 6.                      2 Livy, XXVII. 7.
2Livy, XXVII. 7.                      ' Livy,' XXVII. 8.




ï~~CO. XLVI.]  REVOLT OF TWELVE LATIN COLONIES.

571

But before the consuls could take the field, a storm burst forth more threatening than any which the republic had yet experienced. The sol- Twelve of the Latin
diers of the army defeated at Herdonea, who were now to be sent colonies refuse fresh
over to Sicily, were in a large proportion Latins of the colonies; supplies.
and as they were to be banished for the whole length of the war, fresh soldiers
were to be levied to supply their places in Italy. This new demand was the
drop which made the full cup overflow. The deputies of twelve of the colonies,
who were at Rome as usual to receive the consul's orders, when they were required to furnish fresh soldiers, and to raise money for their payment, replied
resolutely that they had neither men nor money remaining.3"
"The Roman people," says Livy, "had at this period thirty colonies; of
which number twelve thus refused to support the war any longer. The consuls remo.
The number mentioned by the historian has occasioned great per- strate with themin vai.
plexity; but its coincidence with the old number of the states of he Latin confederacy leaves no doubt of its genuineness; and when the maritime colonies are
excepted, which stood on a different footing, as not being ordinarily bound to
raise men for the regular land-service, it agrees very nearly with the list which
we should draw up of all the Latin colonies mentioned to have been founded before this period. But what particular causes determined the twelve recusant colonies more than the rest to resist the commands of Rome, we cannot tell. Amongst
them we find the name of Alba, which two years before had shown, such zeal in
hastening to the assistance of Rome unsummoned, when Hannibal threatened its
very walls; we also find some of the oldest colonies, Circeii, Ardea, Cora,
Nepete, and Sutrium; Cales, which had so long been an important position during the revolt of Capua, Carseoli, Suessa, Setia, Narnia, and Interamna, on the
Liris. The consuls, thunderstruck at their refusal, attempted to shame them
from their purpose by rebuke.  "This is not merely declining to furnish troops
and money," they said; "it is open rebellion.  Go home to your colonies; forget that so detestable a thought ever entered your heads; remind your fellowcitizens that they are not Campanians nor Tarentines, but Romans, Roman born,
and sent from Rome to occupy lands conquered by Romans, to multiply the race
of Rome's defenders. All duty owed by children to their parents, you owe to
the senate and people of Rome." But in vain did Fabius and Fulvius, with all
the authority of their years and their great name, speak such language to the
deputies.  They were coldly answered, "that it was useless to consult their
countrymen at home    the colonies could not alter their resolution: for they had
no men nor money left." Finding the case hopeless, the consuls summoned
the senate, and reported the fatal intelligence.  The courage which had not
yielded to the slaughter of Cannae, was shaken now. "At last," it was said,
"the blow is struck, and Rome is lost: this example will be followed by all our
colonies and allies: there is doubtless a general conspiracy amongst them to give
us up bound hand and foot to Hannibal."'
The consuls bade the senate to take courage; the other colonies were yet true;
"even these false ones will return to their duty, if we do not con- Ptriti spirit of the
I)Patriotic spirit of the
descend to entreat them, but rather rebuke them for their treason." other eighteen colonies;
the senate resolves to
Every thing was left to the consuls' discretion: they exerted all tak no notice of the
their influence with the deputies of the other colonies privately; twelve.
and having ascertained their sentiments, they then ventured to summon them
officially, and to ask, "Whether their appointed contingents of men and money
were forthcoming?" Then M. Sextilius of Fregellae stood up and made answer
in the name of the eighteen remaining colonies:" They are forthcoming;
and if more are needed, more are at your disposal. Every order, every wish of the
Roman people, we will with our best efforts fulfil: to do this we have means
enough, and will more than enough."  The consuls replied, "Our thanks are all
too little for your desert: the whole senate must thank you themselves." They

U Livy, XXVII. 9.

8i Livy, XXVII. 9.




ï~~572

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLVI

led the deputies into the senate-house; and thanks were voted to them in the
warmest terms. Then the consuls were desired to lead them before the people,
to remind the people of all the services which the colonies had rendered to them
and to their fathers, services all surpassed by this last act of devotion.  The
thanks of the people were voted no less heartily than those of the senate. "Nor
shall these eighteen colonies even now," says Livy, "lose their just glory. They
were the people of Signia, of Norba, of Saticula, of Brundisium, of Fregelle, of
Luceria, of Venusia, of Hadria, of Firmum, and of Ariminum; and from the lower sea, the people of Pontia, and of Pmstum, and of Cosa; and from the midland
country, the people of Beneventum, and of.fEsernia, and of Spoletum, and of
Placentia, and of Cremona." The aid of these eighteen colonies on that day saved
the Roman empire. Satisfied now, and feeling their strength invincible, the senate forbade the consuls to take the slightest notice of the disobedient colonies;
they were neither to send,for them, nor to detain them, nor to dismiss them;
they were to leave them wholly alone.3'
It is enough for the glory of any nation, that its history in two successive
Magnanimity of their years should record two such events as the magnanimous liberality
incidence ini the su.ubse: of the senate in sacrificing their wealth to their country, and the
qteet destinies of thefimes                             othr
houe   of uies ad of no less magnanimous firmness and wisdom of their behavior toFregelim.     wards their colonies.  An aristocracy endowed with such virtue
deserved its ascendency; for its inherent faults were now shown only towards
the enemies of Rome; its nobler character alone was displayed towards her citizens. But when M. Sextilius of Fregellm was standing before Q. Fulvius, promising to serve Rome to the death, and the old consul's stern countenance was
softened to admiration and joy, and his lips, which had so remorselessly doomed
the Capuan senators to a bloody death, were now uttering thanks and praises to
Rome's true colonists, how would each have started, could he have looked for a
moment into futurity, and seen what events were to happen, before a hundred
years were over! By a strange coincidence, each would have seen the selfsame
hand red with the blood of his descendants, and extinguishing the country of the
one and the family of the other. Within ninety years, the Roman aristocracy
were to become utterly corrupted; and its leader, L. Opimius, as base personally as he was politically cruel, was to destroy Fregelle, and treacherously in
cold blood to slay an innocent youth, the last direct representative of the great
Q. Fulvius, after he had slain M. Fulvius, the youth's father, in civil conflict within the walls of Rome.33 Fregellae, to whose citizens Rome "at this time owed her
safety, was within ninety years to be so utterly destroyed by the Roman arms,
that at this day its very site is not certainly known: the most faithful of colonies
has perished more entirely than the rebellious Capua."
Rome could rely on the fidelity of the majority of her colonies; but their very
Te saeree treasure is readiness made it desirable to spate them to the utmost. Therebrought ot.   fore a treasure, which was reserved in the most sacred treasury
for the extremest need, was now brought out; amounting, it is said, to four
thousand pounds weight of gold; and which had been accumulating during a
period of about 150 years, being the produce of the tax at five per cent. on the
value of every emancipated slave, paid by the person who gave him his liberty.
With this money the military chests of the principal armies were well replenished;
and supplies of clothing were sent to the army in Spain, which P. Scipio was now
commanding, and was on the point of leading to the conquest of New Carthage.'
At length the consuls took the field.    Marcellus, according to the plan
5samnium and Lucania agreed upon, broke up from his quarters at Venusia, and proceedssitleRa  ed to watch and harass Hannibal; while Fabius advanced upon
the  Brsuttians treat aboutl subnission.  Tarentum, and Fulvius marched into Lucania.  Caulonia at the
" Livy, XXVII. 10.                       14 Velleius, II. 6, 4. Strabo, V. p. 863.
" Velleius, II. 6, 4. II. 7, 2.  Plutarch,  Auctor ad Herennium, IV. 15.
C. Gracehus, e. xvi. Appian, B. C. I. 26.  5 Livy, XXVII. 10.




ï~~aHAP. XLVI.]

FALL OF TARENTUM.

573

same time was besieged by the band of adventurers from Sicily. The mass of
forces thus employed was overwhelming; and Hannibal, while he clung to Apulia and Bruttium, was unable to retain his hold on Samnium and Lucania. Those
great countries, or rather the powerful party in both, which had hitherto been in
revolt from Rome, now made their submission to Q. Fulvius, and delivered up
such of Hannibal's soldiers as were in garrison in any of their towns. They had
apparently chosen their time well; and by submitting at the beginning of the
campaign they obtained easy terms. Even Fulvius, though not inclined to show
mercy to revolted allies, granted them full indemnity: the axes of his lictors
were suffered this time to sleep unstained with blood. This politic mercy had
its effect on the Bruttians also: some of their leading men came to the Roman?amp to treat concerning the submission of their countrymen on the terms which
had been granted to the Samnites and Lucanians; and the base of all Hannibal's
operations, the southern coast of Italy, was in danger of being torn away from
him, if he lingered any longer in Apulia."
Then his indomitable genius and energy appeared once more in all its brilliancy.
He turned fiercely upon Marcellus, engaged him twice, and so Hannibal's brilliantexdisabled him, that Marcellus, with all his enterprise, was obliged  d  Ro- T 
to take refuge within the walls of Venusia, and there lay helpless man.
during the remainder of the campaign.37 Freed from this enemy, Hannibal flew
into Bruttium: the strength of Tarentum gave him no anxiety for its immediate
danger; so he hastened to deliver Caulonia. The motley band who were besieging it fled at the mere terror of his approach, and retreated to a neighboring
hill; thither he pursued them, and obliged them to surrender at discretion.33 He
then marched back with speed to Tarentum, hoping to crush Fabius, as he had
crushed Marcellus. He was within five miles of the city when he received intelligence that it was lost. The Bruttian commander of the garrison had betrayed
it to Fabius: the Romans had entered it in arms: Carthalo, the Carthaginian
commander, and Nico and Philemenus, who had opened its gates to Hannibal,
had all fallen in defending it: the most important city and the best harbor in
the south of Italy were in the hands of the Romans.9
The news of the fall of Paris, when Napoleon was hastening from Fontainebleau to deliver it, can scarcely have been a heavier disappoint- Hannibal ie to ra
Hannibal tries to draw
ment to him, than the news of the loss of Tarentum was to Han- Fabiusinto a.nare, but
nibal. Yet, always master of himself, he was neither misled by  as.
passion nor by alarm: he halted and encamped on the ground, and there remained quiet for some days, to show that his confidence in himself was unshaken
by the treason of his allies. Then he retreated slowly towards Metapontum, and
contrived that two of the Metapontines should go to Fabius at Tarentum, offering to surrender their town and the Carthaginian garrison, if their past revolt
might be forgiven. Fabius, believing the proposal to be genuine, sent back a
favorable answer, and fixed the day on which he would appear before Metapontum with his army. On that day Hannibal lay in ambush close to the road leading from Tarentum, ready to spring upon his prey. But Fabius came not: his
habitual caution made him suspicious of mischief; and it was announced that the
omens were threatening: the haruspex, on inspecting the sacrifice, which was
offered to learn the pleasure of the gods, warned the consul to beware of hidden
snares, and of the arts of the enemy. The Metapontine deputies were sent back
to learn the cause of the delay; they were arrested, and, being threatened with
the torture, disclosed the truth."'
The remaining operations of the campaign are again unknown: the Romans,
however, seem to have attempted nothing further; and Hannibal He remains master
kept his army in the field, marching whither he would without op- tho field.
6 Livy, XXVII. 15.                    3 Livy, XXVII. 15, 16.
7 Livy, XXVII. 12-14.                 40 Livy, XXVII. 16.
98 Livy, XXVII. 15, 16.




ï~~574

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLVI

position, and again laying waste various parts of Italy with fire and sword.41 So
far as we can discover, he returned at the end of the season to his old winterquarters in Apulia.
It is not wonderful that this result of a campaign, from which so much had
Dissatisfaction atRome; been expected, should have caused great disappointment at Rome.
SesplintagestMe- However much men rejoiced in the recovery of Tarentum, they
less is elected consul. could not but feel that even this success was owing to treason;
and that Hannibal's superiority to all who were opposed to him was more manifest than ever. This touched them in a most tender point; because it enabled
him to continue his destructive ravages of Italy, and thus to keep up that distress
which had long been felt so heavily. Above all, indignation was loud against
Marcellus;4g and if in his lifetime he indulged in that braggart language, which
his son used so largely after his death, the anger of the people against him was
very reasonable. If he called his defeats victories, as his son no doubt called
them afterwards, and as the falsehood through him has struck deep into Roman
history, well might the people be indignant at hearing that a victorious general
had shut himself up all the summer within the walls of Venusia, and had allowed
the enemy to ravage the country at pleasure. The feeling was so strong, that
C. Publicius, one of the tribunes, a man of an old and respected tribunician
family, brought in a bill to the people to deprive Marcellus of his command.
Marcellus returned home to plead his cause, when Fulvius went home also to
hold the comitia; and the people met to consider the bill in the Flaminian circus,
without the walls, to enable Marcellus to be present; for his military command
hindered his entering the city. It is likely that the influence of Fulvius was exerted strongly in his behalf; and his own statement, if he told the simple truth,
left no just cause of complaint against him. He had executed his part of the
compaign to the best of his ability: twice had he fought with Hannibal to hinder
him from marching into Bruttium; and it was not his fault, if the fate of all
other Roman generals had been his also; he had but failed to do what none had
done, or could do. The people felt for the mortification of a brave man, who
had served them well from youth to age, and in the worst of times had never lost
courage: they not only threw out the bill, but elected Marcellus once more consul, giving him, as his colleague, his old lieutenant in Sicily, T. Quintius Crispinus, who was now praetor, and during the last year had succeeded to Fulvius in
the command at Capua.43
It marks our advance in Roman history, that among the prators of this year
A.. C546. A.C.208. we find the name of Sex. Julius Cmsar; the first Cmsar who apau. c.sar pretor. pears in the Roman Fasti.
For some time past the Romans seem to have mistrusted the fidelity of the
Doubts about the fidel- Etruscans; and an army of two legions had been regularly stationed
ity of Etruria.  in Etruria, to check any disposition to revolt. But now C. Calpurnius Piso, who commanded in Etruria, reported that the danger was becoming
imminent, and he particularly named the city of Arretium as the principal seat
of disaffection.44 Why this feeling should have manifested itself at this moment,
we can only conjecture. It is possible that the fame of Hasdrubal's coming may
have excited the Etruscans. It is possible that Hannibal may have had some
correspondence with them, and persuaded them to co-operate with his brother.
But other causes may be imagined; the continued pressure of the. war upon all
Italy, and the probability that the defection of the twelve colonies must have
compelled the Romans to increase the burdens of their other allies. If, as Niebuhr thinks,4" the Etruscans were not in the habit of serving with the legions in
the regular infantry, their contributions in money, and in seamen for the fleets,
4 Livy, XXVII. 20. "Vagante per Italiam   43 Livy, XXVII. 20, 21.
HIannibale."                                44 Livy, XXVII. 21.
42 Livy, XXVII. 20.                        5 See page 505.




ï~~CHAP. XLVI.]

STATE OF ETRURIA.

575

would have been proportionably greater; and both these would fall heavily on
the great Etruscan chiefs, or Lucumones, from whose vassals the seamen would
be taken, as their properties would have to furnish the money. Again, in the
year 544, when corn was at so enormous a price, we read of a large quantity
purchased in Etruria by the Roman government for the use of their garrison in
the citadel of Tarentum.46 This corn the allied states were bound to sell at a fixed
price; so that the Etruscan landowners would consider themselves greatly injured,
in being forced to sell at a low price, what in the present condition of the markets
was worth four or five times as much. But whatever was the cause, Marcellus
was sent into Etruria, even before he came into office as consul, to, observe the
state of affairs, that, if necessary, he might remove the seat of war from Apulia
to Etruria. The report of his mission seemed satisfactory; and it did not appear
necessary to bring his army from Apulia.
Yet some time afterwards, before Marcellus left Rome to take the field, the reports of the disaffection of Arretium became more serious; and C. Disaffection of Arro.
Hostilius, who had succeeded Calpurnius in the command of the tiun.
army stationed in Etruria, was ordered to lose no time in demanding hostages
from the principal inhabitants. C. Terentius Varro was sent to receive them, to
the number of 120, and to take them to Rome. Even this precaution was not
thought sufficient; and Varro was sent back to Arretium to occupy the city with
one of the home legions, while Hostilius, with his regular army, was to move up
and down the country, that any attempt at insurrection might be crushed in a
moment.48 It appears also that, besides the hostages, several sons of the wealthy
Etruscans were taken away to serve in the cavalry of Marcellus' army, to prevent
them at any rate from being dangerous at home.49
The two consuls were to conduct the war against Hannibal, whilst Q. Claudius,
one of the pretors, with a third army, was to hold Tarentum, and Dispositon of the Rothe country of the Sallentines. Fulvius with a single legion re- e i~.armies. Fbiust
sumed his old command at Capua. Fabius returned to Rome, and service.
from this time forward no more commanded the armies of his country, although
he still in all probability directed the measures of the government."
Crispinus had left Rome before his colleague, and, with some reinforcements
newly raised, proceeded to Lucania, to take the command of the
army which had belonged to Fulvius. His ambition was to rival P"an of the campaign.
the glory of Fabius, by attacking another of the Greek cities on the southern
coast. He fixed upon Locri, and having sent for a powerful artillery from Sicily,
with a naval force to operate against the sea front of the town, commenced the
siege.  Hannibal's approach, however, forced him to raise it; and as Marcellus
had now arrived at Venusia, he retreated thither to co-operate with his colleague.
The two armies were encamped apart, about three miles from each other: two
consuls, it was thought, must at any rate be able to occupy Hannibal in Apulia,
while the siege of Locri was to be carried on by the fleet and artillery from Sicily,
with the aid of one of the two legions commanded by the pretor Q. Claudius at
Tarentum. Such was the Roman plan of campaign for the year 546, the eleventh
of this memorable war.5'
The two armies opposed to Hannibal must have amounted at least to 40,000
men; he cotuld not venture to risk a battle against so large a force:
Hannibal destroys  a
but his eye was everywhere; and he was neither ignorant nor legion sent to boesiego
unobservant of what was going on in his rear, and of the intended Loori.
march of the legion from Tarentum to carry on the siege of Locri by land. So
confident was he in his superiority, that he did not hesitate to detach a force of
8000 horse and 2000 foot from his already inferior numbers, to intercept these
4 Livy, XXV. 15.                     4Â~ Livy, XXVII. 26.
4' Livy, XXVII. 21.                   5o Livy, XXVII. 22.
40 Livy, XXVII. 24 6.                  Livy, XXVII. 25.




ï~~576

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLV1.

troops on their way: and while the Romans marched on in confidence, supposing
that Hannibal was far away in Apulia, they suddenly found their road beset; and
Hannibal's dreaded cavalry broke in upon the flanks of their column. The rout
was complete in an instant; the whole Roman division was destroyed or dispersed; and the fugitives, escaping over the country in all directions, fled back
to Tarentum.52  The fleet from Sicily were obliged therefore to carry on the siege
of Locri as well as they could, with no other help.
This signal service rendered, Hannibal's detachment returned to his camp,
Position ofho bringing back their numerous prisoners. Frequent skirmishes took
Proiion  Moftein  w..in.  a sh.  i place between the opposed armies; and Hannibal was continually
billed in an ambush.
l       hoping for some opportunity of striking a blow. A hill covered
with copsewood rose between the two armies, and had been occupied hitherto
by neither party; only Hannibal's light cavalry were used to lurk amongst the
trees at its foot, to cut off any stragglers from the enemy's camp. The consuls,
it seems, wished to remove their camp-for the two consular armies were now
encamped together-to this hill; or, at any rate, to occupy it as an intrenched
post, from which they might command the enemy's movement. But they resolved to reconnoitre the ground for themselves; and, accordingly, they rode forward with two hundred cavalry, and a few light-armed soldiers, leaving their
troops behind in the camp, with orders to be in readiness on a signal given to
advance and take possession of the hill.53 The party ascended the hill without
opposition, and rode on to the side towards the enemy, to take a view of the
country in that direction. Meantime the Numidians, who had always one of their
number on the lookout, to give timely notice of any thing that approached, as
they were lurking under the hill, were warned by their scout, that a party of
Romans were on the heights above them. No doubt he had marked the scarlet
war-cloaks of the generals, and the lictors who went before them, and told his
companions of the golden prize that fortune had thrown into their hands. The
Numidians stole along under the hill, screened by the trees, till they got round
it, between the party on the summit and the Roman camp; and then they charged
up the ascent, and fell suddenly upon the astonished enemy. The whole affair
was over in an instant: Marcellus was run through the body with a spear, and
killed on the spot; his son and Crispinus were desperately wounded; the Etruscan horsemen, who formed the greater part of the detachment, had no inclination
to fight in a service which they had been forced to enter; the Fregellans, who
formed the remainder of it, were too few to do any thing; all were obliged to
ride for their lives, and to leap their horses down the broken ground on the hillsides to escape to their camp. The legions in the camp saw the skirmish, but
could not come to the rescue in time. Crispinus and the young Marcellus rode
in covered with blood, and followed by the scattered survivors of the party; but
Marcellus, six times consul, the bravest and stoutest of soldiers, who had dedicated the spoils of the Gaulish king, slain by his own hand, to Jupiter Feretrius
in the capitol, was lying dead on a nameless hill; and his arms and body were
Hannibal's.54
The Numidians, hardly believing what they had done, rode back to their camp
The Romary to report their extraordinary achievement. Hannibal instantly put
i..ts. of an ibaiLo, his army in motion, and occupied the fatal hill. There he found
te siege oLori.  the body of Marcellus, which he is said to have looked at for some
time with deep interest, but with no word or look of exultation: then he took the
ring from the finger of the body, and ordered, as he had done before in the case
of Flaminius and Gracchus, that it should be honorably burned, and that the
ashes should be sent to Marcellus' son."5 The Romans left their camp under
cover of the night, and retreated to a position of greater security: they no longer

9 Livy, XXVII. 26.
3 Livy, XXVII. 26.

 Livy, XXVII. 27.
11 Plutarch, Marcellus, c, 20.




ï~~CHAP. XLVI.]

HASDRUBAL IN GAUL.

577

thought of detaining Hannibal from Bruttium; their only hope was to escape out
of his reach. Then Hannibal flew once more to the relief of Locri: the terror
of the approach of his Numidian cavalry drove the Romans to their ships; all
their costly artillery and engines were abandoned; and the siege of Locri, no
less disastrous to the Roman naval force than to their land army, was effectually
raised.56
During the rest of the season the field was again left free to Hannibal; and
his destructive ravages were carried on, we may be sure, more He continues master of
widely than even in the preceding year. The army of Marcellus th   e o  cons.
Â~                                      Crispinus  dios  of  his
lay within the walls of Venusia; that of Crispinus retreated to wounds.
Capua;51 officers having been sent by the senate to take the command of each
provisionally.  Crispinus was desired to name a dictator for holding the comitia;
and he accordingly nominated the old T. Manlius Torquatus; soon after which
he died of the effect of his wounds; and the republic, for the first time on record, was deprived of both its consuls before the expiration of their office, by a
violent death.58
The public anxiety about the choice of new consuls was quickened in the highest degree by the arrival of an embassy from Massilia.  The Mas- The Massilians send
silians, true to their old friendship with Rome, made haste to ac- tidings of Hasdrubal'as
quaint their allies with the danger that was threatening them. being in Gaul.
Hasdrubal, Hannibal's brother; had suddenly appeared in the interior of Gaul;
he had brought a large treasure of money with him, and was raising soldiers
busily. Two Romans were sent back to Gaul with the Massilian ambassadors
to ascertain the exact state of affairs; and these officers, on their return to Rome,
informed thesenate, that, through the connections of Massilia with some of the
chiefs in the interior, they had made out that Hasdrubal had completed his levies,
and was only waiting for the first melting of the snows to cross the Alps. The
senate therefore must expect in the next campaign to see two sons of Hamilcai
in Italy.59
Reserving the detail of the war in Spain for another place, I need only relate
here as much as is necessary for understanding Hasdrubal's expe- His route out of Spain.
dition. Early in the season of 546, while the other Carthaginian through Gaul.
generals were in distant parts of the peninsula, Hasdrubal had been obliged with
his single army to give battle to Scipio at Baccula, a place in the south of Spain,
in the upper part of the valley of the Bmtis; and having been defeated there, had
succeeded, nevertheless, in carrying off his elephants and money, and had retreated
first towards the Tagus, and then towards the western Pyrenees, whither Scipio
durst not follow him, for fear of abandoning the sea-coast to the other' Carthaginian generals.6Â~  By this movement Hasdrubal masked his projects from the view
of the Romans; they did not know whether he had merely retired to recruit hj,
army, in order to take the field against Scipio, or whether he was preparing for
a march into Italy.61  But even if Italy were his object, it was supposed that he
would follow the usual route, by the eastern Pyrenees along the coast of the Mediterranean; and Scipio accordingly took the precaution of securing the passes
of the mountains in this direction, on the present road between Barcelona and
Perpignan;62 perhaps also he secured those other passes more inland, leading'
from the three valleys which meet above Lerida into Languedoc, and to the streamswhich feed the Garonne. But Hasdrubal's real line of march was wholly unsuspected: for passing over the ground now so famous in our own military annals,
near the highest part of the course of the Ebro, he turned the Pyrenees, at their
western extremity, and entered Gaul by the shores of the ocean, by the Bidassoa
And the Adour.63  Thence striking eastward, and avoiding the neighborhood of
SLivy, XXVII. 28.                      6 Livy, XXVII. 18, 19. Polybius, X. 88,,3
a' Livy, XXVII. 29.                    Â~' Polybius, X. 89, 7. Livy, XXVII. 20.
5 Livy, XXVII. 83.                     8 Polybius, X. 40, 11.
a Livy, XXVII. 86.                     a' Livy, XXVII. 20.




ï~~57S

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLVI

the Mediterranean, he penetrated into the country of the Arverni; and so would
cross the Rhone near Lyons, and join Hannibal's route for the first time in the
plains of Dauphin6, at the very foot of the Alps. This new and remote line of
march concealed him so long, even from the knowledge of the Massilians, and
obliged them to seek intelligence of his movements from the chiefs of the interior.6'
Now then the decisive year was come, the year of the great struggle so long
Doubts at Rome about delayed, but which the Carthaginians had never lost sight of,
the choice of consuls. when Italy was to be assailed at once from the north and from the
south by two Carthaginian armies, led by two sons of Hamilcar. And at this
moment Marcellus, so long the hope of Rome, was gone; Fabius and Fulvius
were enfeebled by age; Levinus, whose services in Macedonia and Sicily had
been so important, had offended the ruling party in the senate by his opposition
to the appointment of Fulvius as dictator two years before; and no important
command would as yet be intrusted to him. In this state of things the general
voice pronounced that the best consul who could be chosen was C. Claudius
Nero.65
C. Nero came of a noble lineage, being a patrician of the Claudian house, and
AU. 'C. 54. A. c. a great-grandson of the famous censor, Appius the blind. He had
207. C. Nero.  served throughout the war, as lieutenant to Marcellus in 540; as
praetor and propraetor at the siege:of Capua, in 542 and 543; as propretor in
Spain in 544; and lastly as lieutenant of Marcellus in 545.66 Yet it is strange
that the only mention of him personally before his consulship which has reached
us, is unfavorable: he is said to have shown a want of vigor when serving under
Marcellus in 540, and a want of ability in his command in Spain.6" But these
stories are, perhaps, of little authority; and if they are true, Nero must have redeemed his faults by many proofs of courage and wisdom; for his countrymen
were not likely to choose the general rashly, who was to command them in the
most perilous moment of the whole war; and we know that their choice was
amply justified by the event.
But if Nero were one consul, who was to be his colleague?  It must be some
one who was not a patrician, to comply with the Licinian law, and. Lu    the now settled practice of the constitution. But there was no
Decius living, no Curius, no Fabricius; and the glory of the great house of the
Metelli had hitherto during the second Punic war, been somewhat in eclipse,
bearing the shame of that ill-advised Metellus, who dared after the rout of
Cannre to speak of abandoning Italy in despair. The brave and kindly Gracchus,
the bold Flaminius, the unwearied and undaunted Marcellus, had all fallen in
their country's cause. Varro was living, and had learnt wisdom by experience,
and was serving the state wel and faithfully; but it would be of evil omen to
send him again with the last army of the commonwealth to encounter a son of
Hamilcar. At last men remembered a stern and sullen old man, M. Livius, who
had been consul twelve years before, and had then done good service against the
Illyrians, and obtained a triumph, the. last which Rome had seen;68 but whose
hard nature had made him generally odious, and who, having been accused before the people of dividing the Illyrian spoil amongst his soldiers unfairly, had
been found guilty and fined.69 The shame and the sense of wrong had so struck
him--for though ungracious and unjust from temper, he was above corruptionthat for some years he lived wholly in the country; and though he had since returned to Rome, and the last censors had obliged him to resume his place in the
senate, yet he had never spoken there, till this very year, when the attacks made
on his kinsman, the governor of Tarentum, had induced him to open his lips in
'4 Livy, XXVII. 39.                  " Livy, XXIV. 17. XXVII. 14.
SLivy, XXVII. 84.                   s See above, p. 470.
SLivy, XXIV. 17. XXV. 2, 8, 22. XXVI.  G9 Frontinus, IV. I. 45.
17. XXVII. 14.




ï~~CHAP. XLVI.]

THE ROMAN ARMAMENT.

579

his defence. He was misanthropical to all men, and especially at enmity with
C. Nero: yet there were qualities in him well suited to the present need; and
the senators suggested to their friends, and tribesmen, and dependents, that no
better consuls could be appointed than C. Nero and M. Livius.:0
The people might agree to choose Livius, but would he consent to be chosen?
At first he refused altogether: "If he were fit to be consul, why He consentsreluctantly
had they condemned him? if he had been justly condemned, how to be chosen consul;
could he deserve to be consul?"  But the senators reproved him for this bitterness, telling him "that his country's harshness was to be borne like a parent's,
and must be softened by patient submission." Overpowered, but not melted, he
consented to be elected consul.
Then the senators, and especially Q. Fabius, besought him to be reconciled to
his colleague. "To what purpose?" he replied: "we shall both and is reconcilea to
serve the commonwealth the better, if we feel that an enemy's eye Nero.
is watching for our faults and negligences."  But here again the senate's authority
prevailed; and the consuls were publicly reconciled."  Yet the vindictive temper of Livius still burnt within him so fiercely, that, before he took the field, when
Q. Fabius was urging him not to be rash in hazarding a battle, until he had well
learnt the strength of his enemy, he replied, "that he would fight as soon as ever
he came in sight of him;" and when Fabius asked him why he was so impatient,
he answered, "Because I thirst either for the glory of a victory, or for the
pleasure of seeing the defeat of my unjust countrymen." 12
It is worth while to remark what gigantic efforts the Romans made for this
great campaign. One consul was to have Cisalpine Gaul for his Enormous armament of
province, the other Lucania and Bruttium; each with the usual the Roman..
consular army of two legions, and an equal force of Italian allies. The army of
the north was supported by two others of equal force; one, commanded by L.
Porcius, one of the praetors, was to co-operate with it in the field; the other,
commanded by C. Varro, was to overawe Etruria, and form a reserve. In like
manner the consul of the army of the south had two similar armies at his disposal, besides his own; one in Bruttium, of which old Q. Fulvius once more took
the command, and another in the neighborhood of Tarentum. Besides these
twelve legions, one legion occupied Capua, and two new home legions were raised
for the immediate defence of Rome. Thus fifteen legions, containing 75,000 Roman citizens, besides an equal number of Italian allies, were in arms this year for
the protection of Italy. In this same year the return of the whole population of
Roman citizens of an age to bear arms according to the census, amounted only to
137,108; and in addition to the forces employed in Italy, eight legions were
serving abroad; two in Sicily, two in Sardinia, and four in Spain.7"
Soldiers were raised with a strictness never known before; insomuch that even
the maritime colonies were called upon to furnish men for the le- Means taken to raise
gions, although ordinarily exempted from this service, on the ground troops.
that their citizens were responsible for the defence of the sea-coast in their neighborhood. Only Antium and Ostia were allowed to retain their customary exemption; and the men within the military age in both these colonies were obliged to
swear that they would not sleep out of their cities more than thirty nights, so long
as the enemy should be in Italy. The slaves also were again invited to enlist;
and two legions were composed out of them; and after all, so perilous was the
aspect of affairs in the north from the known disaffection of Etruria, and even of
Umbria, that P. Scipio is said' to have draughted 10,000 foot and 1000 horse
from the forces of his province, and sent them' by sea to reinforce the army of the
north; while the praetor commanding in Sicily sent 4000 archers and slingers for
7o Livy, XXVII. 34.                   72 Livy, XXVII. 40. Valerius Maximus, IX.
n Livy, XXVII. 35. Valerius Maximus, IV. 3, 1.
2, 2, VII. 2, 6.                        3 Livy, XXVII. 36.




ï~~580

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLVI

the army of the south. The lot decided that M. Livius was to be opposed to
Iasdrubal, C. Nero to Hannibal.4
Meantime Hasdrubal had begun his march from the plains between the Rhone
Hasdbal crosses thand the Isere, and proceeded to cross the Alps by the route forAlps, an d advances up-merly followed by his brother. It is said that he found the obonAiminum.    stacles of all kinds, both those presented by nature, and those
offered by the hostility of the inhabitants, far less than had been experienced by
Hannibal. The inhabitants were now aware that the stranger army meant them
no ill; that it was merely passing through their valleys on its way to a distant
land, to encounter its enemies there. Nay, it is added that traces of Hannibal's
engineering were still in existence, that the roads which he had built up along the
steep mountain-sides, and the bridges which he had thrown over the torrents, and
the cuttings which he had made through the rocks, after having been exposed for
eleven years to the fury of the avalanches, and the chafing of the swollen streams,
were even now serviceable to Hasdrubal. At any rate, Hasdrubal appeared in
Italy sooner than either friend or foe had expected him;5 and having issued from
the Alpine valleys, and crossed the Po, he descended along its right bank, and
sat down before the Latin colony of Placentia. But the colony was one of the
faithful eighteen, and did not forget its duty. It closed its gates; and Hasdrubal
had no artillery to batter down its walls; he only lay before it therefore long
enough for the Cisalpine Gauls and Ligurians to join him, and then pressed forward on his march by the line of the later IEmilian road, towards Ariminum and the
shores of the Adriatic. The pretor L. Porcius retreated before him; and Hasdrubal sent off four Gaulish horsemen and two Numidians to his brother, to announce his approach, and to propose that they should unite their two armies in
Umbria, and from thence advance by the Flaminian road straight upon Rome."
Livius had by this time arrived on the scene of action, and had effected his junction with L. Porcius; yet their combined forces were unable to maintain their
ground on the frontier of Italy; Ariminum was abandoned to its fate; they fell
back behind the Metaurus; and still keeping the coast road,-for the later branch
of the Flaminian road, which ascends the valley of the Metaurus, was not yet
constructed,--they encamped about fourteen miles further to the south, under
the walls of the maritime colony of Sena."77
On the other side of Italy, C. Nero, availing himself of the full powers with
Nero oencampsat enu- which the consuls were invested for this campaign, had incorpo"ia.          rated the two legions, which Q. Fulvius was to have commanded in
Bruttium, with his own army, leaving Fulvius at the head of a small army of reserve at Capua. With an army thus amounting to 40,000 foot and 2500 horse,
Nero fixed his head-quarters at Venusia; his object being by all means to occupy
Hannibal, and to hinder him from moving northwards to join his brother.1
At no part of the history of this war do we more feel the want of a good miliDiffolties in tohe his. tary historian, than at the opening of this memorable campaign.
tory of this campaign. What we have in Livy is absolutely worthless; it is so vague, as
well as so falsified, that the truth from which it has been corrupted can scarcely
be discovered. We are told that Hannibal moved later from his winter-quarters
than he might have done, because he thought that his brother could not arrive in
Cisalpine Gaul so early as he actually did; and we are told that he received information of his having reached Placentia."9 Yet, after having heard this, he
wastes much time in moving about in the south, first into Lucania, then to Apulia,
thence falling back into Bruttium, and finally advancing again into Apulia, and
there remaining idle, till the fatal blow had been struck in the north. It is added, that in the course of these movements he was several times engaged with the
4 Livy, XXVII. 38.                   '7 Appian, VII. 52.
7 Livy, XXVII. 89. Appian, VII. 52.  79 Livy, XXVII. 40.
1 Livy, XXVII. 48.                    7 Livy, XXVII. 89.




ï~~CHA. XLVI.]

NERO'S MARCH.

581

Romans, and lost nearly 15,000 men, killed or taken.80 Putting aside these absurdities, in which we cannot but recognize the perversions of Valerius Antias, or
some annalist equally untrustworthy, we must endeavor as far as possible to conjecture the outline of the real story.
With 40,000 men under an active general opposed to him in the field, and with
20,000 more in his rear in the neighborhood of Tarentum, Hannibal
Hsnnibai's movemesnts.
could only act on the offensive by gathering all his remaining garrisons into one mass, and by raising additional soldiers, if it were possible, amongst
the allies who yet adhered to him. This was to be accomplished in the face of a
superior enemy, and, as Hasdrubal was already arrived on the Po, without loss
of time. It was for this object apparently that he entered Lucania, to raise soldiers amongst his old partisans there; with this view he crossed back into Apulia,
and then moved into Bruttium to join the new Bruttian levies, which had been
collected by Hanno, the governor of Metapontum. All this he effected, baffling
the pursuit of Nero, or beating off his attacks; and having amassed a force sufficient for his purpose, he again turned northwards, re-entered Apulia, advanced,
followed closely by Nero,'to his old quarters near Canusium, and there halted.81
Whether he was busy in collecting corn for his further advance, or whether he
was waiting for more precise intelligence from his brother, we know not; but we
do not find that he moved his army beyond Canusium.
Admitting, however, that Hannibal was aware of Hasdrubal's arrival before
Placentia, we can understand why his own movements could not He waits for tidings
but be suspended, after he had collected all his disposable force from his brother.
together, till he should receive a fresh communication from his brother. For from
Placentia Hasdrubal had a choice of roads before him; and it was impossible for
Hannibal to know beforehand which he might take. But on this knowledge his
own plans were to depend; if Hasdrubal crossed the Apennines into Etruria, in
order to rally the disaffected Etruscans around him, Hannibal might then advance into Samnium and Campania: if, on the other hand, Hasdrubal were to
move eastward towards the Adriatic, thinking it desirable that the two armies
should act together, then Hannibal also would keep near the coast, and retracing
the line of his own advance after the battle of Thrasymenus, would be ready to
meet his brother in Picenum, or in Umbria. And it was in order to determine
Hannibal's movements, that Hasdrubal, when he left Placentia, sent off the six
horsemen, as has been already mentioned, to say that he was marching upon Ariminum, instead of upoti Etruria, and that the two brothers were to effect their
junction in Umbria.
With marvellous skill and good fortune Hasdrubal's horsemen made their way
through the whole length of Italy. But Hannibal's rapid move- Hasdrubas messe.
ment into Bruttium disconcerted them; they attempted to follow go.rsarn tbo g1rihim thither; but mistaking their way, and getting too near to Ta- Nero.
rentum, they fell in with some foragers of the army of Q. Claudius, and were
made prisoners. The prietor instantly sent them under a strong escort to Nero.
They were the bearers of a letter from Hasdrubal to his brother, containing the
whole plan of their future operations; it was written, not in cipher, but in the
common Carthaginian language and character; and the interpreter read its contents in Latin to the consul.8"
Nero took his resolution on the instant. He dispatched the letter to the senate,
urging the immediate recall of Fulvius with his army from Capua  roleave is cap
to Rome, the calling out every Roman who could bear arms, and.
the marching forward the two home legions to Narnia, to de'-fend that narrow
gorge of the Flaminian road against the invader. At the same time he told the
senate what he was going to do himself. He picked out 7000 men, of whom
1000 were horse, the flower of his whole army; he ordered them to hold them
Livy, XXVII. 41, 42.

81 Livy, XXVII. 42.

8 Livy, XXVII. 43.




ï~~582

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLVI

selves in readiness for a secret expedition into Lucania, to surprise one of Hannibal's garrisons; and as soon as it was dark, he put himself at their head, leaving
his lieutenant, Q. Catius, in the command of the main army, and began his
march."
His march was not towards Lucania. Already before he left his camp had
and marches to join he sent forward horsemen on the road leading to Picenum and
Livius.       Umbria, with the consul's orders, that all the provisions of the
country should be brought down to the road-side, that all horses and draught
cattle should be led thither also, and carriages for the transport of the weak and
wearied soldiers. Life and death were upon his speed, the life and death of his
country. His march was towards the camp of his colleague, before Sena; his
hope was to crush Hasdrubal with their combined and overwhelming forces,
whilst Hannibal, waiting for that letter which he would never receive, should remain still in Apulia.
When Nero had reached a sufficient distance from Hannibal, he disclosed the
S   secret of his expedition to his soldiers. They felt the glory of their
oao.....  mission, and shared the spirit of their leader. Nor was it a little
thing to witness the universal enthusiasm which everywhere welcomed their
march. Men and women, the whole population of the country, crowded to the
road-side; meat, drink, clothing, horses, carriages, were pressed upon the soldiers;
and happy was the man from whom they would accept them. Every tongue
blessed them as deliverers; incense rose on hastily built altars, where the people,
kneeling as the army passed, poured forth prayers and vows to the gods for their
safe and victorious return. The soldiers would scarcely receive what was offered
to them: they would not halt; they ate standing in their ranks; night and day
they hastened onwards, scarcely allowing themselves a brief interval of rest.4" In
six or seven days the march was accomplished: Livius had been forewarned of
his colleague's approach; and, according to his wish, Nero entered the camp by
night, concealing his arrival from Hasdrubal no less successfully than he had
hidden his departure from Hannibal."3
The new-comers were to be received into the tents of Livius' soldiers; for any
Theydoterminetofight enlargement of the camp would have betrayed the secret; and
without delay.  they were more than seven thousand men: for their numbers had
been swelled on their march; veterans who had retired from war, and youths too
young to be enlisted, having pressed Nero to let them share in his enterprise. A
council was held the next morning; and though Livius and L. Porcius, the praetor, urged Nero to allow his men some rest before he led them to battle, he
pleaded so strongly the importance of not losing a single day, lest Hannibal
should be upon their rear, that it was agreed to fight immediately. The red
ensign was hoisted as soon as the council broke up; and the soldiers marched
out and formed in order of battle.86
The enemy, whose camp, according to the system of ancient warfare, was only
half a mile distant from that of the Romans, marched out and
Hasdrubal retreats.  formed in line to meet them. But as Hasdrubal rode forward to
reconnoitre the Roman army, their increased numbers struck him; and other circumstances, it is said, having increased his suspicions, he led back his men into
their camp, and sent out some horsemen to collect information. The Romans
then returned to their own camp; and Hasdrubal's horsemen rode round it at a
distance to see if it were larger than usual, or in the hope of picking: up some
stragglers. One thing alone, it is said, revealed the secret: the trumpet which
gave the signal for the several duties of the day, was heard to sound as usual
once in the camp of the prasetor, but twice in that of Livius. This, we are told.
satisfied Hasdrubal that both the consuls were before him; unable to understand

$ Livy, XXVII. 43.
-  Li'y, XXVII. 45.

Livy, XXVII. 46.
SLivy, XXVII. 46.




ï~~CHAP. XLVI.]

HASDRUBAL IS OVERTAKEN.

583

how Nero had escaped from Hannibal, and, dreading the worst, he resolved to
retire to a greater distance from the enemy; and having put out all his fires,
he set his army in motion as soon as night fell, and retreated towards the Metaurus.Y
Whose narrative Livy has followed here, we cannot tell; it is not that of Polybius, except in part; and some points speak ill for the credibility along the banks of the
of its author. According to this account, Hasdrubal marched back Metasrus.
fourteen miles to the Metaurus: but his guides deserted him and escaped unobserved in the darkness, so that, when the army reached the Metaurus, they could
not find the fords, and began to ascend the right bank of the river, in the hope
of passing it easily when daylight came, and they should be arrived at a higher
part of its course. But the windings of the river, it is said, delayed him: as he
ascended further from the sea, he found the banks steeper and higher; and no
ford was to be gained.8
The Metaurus, in the last twenty miles of its course, flows through a wide
valley or plain, the ground rising into heights rather than hills, Description of the
while the mountains from which it has issued ascend far off in the course of the  Metauru..
distance, and bound the low country near the sea with a gigantic wall. But, as
is frequently the case in northern Italy, the bed of the river is like a valley within
a valley, being sunk down between steep cliffs, at a level much below the ordinary surface of the country; which yet would be supposed to be the bottom of
the plain by those who looked only at the general landscape, and did not observe
the kind of trough in which the river was winding beneath them. Yet this lower
valley is of considerable width; and the river winds about in it from one side to
the other, at times running just under its high banks, at other times leaving a
large interval of plain between it and the boundary. The whole country, both
in the lower valley and in the plain above, is now varied with all sorts of cultivation, with scattered houses and villages, and trees; an open, joyous, and habitable region, as can be found in Italy. But when Hasdrubal was retreating
through it, the dark masses of uncleared wood still, no doubt, in many parts covered the face of the higher plain, overhanging the very cliffs of the lower valley;
and the river below, not to be judged of by its present scanty and loitering
stream, ran like the rivers of a half-cleared country, with a deep and strong body
of waters.
These steep cliffs would, no doubt, present a serious obstacle to an army wishing to descend to the edge of the river; and if their summits were The Romans overtake
covered with wood, they would at once intercept the view, and Hasdrubal,
make the march more difficult. Thus Hasdrubal was overtaken by the Romans,
and obliged to fight. It is clear from Polybius that he had encamped for the
night after his wearisome march; and retreat being fatal to the discipline of barbarians, the Gauls became unmanageable, and indulged so freely in drinking,
that, when morning dawned, many of them were lying drunk in their quarters,
utterly unable to move.89  And now the Roman army was seen advancing in
order 4  battle; and Hasdrubal, finding it impossible to continue his retreat,
marched out of his camp to meet them.2
No credible authority tells us what was the amount of his army: that the
Roman writers extravagantly magnified it, is certain; and that whodraws up his army
he was enormously outnumbered by his enemy is no less so. Po- orbattle.
lybiust' says, that he deepened his lines, diminishing their width, and drawing up
his Whole force in a narrow space, with his ten elephants in front. We hear
nothing of his cavalry, the force with which his brother had mainly won his victories; and he had probably brought scarcely any African horse from Spain:
what Gaulish horsemen had joined him since he had crossed the Alps, we know
SLivy, XXVII. 47.                   9o Livy, XXVII. 48., Livy, XXVII. 47.                   ' Polybius, XI. 1.
Polybius, XI. 3.




ï~~584

HISTORY OF ROME,

[Czar. XLV I

not. His Gaulish infantry, as many as were fit for action, were stationed on hig
left, in a position naturally so strong as to be unassailable in front; and its flank
would probably be covered by the river. He himself took part with his Spanish
infantry, and attacked the left wing of the Roman army, which was commanded
by Livius. Nero was on the Roman right, the praetor in the centre.92
Between Hasdrubal and Livius the battle was long and obstinately disputed,
He is defeated and the elephants being, according to Polybius, an equal aid, or rather
slain,        an equal hindrance, to both parties;93 for, galled by the missiles
of the Romans, they broke sometimes into their own ranks, as well as into those
of the enemy. Meanwhile Nero, seeing that he could make no progress on his
front, drew off his troops out of the line, and passing round on the rear of the
praetor and of Livius, fell upon the right flank and the rear of the enemy. Then
the fate of the day was decided; and the Spaniards, outnumbered and surrounded,
were cut to pieces in their ranks, resisting to the last. Then too, when all was
lost, Hasdrubal spurred his horse into the midst of a Roman cohort, and there
fell sword in hand, fighting, says Livy with honorable sympathy, as became the
son of Hamilcar and brother of Hannibal94
The conquerors immediately stormed the Carthaginian camp, and there slaugh.
Effects f the victry. tered many of the Gauls, whom they found still lying asleep in
et ofthvitorythe helplessness of brute intoxication.95 The spoil of the camp was
rich, amounting in value to 300 talents: of the elephants, six were killed in the
action; the other four were taken alive. All the Carthaginian citizens who had
followed Hasdrubal were either killed or taken; and 3000 Roman prisoners were
found in the camp, and restored to liberty. The loss of men on both sides was
swelled prodigiously by the Roman writers, ambitious, it seems, of making the
victory an exact compensation for the defeat of Cannie; but Polybius9t states it
at 10,000 men on the side of the vanquished, and 2000 on that of the Romans;
a decisive proof that Hasdrubal's army actually engaged cannot have been numerous, for of those in the field few can have escaped. But the amount of the slain
mattered little; Hasdrubal's army was destroyed, and he himself had perished;
and Hannibal was left to fight out the war with his single army, which, however unconquerable, could not conquer Italy.
Polybius97 praises the heroic spirit of Hasdrubal, saying that he knew when it
value of Hasdrubal's was time for him to die; that, having been careful of his life, se
e  ~      long as there was any hope of accomplishing his grand enterprise,
when all was lost, he gave his country, what Pericles calls the greatest and no.
blest gift of a true citizen, the sacrifice of his own life. And doubtless none can
blame the spirit of self-devotion to the highest known duty: Hasdrubal was true
to his country in his death as in his life. Yet the life of a son of Hamilcar was
to Carthage of a value beyond all estimate: Hasdrubal's death outweighed the
loss of many armies; and had he deigned to survive his defeat, he might again
have served his country, not only in peace as Hannibal did after his defeat at
Zama, but as the leader of a fresh army of Gauls and Ligurians, of Etruscans and
Umbrians, co-operating with his brother in marching upon Rome.
With no less haste than he had marched from Apulia, Nero hastened back thieciei ther to rejoin his army. All was quiet there: Hannibal still lay
telligen f hiboh- in his camp, waiting for intelligence from Hasdrubal. He received
er's death.   it too soon; not from Hasdrubal, but from Nero: the Carthaginian
prisoners were exhibited exultingly before his camp; two of them were set at
liberty, and sent to tell him the story of their defeat; and a head was thrown
down in scorn before his outposts, if his soldiers might know whose it was. They
took it up, and brought to Hannibal the head of his brother."9 He had not
1 Livy, XXVII. 48.                        s XI. 8.
3 XI. 1.                                  7 XI. 2.
1 Livy XXVII. 49. Polybius, XI. 2.        s Livy, XXVII. 51.
' Polybius, XI. 8.




ï~~CHAr. XLVI.]

ANXIETY AND JOY AT ROME.

585

dealt so with the remains of the Roman generals: but of this Nero recked nothing; as indifferent to justice and humanity in his dealings with an enemy, as his
imperial descendants showed themselves towards Rome, and all mankind.
Meanwhile, from the moment that Nero's march from the south had been
heard of at Rome, intense anxiety possessed the whole city. Anxiety and joy at
Every day the senate sat from sunrise to sunset; and not a sena- Rome.
tor was absent: every day the Forum was crowded from morning till evening, as
each hour might bring some great tidings; and every man wished to be among
the first to hear them. A doubtful rumor arose, that a great, battle had been
fought, and a great victory won only two days before: two horsemen of Narnia
had ridden off from the field to carry the news to their home; it had been heard
and published in the camp of the reserve army, which was lying at Narnia to
cover the approach to Rome. But men dared not lightly believe what they so
much wished to be true; and how, they said, could a battle fought in the extremity of Umbria be heard of only two days after at Rome.? Soon, however, it
was known that a letter had arrived from L. Manlius Acidinus himself, who commanded the army at Narnia: the horsemen had certainly arrived there from the
field of battle, and brought tidings of a glorious victory. The letter was read first
in the senate, and then in the Forum from the rostra: but some still refused
to believe: fugitives from a battle-field might carry idle tales of victory to hide
their own shame: till the account came directly from the consuls it was rash to
credit it.9  At last word was brought that officers of high rank in the consuls'
army were on their way to Rome; that they bore a dispatch from Livius and Nero.
Then the whole city poured out of the walls to meet them, eager to anticipate
the moment which was to confirm all their hopes. For two miles, as far as the
Milvian bridge over the Tiber, the crowd formed an uninterrupted mass; and
when the officers appeared, they could scarcely make their way to the city, the
multitude thronging around them, and overwhelming them and their attendants
with eager questions. As each man learnt the joyful answers, he made haste to
tell them to others: "The enemy's army is destroyed; their general slain; our
own legions and both the consuls are safe." So the crowd re-entered the city;
and the three officers, all men of noble names, L. Veturius Philo, P. Licinius
Varus, and Q. Metellus, still followed by the thronging multitude, at last reached
the senate-house. The people pressed after them into the senate-house itself:
but even at such a moment the senate forgot not its accustomed order; the
crowd was forced back; and the consuls' dispatch was first read to the senators
alone. Immediately afterwards the officers came out into the Forum; there L.
Veturius again read the dispatch; and as its contents were short, and it told
only the general result of the battle, he himself related the particulars of what
he had seen and done. The interest of his hearers grew more intense with every
word, till at last the whole multitude broke out into a universal cheer, and then
rushed from the Forum in all directions to carry the news to their wives and children at home, or ran to the temples to pour out their gratitude to the gods. The
senate ordered a thanksgiving of three days; the pretor announced it in the Forum; and for three days every temple was crowded; and the Roman wives and
mothers, in their gayest dresses, took their children with them, and poured forth
their thanks to all the gods for this great deliverance. It was like the burst of
all nature, when a long frost suddenly breaks up, and the snow melts, and the
ground resumes its natural coloring, and the streams flow freely. The Roman
people seemed at last to breathe and move at liberty; confidence revived; and with
it the ordinary business of life regained its activity: he who wanted money found
that men were not afraid to lend it; what had been hoarded came out into circulation; land might be bought without the dread that the purchase would be
rendered worthless by Hannibal's ravages; and in the joy and confidence of the

o Livy, XXVII. 50.




ï~~586

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Cxar. XLVIL

moment, men almost forgot that their great enemy with his unbroken army was
still in Italy.Â~Â~
At the end of the year both.consuls returned to Rome, and triumphed. Many
honl triumph. years had passed since this spectacle had been exhibited in its full
Sconutriumpssolemnity; for Marcellus had only obtained the smaller triumph,
or ovation, in which the general passed through the streets on foot. But now the
kingly chariot once more carried a Roman consul in the pomp of kingly state up
to the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter; and the streets once more resounded
with the shouts and rude jests of the victorious soldiers, as they moved in long
array after their general. The spoil of Hasdrubal's camp was large; each soldier received a donation of three denarii and a half; and three millions of sesterces in silver, besides 80,000 pounds of the old Italian copper money, were carried
into the treasury. Nero rode on horseback by the side of his colleague's chariot;
a distinction made between them, partly because Livius had happened to have
the command on the day of the battle, and partly because Nero had come without his army; his province still requiring its usual force, as Hannibal was there.
But the favor of the multitude, if we can trust the writers under Augustus, when
they speak of his adopted son's ancestor, amply compensated to Nero for this
formal inferiority: they said that he was the real conqueror of Hasdrubal, while
his name, even in absence, had overawed Hannibal. ' One thing, however, is remarkable, that Nero was never employed again in a military command: we only
hear of him after his consulship as censor. Fabius and Fulvius and Marcellus had
been sent out year after year against Hannibal; whilst the man whose military
genius eclipsed all the Roman generals hitherto engaged in Italy, was never opposed to him again. Men's eyes were turned in another direction; and the conqueror of the Metaurus was less regarded than a young man whose career of
success had been as brilliant as it was uninterrupted, and who was now almost
entitled to the name of conqueror of all Spain. It is time that we should trace
the events of the war in the west, and describe the dawn of the glory of Scipio.
CHAPTER XLVII.
P. CORNELIUS SCIPIO-HIS OPERATIONS IN SPAIN-SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF
NEW   CARTHAGE-BATTLE OF B ECULA-THE CARTHAGINIANS EVACUATE
THE SPANISH PENINSULA-SCIPIO RETURNS TO ROME, AND IS ELECTED
CONSUL.-A. U. C. 543 TO A. U. C. 548.
THREE generations of Scipios have already been distinguished in Roman hisFiy of the Scipis. tory: L. Scipio Barbatus, who was actively engaged in the third
Samnite war; L. Scipio, his son, who was consul early in the first
Punic war, and obtained a triumph; and Publius and Cnaeus Scipio, the sons of
L. Scipio, who served their country ably in Spain in the second Punic war, and,
as we have seen, were at last cut off there by the enemy towards the end of the
siege of Capua. Publius Scipio, who was killed in Spain, left two sons behind
him, Lucius and Publius: of these, Lucius, the elder, became afterwards the
conqueror of king Antiochus; Publius, the younger, was the famous Scipio
Africanus.
Athens abounded in writers at the time of the Peloponnesian war; but, had

10 Livy, XXVII. 51.

101 Livy, XXIX. 87.




ï~~CHAP. XLVII.]

SCIPIO'S CHARACTER.

587

not Thucydides been one of them, how hard would it be rightly Contradictory accounts
to estimate the characters of the eminent men of that period! And of Scipio. character.
even Thucydides seems in one instance to have partaken of the common weaknesses of humanity: his personal gratitude and respect for Antiphon has colored,
not indeed his statement of his actions, but his general estimate of his worth: he
attributes an over-measure of virtue to the conspirator, who scrupled not to use
assassination as a means of overthrowing the liberty and independence of his
country. But Polybius, whose knowledge of Rome was that of a foreigner, and
for a long time of a prisoner, could not be to Roman history what Thucydides is
to that of Greece, even if in natural powers he had approached more nearly to him;
and all his accounts of the Scipios are affected by his intimacy with the younger
Africanus, and are derived from partial sources, the anecdotes told by the elder
Lmlius, or the funeral orations and traditions of the family.  On the other hand,
there was a large party in Rome to whom Scipio was personally and politically
obnoxious, and their writers would naturally circulate stories unfavorable to him.
Hence, the accounts of his early life and character are varying, and sometimes
contradictory; and points, apparently the most notorious, are stated very differently, so that we know not what to believe. His friend and companion, Lmalius,
told Polybius,' that in his first battle, when only seventeen, he saved his father's
life; but Ccelius Antipater said that this was a false pretension; that the consul,
P. Scipio, was saved, not by his son, but by the fidelity of a Ligurian slave.2 By
his friends again Scipio is represented as one who, amid all temptations of youth
and power, maintained the complete mastery over his passions:' while his enemies said that his youth was utterly dissolute; and that the famous story of his
noble treatment of the Spanish captive maiden was invented to veil conduct which
had really been of the very opposite nature.4 His common admirers extolled
his singular devotion to the gods: he delighted, it was said, to learn their pleasure, and to be guided by their counsel; nor would he ever engage in any important matter, public or private, till he had first gone up to the capitol, and entered the temple of Jupiter, and there sat for a time alone, as it seemed, in the
presence of the god, and doubtless enjoying unwonted communications from his
divine wisdom.' But Polybius, by temper and by circumstances a rationalist, is
at great pains to assure his readers, that Scipio owed no part of his greatness to
the gods, and that his true oracle was the clear judgment of his own mind. According to him Scipio did but impose upon and laugh at the credulity of the vulgar; speaking of the favor shown him by the gods, while he knew the gods to
be nothing. Livy, with a truer feeling, which taught him that a hero cannot be
a hypocrite, suggests a doubt, though timidly, as if in fear of the skepticism of
his age, whether the great Scipio was not really touched by some feelings of
superstition,' whether he did not in some degree speak what he himself believed.
A mind like Scipio's, working its way under the peculiar influences of his time
and country, cannot but move irregularly; it cannot but be full of
contradictions. Two hundred years later, the mind of the dicta- Hi seig u spirit.
tor Caesar acquiesced contentedly in Epicureanism: he retained no more of enthusiasm than was inseparable from the intensity of his intellectual power, and
the fervor of his courage, even amidst his utter moral degradation. But Scipio
could not be like Cmsar.  His mind rose above the state of things around him;
his spirit was solitary and kingly; he was cramped by living among those as his
equ is, whom he felt fitted to guide as from some higher sphere; and he retired
at last to Liternum to breathe freely,8 to enjoy the simplicity of childhood, since
' X. 8.                                6 Polybius, X. 2, 5, 7.
2 Livy XXI. 46.                        ' XXVI. 19. Sive et ipse capti quadam su2 Polybius, X. 18, 19. Livy, XXVI. 49, 50.  perstitione animi.
4 Cn. Navius and Valerius Antias, quoted by  1 Livy, XXXVIII. 52' 53. Valerius Maximus,
A. Gellius, VI. 8.                     V. 3 2.
6 Polybius, X. 2) 5, 11. Livy, XXVI. 19.




ï~~588

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLVII,

he could not fulfil his natural calling to be a hero king. So far he stood apart
from his countrymen, admired, reverenced, but not loved. But he could not shake
off all the influences of his time; the virtue, public and private, which still existed
at Rome, the reverence paid by the wisest and best men to the religion of their
fathers, were elements too congenial to his nature not to retain their hold on it;
they cherished that nobleness of soul in him, and that faith in the invisible and
divine, which two centuries of growing unbelief rendered almost impossible in the
days of Caesar. Yet how strange must the conflict be, when faith is combined
with the highest intellectual power, and its appointed object is no better than
paganism! Longing to believe, yet repelled by palpable falsehood, crossed inevitably with snatches of unbelief, in which hypocrisy is ever close at the door,
it breaks out desperately, as it may seem, into the region of dreams and visions,
and mysterious communings with the invisible, as if longing to find that food in
its own creations, which no outward objective truth offers to it. The proportions,
of belief and unbelief in the human mind in such cases, no human judgment can
determine: they are the wonders of history; characters inevitably misrepresented
by the vulgar, and viewed even by those who in some sense have the key to them
as a mystery, not fully to be comprehended, and still less explained to others.
The genius which conceived the incomprehensible character of Hamlet, would
alone be able to describe with intuitive truth the character of Scipio or of Cromwell.
In both these great men, the enthusiastic element which clearly existed in them,
 efect n'  did but inspire a resistless energy into their actions, while it in no
I effc on hi life.  way interfered with the calmest and keenest judgment in the
choice of their means: nor in the case of Scipio did it suggest any other end of
life, than such as was appreciated by ordinary human views of good. Where
religion contained no revelation of new truth, it naturally left men's estimate of
the end of their being exactly what it had been before, and only furnished encouragement to the pursuit of it. It so far bore the character of magic, that it
applied superhuman power to the furtherance of human purposes: the gods aided
man's work; they did not teach and enable him to do theirs.
The charge of early dissoluteness brought against Scipio by his enemies is likely
to have been exaggerated, like the stories of our Henry V. Yet
Charge, im.  the sternest and firmest manhood has sometimes followed a youth
marked with many excesses of passion; and what was considered an unbecoming interruption to the cares of public business, was held to be in itself nothing
blamable.   That sanction of inherited custom, which at Rome at this period
was the best safeguard of youthful purity, Scipio was not inclined implicitly to
regard.
With all his greatness there was a waywardness in him, which seems often to
accompany genius; a self-idolatry, natural enough where there
Comp sarison  between
hischaracter andHan- is so keen a consciousness of power and of lofty designs; a self.
nibal's.poe
ibais.     dependence, which feels even the most sacred external relations
to be unessential to its own perfection. Such is the Achilles of Homer, the highest
conception of the individual hero, relying on himself, and sufficient to himself.
But the same poet who conceived the character of Achilles, has also drawn that
of Hector; of the truly noble, because unselfish hero, who subdues his genius to
make it minister to the good of others, who lives for his relations, his friends, and
his country. And as Scipio lived in himself and for himself, like Achilles, so the
virtue of Hector was worthily represented in the life of his great rival Hannibal,
who, from his childhood to his latest hour, in war and in peace, through glory
and through obloquy, amid victories and amid disappointments, ever remembered
to what purpose his father had devoted him, and withdrew no thought or desire
or deed from their pledged service to his country.
Scipio had fought at Cannmae, and, after the battle, had been forward, it was
said, in putting down that dangerous spirit, which showed itself among some of




ï~~3RAP. XLVII.]

WAR IN SPAIN.

589

high birth and name, when they were purposing to abandon Italy is rs
in despair, and seek their fortune in Greece, or Egypt, or Asia.9H of.
His early manhood had attracted the favor of the people; and although the details are variously given, it is certain that he was made curule mdile at an early
age, and with strong marks of the general good-will.0 But he had
filled no higher office than the aedileship, when his father and uncle A..C..
were killed in Spain, and when C. Nero, after the fall of Capua, was sent out as
proprretor to command the wreck of their army, and joining it to the force which
he brought from Italy, to maintain the almost desperate cause of the Roman
arms in the west.
He held his ground, and even ventured, if we may believe a story overrun with
improbabilities, to act on the offensive, and to penetrate into the A. U. C. 544. A. C.
south of Spain, as far as the Betis."  The faults of the Cartha-  er eWarin Spain
ault oftheCarta- 0.after the death ef the
ginian generals were ruining their cause, and vexing the spirit of soipios.
Hasdrubal, the son of Hamilcar, who alone knew the value of the present opportunity, and was eager to make use cof it. But the other Hasdrubal and Mago
thought their work was done, and were:nly anxious to enrich themselves out of
the plunder of Spain. They disgusted the Spanish chiefs by their insolence and
rapacity, while they were jealous of each other, and both, as was natural, hated
and dreaded the son of Hamilcar.2  Accordingly, all concert between the Carthaginian generals was at an end; they engaged in separate enterprises in different parts of the country: Hasdrubal, the son of Gisco, and Mago, moved off to
the extreme west of the peninsula, to subdue and plunder the remoter Spanish
tribes; and only Hasdrubal, the son of Hamilcar, remained to oppose the Romans. Nero, therefore, whether he acted on the offensive or no, was certainly
unassailed behind the Iberus; and at the end of the year 544, eighteen months
at least after the defeat of the Scipios, the Roman arms had met with no fresh
disaster; and the coast of the Mediterranean between the Pyrenees and the Iberus still acknowledged the Roman dominion.
It was at this period that the government resolved to increase its efforts in
Spain, to employ a larger army there, and to place it under the A.v.c. 5. A.c.209.
command of an officer of higher rank than Nero, who was only prosecute it with ore e
proprietor. It was probable that Hasdrubal's expedition to Italy vigor.
was now seriously meditated, and that the Romans, being aware of this, were
anxious to detain him in Spain; but, even without this special object, the importance of the Spanish war was evident; and it was not wise to leave the Roman
cause in Spain it its present precarious state, in which it was preserved only by
the divisions and want of ability of the enemy's generals. Accordingly, the tribes
were to meet to appoint a proconsul, who should carry out reinforcements to
Spain, and, with a propretor acting under him, take the supreme command of
the Roman forces in that country.
To the surprise of the whole people, P. Scipio, then only in his twenty-seventh
year, and who had filled no higher office than that of curule mdile, Spo is  td pcame forward as a candidate.  It is said that he had no competi- onsul for the Spani
tors, all men being deterred from undertaking a service which war,
seemed so unpromising; whereas Scipio himself had formed a truer judgment of
the state of affairs in Spain, and felt that they might be restored, and that he
himself was capable of restoring them. He expressed his confidence strongly in
all his addresses to the people; and there was that in him which distinguished
his boldness from a young man's idle boastings, and communicated his hope to
his hearers.'4 At the same age, and nearly under the same circumstances, in
which Napoleon was appointed in 1796 to take the command of the French army
9 Livy, XXII. 53. See above, p. 509.  12 Polybius, IX. 11. X. 86.
1 Polybius X. 4. Livy, XXV. 2.        's Livy, XXVI. 18. Polybius, X. 6.
21 Livy, XXVI. 17.                    24 Livy, XXVI. 19. Polybius, X. 6.




ï~~590

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CHAP. XLVII,

of Italy, was P. Scipio chosen by the unanimous voice of the Roman people, to
take the command of their army in Spain. And great as were the consequences
of the appointment of Napoleon, those which followed the appointment of Scipio
were greater and far more lasting.
At the same time a new proprietor was to be sent out in the room of C. Nero,
and goes with large re- whose year of command was come to an end. His successor was
inforcements to Spain. M. Junius Silanus,"5 who had been praetor two years before, and
since that time had been employed in overawing the party disaffected to Rome
in Etruria. The two new generals were to take with them large reinforcements,
amounting to 10,000 foot, 1000 horse, and a fleet of thirty quinqueremes. The
troops were embarked at the mouth of the Tiber; and the fleet proceeded along
the coasts of Etruria, Liguria, and Gaul, till it arrived safely at Emporie, a Massaliot colony, lying immediately on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. Here the
soldiers were disembarked, and proceeded by land to Tarraco; the fleet followed;
and the head-quarters of the proconsul were established at Tarraco for the
winter, as it was too late in the season to admit of any active operations immediately.6
And now that Spain has received that general and that army, by whom her
iew of Spain fate was fixed through all after time,-for the expulsion of the
w... sp.  Carthaginians from the peninsula decided its subjection to the Romans, and though the work of conquest was slow, and often interrupted, it was
not the less sure,-let us for a moment survey the earliest known state of this
great country; what Spain was, and who were the earliest Spaniards, before Romans, Goths, and Moors, had filled the land with stranger races, and almost extirpated the race and language of its original people.
The Spanish peninsula, joined to the main body of Europe by the isthmus of
Description of the Span- the Pyrenees, may be likened to one of the round bastion towers
o eninPaa.   which stand out from the walls of an old fortified town, lofty at
once and massy. Spain rises from the Atlantic on one side, and the Mediterranean on the other, not into one or two thin lines of mountains divided by vast
tracts of valleys or low plains, but into a huge tower, as I have called it, of tableland, from which the mountains themselves rise again like the battlements on the
summit. The plains of Castile are mountain plains, raised nearly 2000 feet above
the level of the sea; and the elevation of the city of Madrid is nearly double that
of the top of Arthur's Seat, the hill or mountain which overhangs Edinburgh.
Accordingly the centre of Spain, notwithstanding its genial latitude, only partially enjoys the temperature of a southern climate; while some of the valleys of
Andalusia, which lie near the sea, present the vegetation of the tropics, the palmtree, the banana, and the sugar-cane. Thus the southern coast seemed to invite
an earlier civilization; while the interior, with its bleak and arid plains, was fitted
to remain for centuries the stronghold of barbarism.
Accordingly the first visits of the Phoenicians to Spain are placed at a very
Ear       remote period. Some stories ascribed the foundation of Gades to
tirmnt in Spain. Tho Archelaus, the son of Phoenix-Phoenix and Cadmus being the
thae aboriginal.inhabit- supposed founders of Tyre and Sidon, and belonging to the earliante.         est period of Greek tradition; while other accounts of a more historical character made the origin of Gades contemporary with the reign of the
Athenian Codrus, that is, about a thousand years before the Christian era.7
Three hundred years later, the Prophet Isaiah" describes the downfall of Tyre
as likely to give deliverance to the land of Tarshish; that is, to the south of
Spain, where the Phoenicians had established their dominion. In the time of
Ezekiel, the Tyrian trade with Spain was most flourishing; and the produce of
the Spanish mines, silver, iron, tin, and lead, are especially mentioned as the ar.
SLivy, XXVI. 19. -17 Velleius, I. II. 5.
a6 Livy, XXVI. 19, 20.                   18 XXIII. 10.




ï~~CHAP. XLVII.]

EARLY SETTLERS IN SPAIN.

591

ticles which came from Tarshish to the Phoenician ports.9  Nor did the Phoenicians confine themselves to a few points on the sea-coast; they were spread
over the whole south of Spain; and the greatest number of the towns of Turditania were still inhabited in Strabo's time by people of Phoenician origin."
They communicated many of the arts of life to the natives, and among the rest
the early use of letters; for the characters which the Iberians used in their
writing before the time of the Romans," can scarcely have been any other than
Phoenician. The Phoenicians visited Spain at a very remote period; but they
found it already peopled. Who the aboriginal inhabitants were, and from
whence they came, it is impossible to determine.      The Greeks called them
Iberians, and said that, although they were divided into many tribes, and spoke
many various dialects, they yet all belonged to the same race.2  It cannot be
doubted that their race and language still exist; that the Basques, who inhabit
the Spanish provinces of Guipuscoa, Biscay, Alava, and Navarre, and who in
France occupy the country between the Adour and the Bidassoa, are the genuine descendants of the ancient Iberians. Their language bears marks of extreme antiquity; and its unlikeness to the other languages of Europe is very
striking, even when compared with Welsh, or with Sclavonic. The affinities of
the Welsh numerals with those of the Teutonic languages, and the Greek and
Latin, are obvious at the first glance; and the same may be said of most of the
Sclavonic numerals: but the Basque are so peculiar, that it is difficult to identify
any one of them, except "sei," "six," with those of other languages.3  And an
evidence of its great antiquity seems furnished by the fact, that the inflexions of
the nouns and verbs are manifestly so many distinct words, inasmuch as they
exist in a separate form as such.  We suspect this reasonably of the terminations
of the nouns and verbs of Greek and Latin; but in the Basque language it can
be proved beyond question.24
We have seen that the Phoenicians were settled amongst the Iberians in the
south; and Keltic tribes were said to be mixed up with them in various traditions of
parts of the north and centre, forming a people, whom the Greeks earlysettlements.
called Keltiberians. How far strangers of other races were to be found in Iberia,
it is difficult to decide. One or two Greek colonies from Massalia, such as Rhoda
and Emporime, were undoubtedly planted on the shore of the Mediterranean, just
within the limits of Iberia, immediately to the south of the Pyrenees.5  These
belong to the times of certain history; but stories are told of invasions of Spain,
and of colonies founded on its territory, on which in their present form we can
place no reliance. Carthaginian writers spoke of a great expedition of the Tyrian
' XXVII. 12.                            23 I give the Welsh from Pughe's Welsh
20 III. p. 149.                        Grammar, Denbigh, 1832; the Sclavonic (Boz Strabo, III. p. 139.                 hemian), from Dobrowsky, Lehrgebaude der
22 Herodotus, in a fragment of Stephanus Bdhmischen Sprache, Prag. 1819; the Basque
Byzantius, v. 'Ifirptas, preserved by Constantine from Larramendi, Arte de la Lingua BasconPorphyrogenitus, and given by Berkelius: To gada, Salamanca, 1724.
'I(3,puov yovos--&a prast.s'dpacns, is'yfsos "v,
card 0-vela.
Numerals.frcm 1 to 10.
WELSH.          SCLAVONIC.          BASQUE.
One              Un               Geden              Bat
Two              Dan              Dwa                Bi
Three            Tri              Tri                Hird
Four             Pedwar           Etyn               Lan
Five             Pump             Pet                Bost
Six              Chwech           Ssest              Sei
Seven            Saith            Sedm               Zazpi
Eight            Wyth             Osm                Zortzi
Nine             Naw              Dewet              Bederatzi
Ten              Deg              Deset              Amir.
' See W. Humboldt's Dissertation on the  2 Strabo, III. pp. 159, 160.
Basque Language in Adelung's Mithridates,
Vol. Iv. p. 314--3832.




ï~~592

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CuAP. XLVIL

Hercules into Spain, at the head of an army of Medes, Persians, Armenians, and
other nations of the east.26 Megasthenes,7 the Greek traveller and historian of
India, said that Tearco, king of./Ethiopia, and Nabuchodonosor, king of the Chaldeans, had both carried their arms as far as Spain. Amongst the innumerable
countries which were made the scene of the adventures of the Greek chiefs on
their return from Troy, after they had been scattered by the famous storm, the
coasts of Iberia, and even its coasts upon the ocean, are not forgotten."  Other
stories, as we have seen, claimed a Greek origin for Saguntum; while others
again called it a Rutulian colony, from the Tyrrheno-Pelasgian city of Ardea.29
The settlements of the Greek chiefs on their way home from Troy are mere romances, as unreal as the famous siege of Paris by the Saracens in the days of
Charlemagne, or as the various adventures and settlements of Trojan exiles, which
were invented in the middle ages. Whether any real events are disguised in the
stories of the expeditions of Hercules, of Tearco, and of Nabuchodonosor, is a
question more difficult to answer: for the early migrations from the east to the
west are buried in impenetrable obscurity. But the Persians and AEthiopians
may have made their way into Spain before historical memory, as the Vandals
and Arabs invaded it in later times; the fact itself is not incredible, if it rested
on any credible authority.
Not knowing, then, what strange nations may at one time or other have instate of agri olture in vaded or settled in Spain, we cannot judge how much the Iberian
spain.        character and manners were affected by foreign influence. Agriculture was practised from a period beyond memory: but the vine and olive, and
perhaps the flax, were first introduced into the south of Spain by the Phoenicians,
and only spread northwards gradually, the vine and fig advancing first, and the
olive, as becomes its greater tenderness, following them more slowly and cautiously. Even in Strabo's time the vine had scarcely reached the northern coast
of Spain; and the olive, when Polybius wrote, appears not to have been cultivated north of the Sierra Morena."  Butter supplied the place of oil to the inhabitants of the northern coast, and beer that of wine."1
In the character of the people some traits may be recognized, which even to
character of the Ibe. this day mark the Spaniard. The grave dress,32 the temperance....         and sobriety, the unyielding spirit, the extreme indolence, the perseverance in guerilla warfare, and the remarkable absence of the highest military
qualities, ascribed by the Greek and Roman writers to the ancient Iberians, are
all more or less characteristics of the Spaniards of modern times. The courtesy
and gallantry of the Spaniard to women has also come down to him from his
Iberian ancestors: in the eyes of the Greeks it was an argument of an imperfect
civilization, that among the Iberians the bridegroom gave, instead of receiving, a
dowry; that daughters sometimes inherited to the exclusion of sons, and, thus
becoming the heads of the family, gave portions to their brothers, that they might
be provided with suitable wives.33 In another point, the great difference between
the people of the south of Europe, and those of the Teutonic stock, was remarked
also in Iberia: the Iberians were ignorant, but not simple-hearted; on the contrary, they were cunning and mischievous, with habits of robbery almost indomitable, fond of brigandage, though incapable of the great combinations of war.3"
These, in some degree, are qualities common to almost all barbarians; but they
offer a strong contrast to the character of the Germans, whose words spoke what
was in their hearts, and of whose most powerful tribe it is recorded, that their
ascendency was maintained by no other arms than those of justice.35
2 Sallust, Jugurth. c. XVIII.          * Livy, XXI. 7. See Niebuhr, vol. i. note 127.
27 Quoted by Strabo, XV. 1, Â~ 6, p. 687, and  o III. p. 164.
by Josephus, Antiq. X. 11, Â~ 1, and contr.  3 Strabo, III. p. 155. Polybius in AthensApion. I. 20. Strabo's character of Megas- us, I. 28.
thenes is not favorable: &a0opevrwf irerTLv  2 Strabo, III. p. 145, pEXavt4ove ravref.
i'4eov At pdX re Kai MeyaoOive. II. 1, p. 70.  3 Strabo, III. p. 165. 3 Strabo, III. p. 154.
2 Strabo, III. pp. 149, 150.           1 Tacitus, German. 22, 85.




ï~~CHAP. XLVII.]

SPANISH MINES.

593

Spanish soldiers had for more than two centuries formed one of the most efficient
parts of the Carthaginian armies;u and on this account the Car- Importance of Spain to
thaginian government set a high value on its dominion in Spain. the Carthaginians.
But this dominion furnished Carthage with money, no less than with men. The
Spanish mines had been worked for some centuries; first by the Phoenicians of
Asia, and latterly by their Carthaginian descendants; yet they still yielded
abundantly. And some of them have been worked for two thousand years since
the Carthaginians were driven out of the country; and to this hour their treasures are unexhausted.3
These mines existed for the most part in the mountains which divide the
streams running to the Guadiana from those which feed the Guadalquiver.8  This is the chain so well known by the name of the Spanish mine.
Sierra Morena; but the several arms which it pushes out towards the sea east=
ward and southward, were also rich in precious metals; and some mines were
worked in the valley of the Guadalquiver itself, as low down as Seville. The
streams, moreover, which flowed from these mountains, brought down gold
mingled with their sand and gravel;" and this was probably collected long before the working of the regular mines began. But in the time of the second
Punic war the mines were worked actively; and a hundred years earlier the
cinnabar, or sulphuret of quicksilver, of the famous mines of Almaden, was well
known in the markets of Greece.40 The Carthaginians honored as a hero or
demi-god, the man who first discovered the most productive silver mines; and
one of these was in the immediate neighborhood of New Carthage itself.4' Others
were nearer the Guadalquiver, at Castulo and Ilipa; or on the feeders of the
Guadiana, as at Sisapo,42 the ancient name of the place near to which the great
quicksilver mines were worked, now known as the mines of Almaden. One large
and most productive silver mine, yielding three hundred pounds daily, is said to
nave been opened by Hannibal himself,43 who, while he was in Spain, had married the daughter of one of the chiefs of Castulo,"44 and perhaps had acquired
some possessions through her in the mining district, as Thucydides had through
his wife in Thrace.
The immense resources which the Carthaginians derived from their Spanish
dominion, seemed now more than ever secured to them, by the de- soipio's first measures
struction of the Roman army under the two Scipios, and the con- in spain.
sequent retreat of the Romans behind the Iberus. But the divisions between
their generals, and the arrogance with which their officers now treated the Spaniards, as if it was no longer worth while to conciliate them, had made a fatal
opening, exposing their power to the most deadly blow which it had yet sustained. Scipio, with intuitive sagacity, observed this opening, and with decision
no less admirable struck his blow to the heart of his enemy. He formed his
plans at Tarraco during the winter; as soon as the season allowed his fleet to cooperate with him, he put it and his army in motion; and while the three Carthaginian generals were in places equally remote from one another, and from the
point threatened by the enemy, Scipio crossed the Iberus, and led his land and
sea forces to besiege New Carthage.45
His early and most intimate friend, C. Lelius, commanded the fleet; the proprmtor, M. Silanus, was left behind the Iberus with 3000 foot and A. u. c. 545. A. c.
500 horse, to protect the country of the allies of Rome, while o 0.t He marhe.
Scipio himself led 25,000 foot and 2500 horse on his expedition. thsa.
Polybius declares that the march from the Iberus to New Carthage was performed in seven days; but as, according to his own reckoning, the distance was
* flerodotus, VII. 165.               41 Polybius, X. 10, 11. Strabo, III. p. 148..
7 Strabo, III. 146-148.               42 Polybius, X. 38a, 7. Strabo, III. p. 142.
s Strabo, III. p. 142.                4 Pliny, XXXIII. 81.
39 Strabo, III. p. 146.               4 Livy, XXIV. 41.
" Strabo, III. p. 147.                4 Polybius, X. 6-9. Livy, XXVI. 42.
38




ï~~504

HISTORY OF ROME

[CHAP. XLVI

not less than 325 Roman miles, the accuracy of one or both of his statements
may well be questioned.46  Three degrees of latitude divide Carthagena from the
Ebro; and the ordinary windings and difficulties of a road in such a distance
must make it all but an impossibility that an army with its baggage should have
marched over it in a single week. However, the march was undoubtedly rapid;
and the Roman army established itself under the walls of New Carthage, while
all succor was far distant, and when the actual garrison of a place so important
did not exceed a thousand men. To the protection of a force so small was committed the capital of the Carthaginian dominion in Spain, the base of their military operations, their point of communication with Africa, their treasures and
magazines, and the hostages taken from the different Spanish tribes to secure
their doubted fidelity.4
The present town of Carthagena stands at the head of its famous harbor, built
Position of new car- partly on some hills of tolerable height, and partly on the low
thage.        ground beneath them, with a large extent of marshy ground behind it, which is flooded after rains, and its inner port surrounded by the buildings of the arsenal, running deeply into the land on its western side. But in the
times of the second Punic war, the marshy ground behind was all a lagoon, and
its waters communicated artificially with those of the port of the arsenal; so that
the town was on a peninsula, and was joined to the main land only by a narrow
isthmus, which had itself been cut through in one place, to allow the lagoonwater to find an outlet."48 Scipio then encamped at the head of this isthmus; and
having fortified himself on the rear, with the lagoon covering his flank, he left his
front open, that nothing might obstruct the free advance of his soldiers to storm
the city.49
Accordingly, without delay, he was preparing to lead on his men to the assault, when he was himself assailed by Mago, who, with his scanty
Sipio attacks t,  garrison, made a desperate sally along the isthmus against the
Roman camp. After an obstinate struggle, the besieged were beaten back into
the town with loss; and the Romans, following them, fixed their ladders to the
walls, and began to mount. But the height of the walls was so great, that the
long ladders necessary to reach their summit broke in some instances under the
weight of the soldiers who crowded on them; and the enemy made their defence
so good, that towards afternoon Scipio found it expedient to recall his men from
the assault.5Â~
He had told his men before the assault began, that the god Neptune had apand carries the wall,. peared to him in his sleep, and had promised to give him aid in
the hour of need, so manifest, that all the army should acknowledge his interposition.5' For the lagoon, it seems, was so shallow, that even the
slight fall of the tide in the Mediterranean was sufficient to leave much of it uncovered, as is the case at this day in parts of the harbor of Venice. This would
take place in the afternoon, and Scipio ordered five hundred men to be ready
with ladders, to march across the lagoon as soon as the ebb began. Then he
renewed his assault by the isthmus; and whilst this in itself discouraged the enemy, who had hoped that their work for the day was over, and whilst the soldiers
again swarmed up the ladders, and the missiles of the besieged were beginning to
fail, the five hundred men who were in readiness, boldly rushed across the lagoon,
and, having guides to show them the hardest parts of it, reached the foot of the
walls in safety, applied their ladders where there were no defenders, and mounted
without opposition.'
No sooner had they won the walls, than they hastened to the main gate of the
' Polybius, X. 9, 7. III. 89, 5. XXVI. 42.  1 Polybius, X. 12, 13. Livy XXVI. 45.
4 Bolybius, X. 8.                     bl Polybius, X. 11. Livy, XXVI. 45.
* Polybius, X. 10. Livy, XXVI. 42.    s' Polybius, X. 14. Livy, XXVI. 46.
SP:olybius, X. 11.




ï~~NP. XLVII.]

TAKING OF NEW CARTHAGE.

595

city, towards the isthmus; and when they had burst it open, their The town is taken and
comrades from without rushed in like a torrent. At the same plndered.
moment the scaling parties on each side of the main gate overbore the defenders,
and were now overflowing the ramparts. Mago reached the citadel in safety;
but Scipio in person pushed thither with a thousand picked men; and the governor, seeing the city lost, surrendered. The other heights in the town were
stormed with little difficulty; and the soldiers, according to the Roman practice,
commenced a deliberate massacre of every living creature they could find, whether
man or beast, till, after the citadel had surrendered, a signal from their general
called them off from slaughter, and turned them loose upon the houses of the
town to plunder. Yet it marks the Roman discipline, that even before night fell,
order was restored. Some of the soldiers marched back to the camp, from
whence the light troops were sent for to occupy one of the principal heights of
the town; Scipio himself, with a thousand men, went to the citadel; and the
tribunes got the soldiers out of the houses, and made them bring all their plunder into one heap in the market-place, and pass the night there quietly, waiting
for the regular division of the spoil, which was to take place on the following
morning.3
When the morning came, whilst the usual distribution of the money arising
from the sale of the plunder was made by the tribunes, Scipio pro- Scipio's conduct to the
ceeded to inspect his prisoners. All were brought before him prisoners.
together, to the number of nearly 10,000. He first caused them to be divided
into three classes. One consisted of all the citizens of New Carthage, with their
wives and families: all these Scipio set at liberty, and dismissed them to their
homes unhurt. The second class contained the' workmen of handicraft trades,
who were either slaves, or, if free, only sojourners in the city, enjoying no political rights. These men were told, that they were now the slaves of the Roman
people, but that, if they worked well and zealously in their several callings, they
should have their liberty at the end of the war. Meantime they were all to enter
their names with the qumestor; and a Roman citizen was set over every thirty of
them as an overseer. These workmen were in all about two thousand.     The
third class contained all the rest of the prisoners, domestic slaves, seamen, fishermen, and the mixed populace of the city; and from these Scipio picked out the
most ablebodied, and employed them in manning his fleet: for he found eighteen
ships of the enemy at New Carthage; and these he was able to add to his own
naval force immediately, by putting some of his own seamen into them, and filling up their places with some of the captives, taking care, however, that the
number of these should never exceed a third of the whole crew. The seamen
thus employed were promised their liberty at the end of the war, like the workmen, if they did their duty faithfully.54
The Carthaginian prisoners and the Spanish hostages were still to be attended
to. The former were committed to the care of Lrelius, to be taken His hind treatment of
forthwith to Rome; and there were amongst them fifteen mem- the Spanish hostages.
bers of the great or ordinary council of Carthage, and two members of the council of elders. The Spanish hostages were more than three hundred; and amongst
them were many young boys: To show kindness to these was an obvious policy;
accordingly Scipio made presents to them all, and desired them to write home
to their friends, and assure them that they were well and honorably treated, and
that they would all be sent back safely to their several countries, if their countrymen were willing to embrace the Roman alliance. Particular attention was shown
to the wife of a Spanish chief of high rank, who had been recently seized as a
hostage by Hasdrubal Gisco, because her husband had refused to comply with
his demands for money. Her treatment had been rude and insolent, if not worse;
but Scipio assured her that he would take as delicate care of her and of the other

'is Polybius, X. 1:5. Livy, XXVI. 46.

b  Polybius, X. 16, 17. Livy, XXVI. 47.




ï~~596

HISTORY OF ROME.

[OHAP. XLVII

Spanish women, as ne would of his own sisters or daughters. This honorable
bearing of the young conqueror, for Scipio was not more than twenty-seven
years of age, produced a deep impression all over Spain.55
After this important conquest, Scipio remained for a time at New Carthage,
Magazines takenin the and busied himself in exercising his soldiers and seamen, and in
ciy.          setting his workmen to labor ia manufacturing arms.56  He had
taken a considerable artillery in the place, a large sum of money, abundant magazines of corn, and about sixty-three merchant-ships in the harbor, with their cargoes; so that, according to Livy, the least valuable part of the conquest of New
Carthage was New Carthage itself."
Lmlius with his prisoners arrived at Rome after a voyage of thirty-four days,
elis carries the news  and brought the welcome news of this great restoration of the Roof this conquest to man affairs in Spain."  Amidst the confusions of the chronology
Rome.         of the Spanish war, it is not easy to ascertain the exact time at
which Lmelius reached Rome. But it is probable that he arrived there early in
the year 545, perhaps at that critical moment when the disobedience of the
twelve colonies excited such great alarm, and when the destruction of the army
of Cn. Fulvius at Herdonea was still fresh in men's memories. Scipio's victory
was therefore doubly welcome; and his requests for supplies were favorably listened to; for his army, although victorious, was still in want of many things, the
old soldiers especially, who had been ill clothed and worse paid during several
years. Accordingly we find that a sum of fourteen hundred pounds' weight of
gold was brought out from the treasure reserved for the most extraordinary occasions, and expended in purchasing clothing for the army in Spain.59
Scipio himself returned from New Carthage to Tarraco, taking his Spanish
Tho rest of the year hostages with him.6"  It was early in the season; but we hear of
passes in inaction,  no other military action during the remainder of the year. This
on Scipio's part is easily intelligible: his army was too weak to hold the field
against the combined forces of the enemy; and it was his object to strengthen
himself by alliances with the natives, and to draw them off from the service of
Carthage, if he could not induce them to enter that of Rome. He had struck
one great blow with vigor, surprising the enemy by his rapidity: but what had
been won by vigor might be lost by rashness; and after so great an action as the
conquest of New Carthage, he could well afford to lie quiet for the rest of the
year, waiting for his supplies of clothing from Rome, and strengthening his interest amongst the chiefs of Spain. The inactivity of the Carthaginian generals
would be more surprising, if we did not make allowance for the paralyzing effect
of their mutual jealousies. No efficient co-operation could be contrived between
them; and Hasdrubal, Hannibal's brother, was too weak to act alone, and, disgusted with the conduct of his colleagues, was probably anxious to husband his
own army carefully, looking forward now more than ever to the execution of his
long projected march upon Italy. Thus there was a pause from all active operations in Spain for several months; _whilst in Italy Fabius had recovered Tarentum, and he and Fabius were on the point of being succeeded in the consulship
by Marcellus and Crispinus.
The loss of Tarentum made it more important than ever that Hasdrubal
A.v.c. 56. A.C. 208. should join his brother in Italy; while the growing disposition of
Do ine fohee  the Spaniards to revolt to Rome rendered the prospect of success
"         in Spain less encouraging. But with no Carthaginian accounts remaining, and amidst the confusions, omissions, and contradictions of the Roman
historians, it is almost impossible to give a satisfactory explanation of the events
of the ensuing year, 546, in Spain. Masinissa, then a very young man, the son
4 Polybius, X. 18. Livy, XXVI. 47, 49.  * Livy, XXVII. 7.
M Polybius, X. 20.                    5 Livy, XXVII. 10.
SXXVI. 47. Polybius, X. 19.           0 Livy, XXVII. 17. Polybius, X. 84.




ï~~COAP. XLVII.]

SECOND CAMPAIGN.

597

of a Numidian king, named Gala, was sent over from Africa with a large body
of Numidian cavalry to reinforce Hasdrubal, the son of Hamilcar, principally, it
is said, in order to his march into Italy."' Still Hasdrubal made no forward
movement, but remained in a very strong position near a place called variously
Brecula or Bebula, situated in the upper valley of the Guadalquiver, near the
mining district; and there he seemed rather disposed to await Scipio's attack,
than to assume the offensive."  He saw that the fidelity of the Spaniards to Carthage was deeply shaken, not only by the loss of their hostages, but by the encouraging treatment which the hostages themselves had received from the Romans. This feeling had been working ever since the fall of New Carthage; and
now its fruits were daily becoming more manifest; insomuch that, when the time
at which Scipio was expected to take the field drew near, Mandonius and Indibilis, two of the most influential of the Spanish chiefs, retired with all their followers from Hasdrubal's camp, and established themselves in a strong position,
from which they might join the Romans, as soon as their army should appear in
the south."   On the other hand, Scipio's Roman force was strengthened, by his
having laid up his fleet, and draughted the best of his seamen into the legions,
to increase the number of his soldiers. And although a combined effort of the
three Carthaginian generals might yet have recovered New Carthage, or at any
rate kept Scipio behind the Iberus, nothing of this sort was attempted; and
Hasdrubal Gisco, jealous, it seems, both personally and politically of Hannibal's
brother, left him unaided to sustain the first assault of the enemy.
Hasdrubal, the son. of Hamilcar, therefore, under these circumstances, was
doubtless anxious to carry into effect his expedition into Italy. Hasdruba  leaves
Yet, not wishing it to be said that he had abandoned his colleagues,  a.
he resolved first to try his strength with Scipio, tosee what Spanish tribes would
actually join him, and whether, by offering battle in a favorable position, he
could repulse the enemy, and thus break that spell of Scipio's fortune which
was working so powerfully. But in this hope he was disappointed. Scipio advanced from the Iberus to the valley of the Bmtis, or Guadalquiver, before Hasdrubal saw any thing of the armies of his colleagues hastening to his aid: many
Spanish tribes joined the Roman army at the Iberus; Mandonius and Indibilis
hastened to it as soon as it approached the place where they were posted; and
Hasdrubal, unable to maintain his strong position, and, if we believe Scipio's
statement, seeing it in the act of being carried by the enemy at the close of a
successful assault, retreated accordingly, not towards the southern sea, nor towards the western ocean, but northwards towards the Tagus,64 and from thence,
as we have seen, towards the western Pyrenees; there recruiting his army from
those tribes which had not yet come under the influence of Rome, and preparing
for that great expedition to Italy, of which we have already related the progress
and the event.
Before Hasdrubal finally retreated, he had lost many prisoners. All those who
were Spaniards, were sent home free without ransom by the pol- Increase f Scipio  s in.
itic conqueror; arid he liberally rewarded those Spanish chiefs uence..
who had already come over to his side. They, on their part, saluted him with
the title of king. The first Hasdrubal, the founder of New Carthage, had lived
in kingly state amongst the Spaniards; and they probably thought that Scipio
meant to do the same, and would pass the rest of his life in their country. But
the name of king, although perhaps not ungrateful to Scipio's ears, was intolerable to those of his countrymen; nor would he have been contented to reign in
Spain over barbarians: his mind was already turned towards Africa, and anticipated the glory of conquering Carthage. So he repressed the homage of the
Spanish chiefs, and desired them to call him, not king, but general. He then
61 Livy, XXIV. 49. XXV. 34.           5 Polybius, X. 85. Livv, XXVII. 17.
SPolybius, X. 38. Livy, XXVII. 18. Ap-  64'Polybius, X. 88, 89. Livy, XXVII. 17, 18,
plan, VI. 24.                         Appian, VI. 25-28.




ï~~598

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CnA. XLVaI

took possession of the strong position which Hasdrubal had evacuated; and there
he remained during the rest of the season, watching, so it is said, the movements
of Hasdrubal Gisco, and Mago, who were now come upon the scene of action.
On the approach of winter he again returned to Tarraco.65
Such is the account given by Polybius of the events of the war in Spain durifsf ulesin the.. ing the summer of the year 545; and such, no doubt, was the
count cl t. campaign. statement given by Scipio himself, and obtained by Polybius from
Scipio's old friend and companion, C. Lmelius. What Silenus said of these events
we know not; and it is possible that Hasdrubal's account of them was never
known, owing to his subsequent fate, so that Silenus may have had no peculiar
information about them, and may have passed them over slightly. It is evident
that Scipio's pretended victory at Becula was of little importance. Hasdrubal
carried off all his elephants, all his treasure, and a large proportion of his infantry:
he was not pursued; he retreated in the direction which best suited his future
movements; and these movements he effected without the slightest interruption
from the enemy. Scipio did not follow him, says Polybius,6 because he dreaded
the arrival of the other Hasdrubal and Mago: he remained in the south, therefore,
to keep them in check, and to prevent them from attacking New Carthage; and
not doubting that Hasdrubal would follow his brother's route, and attempt to
enter Gaul by the eastern Pyrenees, he detached some troops from his army to
secure the passes of the mountains, and other defensible positions between the
Iberus and the frontiers of Gaul." It is probable that his notions of the geography of the western parts of Spain and Gaul were so vague, that he had no conception of the possibility of Hasdrubal's marching towards the Alps without coming near the Mediterranean. The line which he actually took from the western
Pyrenees to the upper part of the course of the Rhone, through the interior of
Gaul, was one of which Scipio, in all probability, did not even suspect the existence.
It may be asked why Hasdrubal, whose great object was to reach Italy, did
Reason. for:Hndaru- not commence his march at the beginning of the year, without
ba s delay,   waiting so long at Becula; especially after the desertion of Mandonius and Indibilis had taught him that the Spaniards were no longer to be relied on. But he had himself on a former occasion won over the Celtiberians from
the army of Scipio's father; and any reverse sustained by the Romans might
tempt the Spanish chiefs to return to their old alliance. It is possible also that
he waited so long at Baecula for another reason, because he wished to carry with
him as large a sum of money as possible; and he was daily drawing a supply
from the abundant silver mines in the neighborhood. The success of his expedition depended on his being able to raise soldiers amongst the Cisalpine Gauls, as
well as amongst the tribes of northwestern Spain; and for both these purposes
ready money was most desirable.
A more inexplicable point in the story of these transactions is the alleged disJealousies of the Car- cord between Hasdrubal and the other Carthaginian generals;
thaginian generals.  when one of them, Mago, was his own brother, and was not only
a soldier of tried ability, but is expressly said to have conducted the war in Spain
in accordance with Hannibal's directions, after Hasdrubal had marched into Italy.68
Whether Mago was placed under Hasdrubal Gisco's orders, and could not act
independently, or whether jealousy, or any other cause, really made him careless
of his brother's success and safety, we cannot pretend to determine: the interior
of a Carthaginian camp, and still more the real charsacters and feelings of the
Carthaginian generals, are entirely unknown to us.
The one great advantage possessed by Scipio, far more important than his
Asdeny of Sipiopretended victory at Bemcula, was the remarkable ascendency which
v the minds ofthe he had obtained over the minds of the Spaniards. Every thing
Spaniards.   in him was at once attractive and imposing; his youth, and the
$ Polybius, XXXVIII. 40. Livy, XXVII. 19.  * Polybius, X. 40.
SX. 39.                      "s Polybius, IX. 22.




ï~~HAP. XLVII.]

IASDRUBAL MARCHES INTO ITALY.

599

mingled beauty and majesty of his aspect; his humanity and courtesy to the
Spanish hostages and to their friends; his energy and ability at the' head of his
army. Above all, there was manifest in him that consciousness of greatness,
and that spirit, at once ardent, lofty, and profound, which naturally bows the
hearts and minds of ordinary men, not to obedience only and respect, but to admiration, and almost to worship. The Carthaginian generals felt, it is said, that
no Spanish troops could be trusted, if brought within the sphere of his influence;
Mago must go over to the Balerian islands, and raise soldiers there, who might
be strangers to the name of Scipio; while Masinissa should follow the course
pursued by Mutines in Sicily, and scour the whole country with his Numidian
cavalry, relieving the allies of Carthage, and harassing the states which had revolted.69  But Masinissa himself was not secure from Scipio's ascendency: his
nephew had been made prisoner at Brecula, and had been sent back to him without ransom:7 some conciliatory messages were probably addressed to him at
the same time, and Scipio never lost sight of him, till two years afterwards he
gratified the Namidian's earnest wish for a personal interview, and then attached
him forever to the interests of Rome."7
Meanwhile that memorable year was come, when the fortune of Rome 7 as exposed to its severest trial, and rose in the issue signally triumphant. A.. C. M.sd.
Vainly did Scipio's guards keep vigilant watch in the passes of the batl evades Scipio, and
eastern Pyrenees, looking out for the first signs of Hasdrubal's marches into Italy.
approach, and hoping to win the glory of driving him back defeated, and of
marring his long-planned expedition to Italy. They sat on their mountain posts,
looking earnestly southwards, while he for whom they waited was passing far
on their rear northwards, winning his way through the deep valleys of the chain
of Cebenna, or the high and bleak plains of the Arverni, till he should descend
upon the Rhone, where it was as yet unknown to the Massaliot traders, flowing
far inland in the heart of Gaul. Hasdrubal had accomplished his purpose: his
Spanish soldiers were removed out of the reach of Scipio's ascendency; the accumulated treasures of his Spanish mines had purchased the aid of a numerous
band of Gauls; and the Alps had seemed to smooth their rugged fastnesses to give
him an easy passage. All the strength which Rome could gather was needed
for the coming struggle; and Scipio, as we have seen, sent a large detachment
from his own army, both of Roman soldiers and of Spaniards, to be conveyed by
sea from Tarraco to Etruria, and to assist in conquering the enemy in Italy, whose
march he had been unable to stop in Spain.
Thus, with Hasdrubal's army taken away from the Carthaginian force in Spain,
and with the Roman army weakened by its contributions to the A. U. C. 547. A. C.
defence of Italy, the Spanish war was carried on but feebly dur- 207. Tse campaignof
y,  p                        y      547 not marked by any
ing the summer of the year 547. A new general of the name of decisive events.
Hanno had been sent over to take Hasdrubal's place; and he and Mago proceeded
to raise soldiers amongst the Celtiberians in the interior," while Hasdrubal Gisco
was holding Batica, and while Scipio was still in his winter-quarters at Tarraco,
But some Celtiberian deserters informed Scipio of the danger; and he sent M.
Silenus with a division of his army to put it down. A march of extreme rapidity
enabled him to surprise U1e enemy; the best of Hanno's new levies were cut to
pieces, the rest dispersed. Hanno himself was made prisoner; but Mago carried
off his cavalry and his old infantry without loss, and joined Hasdrubal Gisco safely
in Batica.13 The formation of a Carthaginian army in the centre of Spain was
thus effectually prevented; and Scipio, encouraged by this success, ventured to
resume the offensive, and to advance in pursuit of Hasdrubal Gisco into1the
south. Hasdrubal, instead of risking a general action, broke up his army into
small detachments, with which he garrisoned the more important towns. Scipio
e9 Livy, XXVII. 20.                   7 Livy, XXVIII. 1.
7o Livy, XXVII. 19.                   7 Livy, XXVIII. Appian, VI. 31.
71 Livy, XXVIII. 85.




ï~~l00

HISTORY OF ROME.

[Chp. XLVIL

shrank from the tedious and difficult service of a series of sieges, in a country at a
distance from his resources, and where Mago and Masinissa with their cavalry
would be sure to obstruct, if not destroy, all his communications. But to avoid,
the discredit of retreating without having done any thing, he singled out one of
the wealthiest and strongest of the towns thus garrisoned against him, by name
Oringis, and sent his brother, L. Scipio, with a large division of his army to attack
it. It was stormed after an obstinate resistance; and the conqueror, true to his
brother's policy, after carrying off his Carthaginian prisoners in the garrison,
restored the town unplundered to its Spanish inhabitants.74 Thus much having
been achieved for the honor of the Roman arms, Scipio carried back his whole
army behind the Iberus, sent off L. Scipio to Rome, with Hanno and his other prisoners of distinction, and himself went into winter-quarters as usual at Tarraco.5
But before the end of the season he must have received intelligence of the
A. U. C. 548. A. C. battle of the Metaurus. The troops which he had sent to Italy
206. Scipio becomesaby         pat    lat       bak     hm   snaevr
anxious for a decisiv were probably, in part at least, sent back to him; nd every moaction.       tive combined to make him desirous of marking the next campaign
by sbme decisive action. Nero, whom he had succeeded in Spain, had won
the greatest glory by his victory over Hasdrubal: it became Scipio to show that
he too could serve his country no less effectively.
The Carthaginian general, whether he had been reinforced from Africa, or
Strength and position whether he had used extraordinary vigor in his levies of solof th woarmies.  diers in western Spain, took the field early in the spring of the
year 548, with an army greatly superior to that of his enemy. If Polybius, or
rather Scipio may be trusted, he had 70,000 foot, 4000 horse, and thirty-two
elephants; while the Roman army, with all the aids which Scipio could gather
from the Spanish chiefs in the Roman alliance, did not exceed 45,000 foot, and
3000 horse.6  Hasdrubal took up a position in the midst of the mining district,
near a town which is variously called Elinga and Silpia;n but neither its real
name nor its exact situation can be determined. His camp lay on the last hills
of the mountain country, with a wide extent of open plain in front of it. He
wished to fight, and if possible on this ground, favorable at once to his superior
numbers, and to his elephants.
Scipio, no less anxious to bring on a general battle, marched straight towards
opon fobttl the enemy. But when he saw their numbers, he was uneasy lest
Pparations for battle. the faith of his Spanish allies should fail, as it had towards his
father; he dared not lay much stress on them; yet without them his numbers
were too weak for him to risk a battle. His object therefore was to use his
Spaniards for show, to impose upon the enemy, while he won the battle with his
Romans. And thus, when the day came on which he proposed to fight, he
suddenly changed his dispositions. For some days previously, both armies had
been drawn up in order of battle before their camps; and their cavalry and light
troops had skirmished in the interval between. All this time the Roman troops
had formed the centre of Scipio's line, opposite to Hasdrubal's Africans, while
the Spanish auxiliaries in both armies were on the wings. But on the day of the
decisive battle, the Spaniards formed the centre of Scipio's army, while his Roman
and Italian soldiers were on the right and left. The men had eaten their breakfast before day; and the cavalry and light troops pushed forward close under the
camp of the enemy, as if challenging him to come out and meet them. Behind
this cloud: of skirmishes, the infantry were fast forming, and advancing to the
middle of the plain; and when the sun rose, it shone upon the Roman line, with
its order completed; the Spaniards in 'the centre, the Romans and Italians on
the right and left; the left commanded by M. Silanus and L. Marcius, Scipio in
person leading his right."
"' Livy, XXVIII. 3.                 bius, has been altered into Ilipa, on the au76 Livy, XXVIII. 4.                 thority of Strabo; in the text of Livy the name
' Polybius, XL. 20. Livy, XXVIII. 12.  stands Silpia.
Elinga in the MS. and old text of Poly-  7 Polybius, XL. 22. Livy, XXVIII. 14.




ï~~COu. XLVII.]

CAMPAIGN OF 548.

601

The assault of the Roman cavalry and light troops called out Hasdrubal's
army; the Carthaginians poured forth from their camp without
waiting to eat, just as the Romans had done at the Trebia; their h  i  gge.
cavalry and light troops engaged the enemy; while their infantry formed in its
usual order, with the Spanish auxiliaries on the wings, and the Africans in the
centre. In this state the infantry on both sides remained for a time motionless;
but when the day was advanced, Scipio called off his skirmishers, sent them to
the rear, through the intervals of his maniples, and formed them behind his infantry on both wings; the light infantry immediately behind the regular infantry,
and the cavalry covering all.
For a few moments the Roman line seemed advancing evenly to meet the line
of the enemy. But suddenly the troops on the right wing began Scipio gains a complete
to wheel round to the left, and those on the left wing wheeled to victory.
the right, changing their lines into columns; while the cavalry moved round from
the rear, and took up its position on the outside of the columns; and both infantry and cavalry now advanced with the utmost fury against the enemy. Thus
the centre of the Roman army was held back by the rapid advance of its wings;
and the Africans in Hasdrubal's centre were standing idle, doing nothing, whilst
the battle was raging on their right and left, and y t not venturing to move from
their position to support their wings, because of the enemy in their front, who
threatened every moment to attack, yet still advanced as slowly as possible to give
time for the attacks on the two wings to complete their work. And this work
was not long; Roman and Italian veterans were opposed to newly raised Spaniards; men well fed to men exhausted by their long fast; men perfect in all their
movements, and handled by their general with masterly skill, to barbarians confused by evolutions which neither they nor their officers could deal with. As
usual, the elephants did as much mischief to friends as to foes; and the Carthaginian wings, broken and slaughtered, began to fly. Then the Africans in the
centre commenced their retreat also; slowly at first, as men who had not themselves been beaten; but the flight of their allies infected them; and the Romans
pressed them so hardly, that they too rushed towards their camp with more
haste than order.9 The battle was won; and Scipio said that the camp would
have been won also, had not a violent storm suddenly burst on the field of battle,
and the rain fallen in such a deluge, that the Romans could not stand against it,
but were obliged to seek the shelter of their own camp. Their work, however,
was done; not least probably by the effect which the battle would have on the
minds of the Spaniards. In the Carthaginian army, their countrymen had been
exposed to defeat and slaughter, while the Africans looked on tamely, and moved
neither hand nor foot to aid them; on the other hand, the Spaniards in Scipio's
army had obtained a victory, with no loss to themselves; it had been purchased
altogether by the blood of the Romans.
Accordingly, the Carthaginian generals found that the contest in Spain was
virtually ended. The Spanish soldiers in their army went over in esteno  car.
Destruction of the Car.
large bodies to the enemy; the Spanish towns opened their gates tbaginian dominion i
to the Romans, and put the Carthaginian garrisons into their hands., a.
Hasdrubal and Mago, closely followed by the enemy, retreated by the right
bank of the Bmetis to the shores of the ocean, and effected their escape by sea to
Gades. Masinissa left them, and went home to Africa, not, it is said, without
having a secret interview with M. Silanus, and settling the conditions and manner of its defection. Scipio himself returned by slow marches to Tarraco, inquiring by:the way into the merits or demerits of the various native chiefs, who came
crowding around him to plead their services, and to propitiate the favor of the
new conqueror of Spain. Silanus, whom he had left behind in the south, to witness the final dispersion of the army of Hasdrubal, soon after rejoined him at

'" Polybius, XI. 23, 24. Livy, XXVIII. 15, 16.




ï~~602

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CmAr. XLVII

Tarraco, and reported to him that the war was over, that no enemy was to be
found in the field, from the Pyrenees to the Pillars of Hercules.0 Scipio therefore sent off his brother to Rome, to announce the completion of his work.
His own mind was already turned to another field of action: the expulsion of
Sipo crosses to Afrithe Carthaginians from Spain seemed to him only to be valued as
and negotiatoe. withSy- it might enable him the easier to carry the war into Africa. He
ph a x.       had already won the support of Masinissa: but he desired to se.,
cure a more powerful ally; and accordingly he sent Lmelius over to Africa, to
sound the dispositions of the Masesylian king, Syphax, the most powerful of all
the African princes, and who, although at present in alliance with the Carthaginians, had been, not many years since, their enemy. Syphax told Lmlius that he
would negotiate only with the Roman general in person; and Scipio, relying on
his own personal ascendency, and affecting in all things what was extraordinary,
did not hesitate to leave his province, and to cross over from  New Carthage to
Africa, with only two quinqueremes, in order to visit the Masmesylian king. No
less fortunate than Napoleon, when returning from Egypt to France in his solitary frigate, Scipio crossed the sea without accident, and entered the king's port
in safety, with the Wind so brisk and fair as to carry him into the harbor in a
straight course, in a very short time after his ships had first been seen from the
shore.8' In the harbor, by the strangest of chances, were seven ships of the
Carthaginians, which had just brought Hasdrubal from Spain with the very same
object as Scipio, th secure the alliance of king Syphax; it having been known,
probably, that a Roman officer had lately visited his court, with purposes which
could not be doubtful. Hasdrubal and Scipio met under the roof of Syphax;
and by his special request, they were present at the same entertainment.82 Laelius, who had accompanied his friend to Africa, magnified the charms of his address and conversation, according to his usual practice, and told Polybius, many
years afterwards, that Hasdrubal had expressed to Syphax his great admiration
of Scipio's genius, which, he said, appeared to him more dangerous in peace than
in war.83  Lmlius further declared that Syphax was so overcome by Scipio's influence, as to conclude a treaty of alliance with him," which treaty, however, we
may be very sure, was not one of those which Polybius found preserved in the
capitol. It is very possible that Syphax amused Scipio with fair promises; but
in reality Hasdrubal negotiated more successfully than his Roman rival; and the
beauty of his daughter, Sophonisba, was more powerful over the mind of
Syphax, than all the fascinations of Scipio's eloquence and manners.8"  Scipio,
however, was satisfied with the si.eess of his mission, and returned again to
New Carthage.
It is manifest that, when Scipio and Silanus returned from the south of Spain
rns.nrection of theo span- to Tarraco, after the dispersion of the Carthaginian army, they imlards.        agined that their work was done; and they cannot have expected
to be called out again to active operations in the same year. But, after Scipio's
return from his voyage to Africa, we find him again taking the field in the south:
we find a general revolt of the Spanish chiefs, who had so lately joined him; and
what is most startling, we find his own Roman army breaking out into an alarming mutiny. Livy's explanation is, simply, that the present appeared a favorable
opportunity to punish those Spanish towns which had made themselves most
obnoxious to Rome in the course of the war, and on which it would not have been
expedient to take vengeance earlier."6 But surely, if any such intention had been
entertained a few weeks sooner, the Roman army would never have been marched back behind the Iberus, but would have proceeded at once to attack the obnoxious towns, as soon as Hasdrubal and Mago had retired to Gades, and the
SLivy, XXVIII. 16.                   s' Livy, XXVIII. 18.
e1 Livy, XXVIII. 17.                 "b Livy, XXIX. 23.
s Livy, XXVIII. 18.                  e6 Livy, XXVIII. 19.
83 XI. Fragm. Mai. Livy, XXVIII. 18.




ï~~CHA. XLVII.]

SIEGE OF ILLITURGI.

603

Carthaginian army was broken up. Either the Spaniards must have given some
new provocation, which called Scipio again into the field; or some new motive
must have influenced him, which hitherto he had not felt, and, outweighing all
other considerations, forced him to retrace his steps to the south.
Either of these causes is sufficiently probable. Mago had by this time received
instructions from Hannibal; and acting under such direction, he
was not likely to abandon Spain to the Romans without another Pobbl    it.
struggle. We read of a Carthaginian garrison in Castulo, which is said to have
fled thither after the dispersion of Hasdrubal's army;87 but it may also have been
sent thither by Mago from Gades, to assist in organizing a new rising against the
Romans. The mines were still in his hands; and he probably employed their
treasures liberally. Nor were causes wanting to rouse the Spaniards, without
any foreign instigation. If they had admired Scipio, they had since found that
his virtues did not restrain the license of his army; the Roman soldiers had
fleshed themselves with the plunder of Spain, and were likely to return after a
moment's respite, and fall again upon their prey. On the other hand, the Roman
army, like the Spaniards afterwards in America, may have been so eager to
prosecute their conquest, and to win more of the wealth of Spain, that their
general found it impossible not to gratify them; or they may have sh4 wn symptoms of license and turbulence, which made it desirable to keep them actively
employed, that they might not have leisure to contrive mischief: whatever was
the cause, the Roman army again marched into the south of Spain. L. Marcius
was ordered to attack Castulo; Scipio himself laid siege to Illiturgi.
Illiturgi stood on the north, or right bank of the Bmtis, near to the site of the
present town of Andujar, and not far therefore from Baylen, and Sitation sd state ofl
from the scene of the almost solitary triumph of the Spanish arms Illitrgi.
in the war with Napoleon. Its people had been allies of the Carthaginians, and
had revolted to Rome, when the two Scipios first advanced into the south of
Spain;"8 but after their defeat and death, Illiturgi had gone back to the alliance
of Carthage; and the Roman fugitives from the rout of the two Scipios, who
escaped to Illiturgi, were either cut off by the inhabitants, or given up by them
to the Carthaginians. Such was the Roman account of the matter; and Castulo
was charged with a similar defection after the defeat of the Scipios, a defection
however not aggravated, as at Illiturgi, by any particular acts of hostility.89
Vengeance was now to be taken for this alleged treason. Without any terms
of peace offered or solicited on either side, the Romans prepared Itcapture anddestrue.to attack Illiturgi, and the Spaniards with all their national ob- tion.
stinacy to defend it. They fought so stoutly, that the Romans were more than
once repulsed; and Scipio was at last obliged to offer to lead the assault in person, and was preparing to mount the first ladder, when a general shout of his
soldiers called upon him to forbear: with an overwhelming rush of numbers they
crowded up the ladders in many places at once, and drove the defenders by
main force from the ramparts. At the same moment, Laelius scaled the walls
on the opposite side of the city; and some African deserters, who were now in
the Roman service, men trained to all feats of daring activity, climbed up the
almost precipitous cliff on which the citadel was built, and surprised it without
i esistance.9Â~ Then followed a horrible massacre, in which neither age nor sex
was spared; and when the sword had done its work upon the people, fire was
let loose upon the buildings of the city, and Illiturgi was totally destroyed.
Scipio then marched to Castulo to support L. Marcius, who had been able, it
seems, to make no impression with the force under his separate Capture of Cstl
command. But Scipio's arrival, fresh from the storming of Illi-   fcato
turgi, struck terror into the besieged; and the Spaniards hoped to make their

az Livy, XXVIII. 20.
ea Livy, XXIII. 49.

L  Livy, XXVIII. 19.
L I  Livy, XXVIII. 19, 20,




ï~~604

HISTORY OF ROME.

[On". XLVII.

peace by surrendering, not their town only, but a Carthaginian garrison, which
was engaged jointly with them in its defence. The Romans treated Castulo, says
Livy, more mildly than they had treated Illiturgi; which seems to imply that
even at Castulo blood was shed after the town was taken, though it did not
amount to an indiscriminate massacre.9
After the second conquest, Scipio left it to L. Marcius to complete the work,
of Astapo self-devo whether of vengeance or of ambition, by the subjugation of the
Lion of its inhabitants. other towns of Bmtica, while he himself returned to New Carthage.92  Marcius crossed the Bmtis, and received the submission of some of the
towns on the left bank; but the inhabitants of one place, Astapa, which had
rendered itself obnoxious, by carrying on an active guerilla warfare against the
Roman detached parties and communications, exhibited one of those shocking instances of desperation which testify so painfully to the miserable lot of the vanquished in ancient carfare. They erected a great pile in the middle of their city,
on which they threw all their ornaments and most valuable property, and then
bade their wives and children ascend it, and sit down quietly on the top. Fifty
chosen men were left to keep watch beside the pile, while the rest of the citizens
sallied out against the Romans, determined to fight till they were cut to pieces.
They fell to a man, selling their lives dearly: in the mean while the fifty men left
by the pile performed their dreadful task; they set it on fire; they butchered
the woimen and children who were placed on it, and then threw themselves into
the flames. The Roman soldiers lost their plunder, and exclaimed against the
desperate ferocity of the people of Astapa.
After this tragedy, the neighboring towns submitted; and Marcius returned to
Offer to surrender a- his general at New Carthage. But he was not allowed to rest:
***           for a secret deputation came to Scipio from Gades, offering to surrender the city to him, along with the Carthaginian fleet and garrison employed
in maintaining it, and Mago their general, Hannibal's brother. Again therefore
Marcius took the field with a light division of the army; and Lnelius accompanied
him by sea with a small squadron, to ascertain whether the offer could really be
executed.94
It was now late in the summer; and the season, combined with the fatigue and
seopo'sil.ness: mutiny excitement which he had undergone, brought on a serious illness
uthe Roman army.  upon Scipio, which rumor magnified, spreading the tidings over
Spain that the great Roman general could not live. At once, it is said, the
fidelity of the Spanish chiefs was shaken: Mandonius and Indibilus, who had regarded Scipio with such extreme veneration, cared nothing for the Roman people,
and prepared to assert their country's independence, by driving out the Roman
army' But a worse mischief was threatening; a division of eight thousand Roman or Italian soldiers, who were quartered in a stationary camp on the Sucro, at
once as a reserve for the army engaged in the field, and as a covering force to
keep the more northern parts of Spain quiet, broke out into open mutiny; and
having driven their tribunes from the camp, they conferred the command on two
private soldiers, the one C. Atrius, of the allied people of the Umbrians, and the
other C. Albius, of the Latin colony of Cales. It is probable that this division
of Scipio's army consisted almost entirely of Latins and Italian allies; and the
generals chosen accordingly represented both of these, and assumed the full state
of Roman generals, causing the lictors to go before them, and to bear the rods
and axes, which were the symbol of the consul's imperium, his absolute power of
life and death.95
The alleged grievance of the mutinous soldiers was, that their pay was greatly
itean... es Seipio's re. in arrears. This indeed was likely to be the case, the treasury of
*.ver.        Rome being ill able to meet the numerous demands for the public
" Livy, XXVIII. 20.                    4 Livy, XXVIII. 28.
' Livy, XXVIII. 21.                  8 Livy, XXVIII. 24.
Q Livy, XXVIII. 22, 23. Appian, VI. 33.  9 Livy, XXVIII. 25.




ï~~COAr. XLVII.]

SCIPIO'S POLITIC CONDUCT.

605

service; and as the Spanish army had avowedly been left to its own resources
as to money, it is probable that the soldiers were allowed to plunder the more
freely, in order to reconcile them to their not being paid in the regular manner.
Scipio himself was charged with injuring the discipline of his army by his indulgence: here, as in other things, it was in his character to rely on his own personal ascendency; and he thought that he might dispense with the constant
strictness necessary to ordinary men, as he was sure that his soldiers would never
be disobedient to him. But however lax his discipline was, troops at a distance
from the seat of war, and quartered amongst a friendly or submissive people,
must be somewhat restrained in their license of plunder; and accordingly, even
before Scipio's illness, the soldiers on the Sucro complained that they were
neither paid regularly as in peace, nor allowed to provide for themselves as in
war. And when they heard that Scipio was at the point of death, and that the
Spaniards in the north were revolting from Rome, they hoped to draw their own
profit out of these troubledwaters, and, following the example of the Campanians
at Rhegium, to secure a city for themselves, and to live in luxury upon the plunder and the tributes of the surrouiding people.9"  It is said that Mago from Gades
sent them money, to prevail on them to enter into the service of Carthage, and
that they took the money, but did no more than appoint their own generals, take
oath of fidelity to one another, and remain in a state of open revolt from Rome.9s
They probably thought that they might establish themselves in Spain without
serving any government at all; and that their own swords were more to be relied
on than Mago's promises. While this was the state of affairs on the Sucro,
tidings came, not of Scipio's death, but of his convalescence; and presently seven
military tribunes arrived in the camp, sent by Scipio to prevent the soldiers from
breaking out into any worse outrage. The tribunes affected to rejoice that matters had not been carried to any greater extremity; they acknowledged the
former services of the troops, and said that Scipio was not a man to forget or
leave them unrewarded; meanwhile the general would endeavor to raise money
from the subject tribes of Spain, to make good their arrears of pay. Accordingly
soon afterwards a proclamation appeared, inviting the soldiers to come to New
Carthage to receive it.90
Scipio's recovery was felt from one end of Spain to the other; the revolted
Spaniards gave up their hostile purposes, and returned quietly to The mutineer come to
their homes; and the soldiers on the Sucro, moved at once by the New Carthage.
fear of resisting one whom the gods seemed to favor in all things, and by the
hope of receiving, not only pardon for their fault, but the very pay which they
demanded, resolved to march in a body to New Carthage. As they drew near
to that city, the seven tribunes, who had visited their camp on the Sucro, came
to meet them, gave them fair words, and mentioned, as if incidentally, that M.
Silanus, with the troops at New Carthage, was to march the next morning to put
down the revolt of Mandonius and Indibilis. Delighted to find that Scipio would
thus be left without any force at his disposal, they entered New Carthage in high
spirits: there they saw the troops all busy in preparations for their departure;
and they were told that the general was rejoiced at their seasonable arrival, to
supply the place of the soldiers who were going to leave him. In perfect confidence they dispersed to their quarters for the night. '0
Thus the prey had run blindly into the snare. The seven tribunes, who met
the soldiers on their march, had each been furnished with the names
of five of the principal ringleaders, whom they were to secure in They are surrounded.
the course of the evening without disturbance. Accordingly they invited them
to supper in their quarters, seized them all, and kept them in close custody till
the next morning. But all else was quiet: the baggage of the army which was

7 Livy, XXVIII. 24.
0 Appian, VI. 84.

9 Livy, XXVIII. 25.
10 Livy, XXVIII. 26.




ï~~606

HISTORY OF ROME.

[CArP. XLVII

to take the field against the Spaniards began to move before daybreak; about
dawn the columns of the troops formed in the streets, and marched out of the
town. But they halted at the gates; and parties were sent round to every other
gate to secure them all, and to take care that no one should leave the city. In
the mean time the troops from the Sucro were summoned to the forum to meet
their general; and they -crowded impatiently to the place, without their arms, as
was the custom of the Greek soldiers on similar occasions. No sooner were they
all assembled, than the columns from the gates marched into the town, and occupied all the streets leading to the market-place. Then Scipio presented himself on his tribunal, and sat a while in silence. But as soon as he heard that the
prisoners, who had been secured on the preceding evening, were brought up, the
crier, with his loud clear voice, commanded silence, and Scipio arose to speak.101
The scene had been prepared with consummate art; and its effect was overwhelming. The mutinous soldiers saw themselves completely in
e y the punishment of their general's power; they listened in breathless anxiety to his
hringleaders,  address, and with joy beyond all hope heard his concluding sentence, that he freely pardoned the multitude, and that justice would be satisfied
with the punishment of those who had misled them. The instant he ceased
speaking, the troops posted in the adjoining streets clashed their swords on their
shields, as if they were going to attack the mutineers; and the crier's voice was
again heard calling the names of the thirty-five ringleaders, one after another, to
receive the punishment to which they had been condemned. They were brought
forth, already stripped and bound; each was fastened to his stake; and all underwent their sentence, being first scourged, and then beheaded. When all was
finished the bodies were dragged away, to be thrown out of the city; the place
of execution was cleansed from the blood; and the soldiers from the Sucro heard
the general and the other officers swear to grant them a free pardon with an entire amnesty for the past. They were then summoned by the crier, one by one,
to appear before the general to take the usual military oath of obedience, after
which each man received his full arrears of pay.l2 Never was mutiny quelled
with more consummate ability; and Scipio's ascendency over his soldiers after
this memorable scene was doubtless more complete than ever.
The punishment of the mutineers, however, we are told, rendered the revolted
The revole d Spaniards Spaniards desperate. Thinking that they had already done enough.areaubdued.  to draw down Scipio's vengeance, they resolved to try the chances
of war, and again took the field, and began to attack the allies of the Romans on
the north of the Iberus. Scipio lost not a moment in marching in pursuit of
them: he was not sorry to employ his soldiers against the enemy, as the surest
means of effacing the recollection of their recent disorders; and he spoke of the
Spaniards with bitter contempt, as barbarians equally powerless and faithless, on
whom he was resolved to take signal vengeance. In ten days he marched from
New Carthage to the Iberus; and on the fourth day after crossing the river he
came in sight of the enemy. He engaged and totally defeated them, not, however, without a loss of more than four thousand men killed and wounded; and
immediately after the battle the chiefs threw themselves on his mercy. He required nothing more than the immediate payment of a sum of money, which was
to make good the money lately advanced or borrowed to pay the soldiers after the
mutiny; and then, leaving Silanus at Tarraco, he returned to New Carthage.'a'
Even yet he would not allow himself to rest. Leaving the mass of his army
Scipi o's interview with at New Carthage, he joined L. Marcius, his lieutenant, in the
Masinissa.    neighborhood of Gades, for the sole purpose, it is said, of gratifying Masinissa's earnest desire of a personal interview. Masinissa had returned
from Africa to Gades, and was professedly consulting with Mago how one more
'o, Livy, XXVIII. 26.                103 Polybius, XI. 81-33. Livy, XXVIII.
12 Polybius, XI. 80. Livy, XXVIII. 29. Ap- 81-84.
plian, VI. 36.




ï~~CHAP. XLVII.]

MAGO EVACUATES SPAIN.

607

attempt might be made to restore the Carthaginian dominion in Spain. But his
mind was already made up to join the Romans; and he took the opportunity of
a pretended plundering excursion with his Numidian cavalry to arrange and effect
a meeting with Scipio. He too, it is said, like all other men, was overawed at
once, and delighted by Scipio's personal appearance, manner, and conversation;
he promised the most zealous aid to the Romans, and urged Scipio to cross over
as soon as possible into Africa, where he might be able to serve him most effectually.'04  Scipio's keen discernment of character taught him the value of Masinissa's friendship; and his journey from New Carthage to Gades, in order to
secure it, was abundantly rewarded afterwards; for had Masinissa fought in Hannibal's army, Scipio, in all probability, would never have won the day at Zama.
Mago heard of the termination of the mutiny in the Roman army, and of the
defeat of the revolted Spaniards in the north; and he found that Mago eva ates spain,
the Roman army was again returned to New Carthage, and that,,nMinorca orinvading
all hopes of making head against Rome in Spain were, for the Italy.
present, at an end. Hannibal summoned him to Italy; and the Carthaginian
government, acting, as it seems, cordially upon Hannibal's views, ordered him to
obey his brother's call. It was not the least bold enterprise of this great war, to
plan the invasion of Italy from Gades, at a time when the whole of Spain, from
the Pillars of Hercules to the Pyrenees, was possessed by the enemy. But
Scipio, to strengthen his land forces, had laid up the greater part of his fleet;
and the exertions of the Carthaginian government, or his own, had provided Mago
with a naval force, small probably in point of numbers, but consisting of excellent
ships manned by skilful seamen, and capable, if ably used, of rendering essential
service. He was supplied with money from Carthage; and he levied large contributions, it is said, on the people of Gades, and even emptied their treasury,
and stripped their temples.'5  He then put to sea, so late in the season, that
Scipio was gone back to Tarraco, and was preparing to return to Rome; and the
Roman army being gone into its winter-quarters behind the Iberus, New Carthage
was left to the protection of its own garrison. This encouraged Mago to attempt
to surprise the place; but in this he failed: he then crossed over to the Island
of Pityusa (Iviza), which was held by the Carthaginians; and having there received supplies of provisions and of men, he proceeded to attack the two Balerian
islands, now called Majorca and Minorca.   He was repulsed from the larger
island, but made himself master of the smaller: there he landed his men, and
drew up his ships, and purposed to pass the winter, the season securing him
from any attack by sea, perhaps even hiding his movements altogether from the
knowledge of the Romans; while he lay in readiness to catch the first return of
spring, and to run over to Italy, and establish himself on the coast of Liguria, in
the midst of a warlike population, furnishing the materials of a future army.'Â~6
Spain was thus abandoned by the Carthaginians; and Gades, left to itself,
went over to the Roman alliance, and concluded a treaty with L. Treaty with Gader.
Marcius, which for two centuries formed the basis of its relations Scipiooreturns to Rome.
with Rome."t7 He had probably been left in command at New Carthage, when
Scipio returned to Tarraco. Scipio himself was known to be desirous of leaving
Spain, and offering himself as a candidate for the consulship; and accordingly
L. Lentulus and L. Manlius Acidius were appointed proconsuls to succeed him
and M. Silanus in the command of the Roman army and province. Scipio meanwhile, accompanied by C. Lelius, returned to Rome; he could not have a triumph, because he had been neither consul nor pretor; but he entered the city
with some display, with an immense treasure of silver, in money and in ingots,
which he deposited in the treasury; and his name was so popular, that he was
0 Livy, XXVIII. 35.                   1 Livy, XXVIII. 87. Aprian, VI. 87. See
10 Livy, XXVIII. 86.                Cicero pro Cornelio, c. XVII.
M Livy, CXXVIIe c7.




ï~~608

HISTORY OF ROME.

[SUPPLEMENT.

elected consul immediately, with an almost unanimous feeling in his favor. His
colleague was P. Licinius Crassus, who at that time held the dignity of Pontifex
Maximus.',s
Thus the war, being altogether extinguished in Spain, was reduced as it were
Prospects of the war in to Italy only; and there it smoldered rather than blazed; for
Ita.          Hannibal with his single army could do no more than maintain his
ground in Bruttium. Was it possible that Mago might kindle a fierce flame in
Liguria? might blow up the half-extinguished ashes in Etruria, and reviving the
fire in the south, spread the conflagration around the walls of Rome? This was
not beyond possibility: but Scipio, impatient of defensive warfare, and himself
the conqueror of a vast country, was eager to stop the torrent at its source, rather
than raise barriers against it, when it was sweeping down the valley: he was
bent on combating Hannibal, not in Italy, but in Africa.
SUPPLEMENT.
[WITH the preceding chapter the work is unfortunately terminated. From a note in
the margin, that chapter appears to have been finished on the 5th of May; on the 12th
of June the author breathed his last. Two more chapters at least would have been
requisite to bring the history down to the end of the Second Punie War; for the heading
of the forty-eighth chapter shows what it was intended to contain:-Last years of the
war in Italy-Consulship of P. Scipio-Scipio in Sicily-Siege of Locri-Scipio in
Africa-His victories over Hasdrubal Gisco and Syphax-The Carthaginians recall Hannibal and Mago from Italy-A. u. c. 548 to A. U. c. 551.
Every reader of the foregoing narrative of one of the most interesting and eventful
periods in ancient history, must regret that the author was not allowed to carry it on to
the close of the war. As the best substitute for that which we should have had, the
following account of the last years of the war, written by Dr. Arnold in the year 1823,
for the life of Hannibal in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, is here inserted.]
The defeat and destruction of Hasdrubal's army reduced Hannibal to the necesAdventures and death sity of acting entirely on the defensive.  It had been for some time
of Mago.      evident, that his single army could not overthrow the supremacy
of Rome in Italy. Still, while the fate of the war was balanced in Spain and
Sicily, and while he was looking forward to the arrival of his brother to co-operate with him, he might be justified in making himself as troublesome as possible
to the enemy, even though by so doing he might sometimes incur the danger of
some loss. But now his policy was altered: to maintain his ground in Italy, till
another effort could be made by his government to support him, was become his
most important duty. He was obliged to abandon several towns which had revolted to him from the Romans; and he forced the inhabitants of others to desert
their homes, and to retire with him into the remotest part of Bruttium. The
superiority of his personal character was so great, that the Romans never dared
to attack him; and thus he might repose for a while, watching the first favorable opportunity of issuing from his retreat, and attempting once more to accomplish the design with which he had originally invaded Italy. The death of Hasdrubal had not extinguished all his hopes. Mago, after the total wreck of the

" Livy, XXVIII. 88.




ï~~OUPPLEMENT.]

HANNIBAL EVACUATES ITALY.

609

Carthaginian interest in Spain, was ordered, as we have seen, to attempt a diver-.
sion in Italy, and transporting a small force with him by sea, landed in Liguria, and
surprised the town of Genoa.1 The name of his family urged the Gauls and Ligurians to flock to his standard; and his growing strength excited much alarm
among the Romans, and obliged them to keep a large army in the north of Italy
to watch his movements. The details of his adventures are unknown; nor are
we informed what cause prevented him from attempting to penetrate into Tuscany. We only find that he became so formidable an enemy as to maintain an
obstinate contest against an army of four Roman legions, a few weeks before the
final evacuation of Italy by Hannibal; nor were the Romans certain of victory,
till Mago was mortally wounded, and obliged to leave the field. From the scene
of this battle, which is said to have been in the country of the Insubrian Gauls,
he retreated with as much expedition as his wound would allow, to the coast of
Liguria; and there he found orders from Carthage that he should immediately
return to Africa, to oppose the alarming progress of P. Scipio. He accordingly
embarked with his troops, and commenced his voyage homewards: but his exertions and anxiety of mind had proved too great for his strength; and he had
scarcely passed the coast of Sardinia, when he expired. So unwearied was the
zeal, and so great the ability, with which the sons of Hamilcar maintained the
cause of their country, alniost solely by their personal efforts, against the overbearing resources and energy of the Roman people.
When the Carthaginian government sent for Mago from Italy, they also recalled Hannibal. The account of his operations during the three Hannibal evacuates Itor four years that preceded his return to Africa is peculiarly un- ay.
satisfactory. The Roman writers have transmitted some reports of victories obtained over him in Italy, too audacious in falsehood for even themselves to have
believed. But, in truth, the terror with which he continued to inspire his enemies, after his career of success was closed, is even more wonderful than his first
brilliant triumphs. For four years after the death of Hasdrubal, he remained in
undisputed possession of Bruttium, when the Romans had reconquered all the
rest of Italy. Here he maintained his army, without receiving any supplies from
home, and with no other naval force at his disposal, than such vessels as he could
build from the Bruttium forests, and man with the sailors of the country. Here
too he seems to have looked forward to the renown which awaited him in aftertimes; and as if foreseeing the interest with which posterity would follow his
progress in his unequalled enterprise, he recorded many minute particulars of his
campaigns on monumental columns, erected at Lacinium,2 a town situated in that
corner of Italy, which was so long like a new country acquired by conquest, for
himself and his soldiers. At length, when it was plain that no new diversion
could be effected in his favor, and when the dangerous situation of his country
called for his presence, as the last hope of Carthage, he embarked his troops
without the slightest interruption from the Romans; and moved only by the disasters of others, while his own army was. unbroken and unbeaten, he abandoned'
Italy fifteen years after he had first entered it, having ravaged it with fire and
sword from one extremity to the other, and having never seen his numercus victories checkered by a single defeat.
Scipio, meanwhile, after his important services, in Spain,. had returned to Rome,
and been elected consul, hoping to carry into execution the design A.. c. 5. A. C..
which he had for some time conceived, of forcing Hannibal to leave 204. Scipio carries the
Italy, by attacking the Carthaginians in Africa. But according to war into Africa.
the invariable policy of Rome, he was desirous of securing the aid of some ally
in the country which he was going to make the seat of war. For this end, as we
have seen, he had already opened a communication with Syphax, the most considerable of the Numidian princes, and, according to Livy, had actually concluded
a treaty with him. But Syphax was won over to the interests of Carthage by
2 Livy, XXVIII. 46. XXX. 18.            Polybius, III. 88, 56.
39




ï~~610

HISTORY OF ROME.

[SUPPLEMEN.

the charms of Sophonisba, the daughter of Hasdrubal Gisco; and a short time
before Scipio crossed over into Africa, he sent to inform him of his new connection, and to dissuade him from his intended expedition, as he should now be
obliged to join the Carthaginians in opposing him. Scipio, however, was not yet
without the prospect of finding allies in Africa. Masinissa had deserted the Carthaginian cause after its disasters in Spain, and had privately pledged himself to
support the Romans on the first opportunity. Since that time he had been deprived of his paternal dominions by the united efforts of Syphax and the Carthaginians; but though his power was thus reduced, his zeal in the cause of Romo
was likely to be the more heightened; and as his personal character was high
among his countrymen, many of them might be expected to join him, when they
saw him supported by a Roman army. Accordingly, he united himself3 to Scipio
so soon as he had landed in Africa; and his activity, and perfect familiarity with
the country and its inhabitants, made him a very valuable auxiliary. The landing had been effected within a few miles of Carthage itself; and after some plunder, amongst which eight thousand prisoners to be scid for slaves are particularly
specified, had been collected from the adjoining country, the army formed the
siege of Utica, whilst a considerable fleet co-operated with it on the side of the
sea. But the approach of Hasdrubal Gisco and Syphax, at the head of two immense armies of Carthaginians and Numidians, induced Scipio to raise the siege,
and to remove his troops to a strong position near the sea, where he proposed
to remain, as winter was fast approaching, and secure of subsistence, through
the co-operation of his fleet, to wait for some favorable opportunity of striking a
vigorous blow.
His first hope was4 to win over Syphax again to the Roman cause; and with
He destros the Carthis view his emissaries were continually going and returning beHie destroy, the Carthaginian and Numid- tween the Roman and Numidian camps. Their temptations to
ian army.     Syphax were ineffectual: but their report of the manner in which
the Carthaginian and Numidian armies were quartered, suggested to Scipio the
possibility of insuring success by other means than negotiation. They related,
that the Carthaginians were lodged in huts constructed of stakes or hurdles, and
covered with leaves, and that the Numidian quarters were composed of similar
materials, of reeds, thatch, and dried leaves. Upon this intelligence Scipio conceived the plan of setting fire to both the camps of the enemy. In order to gain
a more perfect knowledge of their situation, and the approaches to them, he pretended to listen to the terms of peace which Syphax had before proposed to him
in vain. Under pretence of negotiation, he was for some months in constant correspondence with the Numidian king; and disguising some of his most intelligent
soldiers in the dress of slaves, he procured them an easy entrance into the enemy's camp, as forming part of the suite of the officers employed in the negotiation. At last, when the season for military operations was returning, and his
seemingly sincere desire of peace had thrown the enemy into a state of perfect
security, he suddenly broke off all communication with them, declaring that, however disposed he himself was to agree to the proposed terms, the other members
of the military council were fixed on rejecting them. This sudden rupture disappointed Syphax; but neither he nor the Carthaginian general had any suspicion
of Scipio's real designs; when suddenly the Roman army marched out by night
in two divisions, the one commanded by Scipio, and the other by Lmelius, his
second in command, and advanced against the camps of the enemy, which were
not more than six miles from their 'own. La lius, assisted by Masinissa, first
silently approached the encampment of the Numidians, and set fire to the first
tents that he met with. The flames spread so rapidly, that the Numidians were
soon precluded from approaching the quarter where they had first broken out,
and thus, having no suspicion that they had been kindled-by the enemy, crowded: Livy, XXIX. 29.

4 Polybius, XIV. 1, &e.




ï~~,UPPLEMENT.]

SCIPIO'S VICTORIES IN AFRICA.

611

together in the utmost disorder to effect their escape out of the camp. Numbers
were trampled to death in the confusion at the several outlets; numbers were
overtaken by the flames and burnt to death; and the rest, on reaching the open
country, found themselves intercepted by Masinissa, who had posted his troops in
the quarter to which he knew that the fugitives were most likely to direct their
flight. In this manner the whole Numidian army, amounting to sixty thousand
men, was completely destroyed or dispersed, with the exception of Syphax himself and a few horsemen.
Meanwhile the Carthaginians, when they first saw the camp of their allies on
fire, not doubting that it was occasioned by accident, began partly to run with
assistance to the Numidians, and the rest rushed hastily out of their tents, without their arms, and stood on the outside of the camp, contemplating the progress
of this fearful conflagration with dismay. In this he'pless state they found themselves attacked by the enemy, under the command of Scipio in person: some
were instantly cut down; and the rest, driven back into their camp, saw it set
on fire by their pursuers. They then understood the whole extent of the calamity
which had befallen their allies and themselves; but resistance and flight were
alike impracticable; the fire spread with fury to every quarter; and every avenue
was choked up by a struggling crowd of men and horses, all striving with the
same distracted efforts to effect their escape. In this attempt, Hasdrubal and a
few followers alone succeeded; thirty thousand men, who had composed the
Carthaginian army, perished. The annals of war contain no bloodier tragedy.
Hasdrubal, hopeless of delaying the progress of the enemy, continued his flight
to Carthage; while Syphax had retreated into the opposite direc- He gains another vic.
tion towards his own dominions, and was endeavoring to rally the tory.
wrecks of his army. After much debate in the Carthaginian supreme council, it
was resolved that the fortune of war should be tried once more. Syphax was
prevailed upon to join his troops to theirs,.instead of confining himself to the defence of Numidia; and the recent arrival of four thousand Spaniards, who had
been enlisted by Carthaginian agents in Spain, encouraged the two confederates
to hope for a successful issue. Scipio was so engrossed with the siege of Utica,
which he had pushed with additional vigor after his late victory, that he
allowed the enemy to unite their forces, and appear again in the field with no
fewer than thirty thousand men. But when he heard of their junction, he lost
no time in advancing to meet them; and engaging them a second time, in little
more than a month after the destruction of their former armies, he again totally
defeated them, and obliged their two generals to fly once more, Syphax to Numidia, and Hasdrubal to Carthage.
The victors now divided their forces: Laelius and Masinissa were dispatched
in pursuit of Syphax; and in a short time Masinissa recovered his
A. U. C. 52.  A. C.
father's kingdom; and Syphax, having risked a third battle, was o02. Defeat and cptare of Syphax. The
not only defeated as before, but was himself made prisoner, and Cart  agiaia nane for
his capital fell into the hands of the enemy. Scipio meantime peace.
overran the country towards Carthage, receiving or forcing the submission of the
surrounding towns, and enriching his soldiers with an immense accumulation of
plunder. The chief part of this, in order to lighten his army, he sent back to his
winter-quarters before Utica; and then he advanced as far as Tunis, and finding
that important place abandoned by its garrison, posted himself there, hoping by
his presence in the immediate neighborhood of the capital, to terrify the Carthaginians into complete submission. But they had not yet abandoned more resolute counsels; and instead of suing for peace, they determined to send messengers to Italy, to recall Hannibal and Mago, and, in the mean time, to make an
attempt to raise the blockade of Utica, by destroying the Roman fleet., The attempt was made, and was partly successful; but this slight advantage was so far
overbalanced by the defeat and capture of Syphax, intelligence of which reached
Carthage about the same time, that the further prosecution of the war appeared




ï~~612

HISTORY OF ROME.

[STJPPLEM,ff

desperate, and a deputation from the council of elders was sent to Scipio to solicit
terms of peace. It is said that these deputies forgot their own and their country's dignity in the humbleness of their entreaties: they moved Scipio, however,
to dictate such conditions as he might well deem a sufficient recompense of his
victories; conditions which, by obliging the Carthaginians to evacuate Italy and
Gaul,-to cede Spain and all the islands between Italy and Africa,-to give up
all their ships of war, except twenty,-and to pay an immense contribution of
corn and money,-sufficiently declared the complete triumph of the Roman
arms. Hard as they were, the Carthaginians judged them sufficiently favorable
to be accepted without difficulty. A truce was concluded with Scipio; and ambassadors were sent to Rome to procure the ratification of the senate and people.
With regard to the transactions that followed, we are more than ever obliged
Interruption of the ne- to regret the want of a Carthaginian historian. Wherever the
gotiations.   family of Scipio is concerned the impartiality of Polybius becomes
doubtful; and besides, we have only fragments of this part of his narrative, so
that we cannot exactly fix the dates of the several events, a point which here becomes of considerable importance. According to our only existing authorities,
the Carthaginians, emboldened by the arrival of Hannibal, or, according to Livy,
by the mere expectation of his arrival, wantonly broke the truce subsisting between them and Scipio, by detaining some Roman transports which had been
driven by a storm into the bay of Carthage; and then denied satisfaction to the
officers whom Scipio sent to complain of this outrage; and lastly, in defiance of
the law of nations, endeavored to seize the officers themselves on their way back
to the Roman camp at Utica. By such conduct the resentment of Scipio is described to have been very naturally provoked; and the war was renewed with
greater animosity. than ever. This, no doubt, was Scipio's own report of these
transactions, which Polybius, the intimate friend of his adopted grandson, and
deriving his information, in part at least, from Lelius, in all probability sincerely
believed. But it is probable that a Carthaginian narrative of the war in Africa
would so represent the matter, that posterity would esteem the behavior of the
Carthaginians, in breaking off the truce when it suited their purposes, as neither
more nor less dishonorable than the conduct of Scipio himself, when he set fire
to the camps of Syphax and Hasdrubal; and that, although the success was different, yet the treachery in both cases, whatever it may have been, was pretty
nearly equal.
Hannibal, we are told, landed at Leptis,5 at what season of the year we know
not; and after refreshing his troops for some time at Adrumetum,
Battle ofZans.  he took the field, and advanced to the neighborhood of Zama, a
town situated, as Polybius describes it, about five days' journey from Carthage,
towards the west. It seems that Scipio was busied in overrunning the country,
and in subduing the several towns, when he was interrupted in these operations
by the approach of the Carthaginian army. He is said to have detected some
spies sent by Hannibal to observe his position; and by causing them to be led
carefully round his camp, and then sent back in safety to Hannibal, he so excited
the admiration of his antagonist, as to make him solicit a personal interview, with
the hope of effecting a termination of hostilities. The report of this conference,
and of the speeches of the two generals, savors greatly of the style of Roman
family memoirs, the most unscrupulous in falsehood of any pretended records of
facts that the world has yet seen. However, the meeting ended in nothing;
and the next day the two armies were led out into the field for the last decisive
struggle. The numbers on each side we have no knowledge of; but probably
neither was in this respect much superior. Masinissa, however, with four thousand Numidian cavalry, besides six thousand infantry, had joined Scipio a few
days before the battle; while Hannibal, who had so often been indebted to the

* Livy, XXX. 25, &c. Polybius, XV. 1, &c.




ï~~SUPPLEMENT.]

BATTLE OF ZAMA

(113

services pf Numidians, had now, on this great occasion, only two thousand horse
of that nation to oppose to the numbers, and fortune, and activity of Masinissa.
The account of the disposition of both armies, and of the events of the action,
was probably drawn up by Polybius from the information given to him by Laulius, and perhaps from the family records of the house of Scipio. And here we
may admit its authority to be excellent. It states that the Roman legions were
drawn up in their usual order, except that the maniples of every alternate line did
not cover the intervals in the line before them, but were placed one behind another, thus leaving avenues in several places through the whole depth of the army
from front to rear. These avenues were loosely filled by the light-armed troops,
who had received orders to meet the charge of the elephants, and to draw them
down the passages left between the maniples, till they should be enticed entirely
beyond the rear of the whole army. The cavalry, as usual, was stationed on the
wings; Masinissa, with his Numidians, on the right, and Lmelius, with the Italians,
on the left. On the other side, Hannibal stationed his elephants, to the number
of eighty, in the front of his whole line. Next to these were placed the foreign
troops in the service of Carthage, twelve thousand strong, consisting of Ligurians, Gauls, inhabitants of the Balearian islands, and Moors. The second line
was composed of those Africans who were the immediate subjects of Carthage,
and of the Carthaginians themselves; while Hannibal himself, with his veteran
soldiers, who had returned with him from Italy, formed a third line, which was
kept in reserve, at a little distance behind the other two. The Numidian cavalry
were on the left, opposed to their own countrymen under Masinissa; and the
Carthaginian horse on the right, opposed to Lrelius and the Italians. After some
skirmishing of the Numidians in the two armies, Hannibal's elephants advanced
to the charge; but being startled by the sound of the Roman trumpets, and annoyed by the light-armed troops of the enemy, some broke off to the right and
left, and fell in amongst the cavalry of their own army on both the wings; so
that Lmelius and Masinissa, availing themselves of this disorder, drove the Carthaginian horse speedilyfrom the field. Others advanced against the enemy's line,
and did much mischief; till at length, being frightened, and becoming ungovernable, they were enticed by the light-armed troops of the Romans to follow
them down the avenues which Scipio had purposely left open, and were thus
drawn out of the action altogether. Meantime the infantry on both sides met:
and after a fierce contest, the foreign troops in Hannibal's army, not being properly supported by the soldiers of the second line, were forced to give ground;
and in resentment for this desertion, they fell upon the Africans and Carthaginians, and cut them down as enemies; so that these troops, at once assaulted
by their fellow-soldiers, and by the pursuing enemy, were also, after a brave resistance, defeated and dispersed. Hannibal, with his reserve, kept off the fugitives, by presenting spears to them, and obliging them to escape in a different
direction; and he then prepared to meet the enemy, trusting that they would be
ill able to resist the shock of a fresh body of veterans, after having already been
engaged in a long and obstinate struggle. Scipio, after having extricated his
troops from the heaps of dead which lay between him and Hannibal, commenced
a second, and a far more serious contest. The soldiers on both sides were perfect in courage and in discipline; and as the battle went on, they fell in the ranks
where they fought, and their places were supplied by their comrades with unabated zeal. At last Lmlius and Masinissa returned from the pursuit of the
enemy's beaten cavalry, and fell, in a critical moment, upon the rear of Hannibal's
army.' Then his veterans, surrounded and overpowered, still maintained their
SThe battle of Marengo forms, in many tance from the scene of the first engagement.
points, an exact parallel with that of Zama. The struggle, which was obstinatelymaintained,
he Austrians having routed the advanced was decided, as at Zama, by a timely charge of
divisions of the French army, commenced an cavalry on the flank of the enemy's infantry;
entirely new action with the reserve, which but the victorious cavalry in the two battles did
Bonaparte, like Hannibal, had kept at a dis- not belong to the armies whose situations cor



ï~~614

HISTORY OF ROME,

[SUPPLEMENt

high reputation; and most of them were out down where they stood, resisting to
the last. Flight, indeed, was not easy; foi- the country was a plain, and the
Roman and Numidian horse were active in pursuit; yet Hannibal, when he saw
the battle totally lost, with a nobler fortitude than his brother had shown at the
Metaurus, escaped from the field to Adrumetum. He knew that his country
would now need his assistance more than ever; and as he had been in so great a
degree the promoter of the war, it ill became him to shrink from bearing his full
share of the weight of its disastrous issue.
On the plains of Zama twenty thousand of the Carthaginian army were slain,
and an equal number taken prisoners; but the consequences of the
Rsultsoft battl battle far exceeded the greatness of the immediate victory. It was
not the mere destruction of an army, but the final conquest of the only power
that seemed able to combat Rome on equal terms. In the state of the ancient
world, with so few nations really great and powerful, and so little of a common
feeling pervading them, there was neither the disposition nor the materials for
forming a general confederacy against the power of Rome; and the single efforts
of Macedonia, of Syria, and of Carthage herself, after the fatal event of the second Punic war, were of no other use than to provoke their own ruin. The defeat
of Hannibal insured the empire of the ancient civilized world.
The only hope of the Carthaginians now rested on the forbearance of Scipio*
Terms o    tho pee and they again sent deputies to him, with a full confession of the
granted to carthage. injustice of their conduct in the first origin of the war, and still
more in their recent violation of the truce, and with a renewal of their supplica.
tions for peace. The conqueror, telling them that he was moved solely by considerations of the dignity of Rome, and the uncertainty of all human greatness, and
in no degree by any pity for misfortunes which were so well deserved, presented
the terms on which alone they could hope for mercy.     "They were to make
amends for the injuries done to the Romans during the truce; to restore all prisoners and deserters; to give up all their ships of war, except ten, and all their
elephants; to engage in no war at all out of Africa, nor in Africa without the consent of the Romans; to restore to Masinissa all that had belonged to him or any
of his ancestors; to feed the Roman army for three months, and pay it till it
should be recalled home; to pay a contribution of ten thousand Euboic talents,
at the rate of two hundred talents a yeair, for fifty years; and to give a hundred
hostages, between the ages of fourteen and thirty, to be selected at the pleasure
of the Roman general." At this price the Carthaginians were allowed to hold
their former dominion in Africa, and to enjoy their independence, till it should
seem convenient to the Romans to complete their destruction. Yet Hannibal
-strongly urged that the terms should be accepted, and, it is said, rudely interrupted' a member of the supreme council at Carthage, who was speaking against
them. He probably felt, as his father had done under circumstances nearly similar, that for the present resistance was vain; but that by purchasing peace at
any price, and by a wise management of their internal resources, his countrymen
might again find an opportunity to recover their losses. Peace was accordingly
signed; the Roman army returned to Italy; and Hannibal, at the age of fortyfive, having seen the schemes of his whole life utterly ruined, was now beginning,
with equal patience and resolution, to lay the foundation for them again.
From our scanty notices of the succeeding years of his life, we learn that his
Wise domesticpolicy of conduct, as a citizen, displayed great wisdom and great integrity.
anuaot; isforce He is said to have reduced the exorbitant power of an order of
Lo quit Carthage, and
goes toAntiochus.  perpetual judges, whose authority was very extensive, and had been
greatly abused. He turned his attention also to the employment of the public
respond with one another; for at Zama the re- thieu Dumas, Campagnto de 1800, and Victoires
serve was defeated by the charge of Lmelius; et Conqu.ites des Frctnttcauis, tome xi.
while it was victorious at Marengo, owing to 7 Polybius, XV. 19.
the attack made by Kellerman. See Gen. Mat-  1 Livy, XXXIII. 45, 46, &c.




ï~~SUPPLEMENT.]

CONCLUSION.

615

revenue, much of which he found to be embezzled by persons in office, while the
people were heavily taxed to raise the yearly contributions due to the Romans
by the last treaty. When a man of such high character raised his voice against
so gross an abuse, there was yet vigor enough in the popular part of the Carthaginian constitution to give him effectual support; and it appears that th' evil was
removed, and the public revenue henceforward applied to public services. Hannibal, however, had thus created many powerful enemies; and ere long they
found an opportunity of gratifying their hatred. The war between Rome and
Macedonia had lately been concluded; and the success of the Romans, and their
commanding interference in the affairs of Greece, awakened the fears and jealousy
of Antiochus, king of Syria, whose kingdom was the greatest possessed by any
of the successors of Alexander. He seemed disposed to take up the contest
which Philip, king of Macedonia, had been compelled to resign; and the Romans
were either informed, or fancied, that Hannibal was using all his influence at
Carthage to persuade his countrymen to join him. Accordingly a commission
was sent to the Carthaginian government, requiring them to punish Hannibal as
a disturber of the peace between the two nations. Hannibal, knowing that he
should be unable to resist the efforts of his domestic enemies, when thus supported by the influence of Rome, seems at last to have surrendered his longcherished hopes of restoring his country to her ancient greatness. He found
means to escape from Carthage, and procured a vessel to transport him to Tyre,
where he was received with all the honors due to a man who had shed such
glory on the Phoenician name, and from whence he easily reached the court of
Antiochus, at Antioch. Finding that the king was already set out on his way
towards Greece, he followed and overtook him at Ephesus; and being cordially
received, he contributed powerfully to fix him in his determination to declare
war on the Romans, and was retained near his person, as one of his most valuable
counsellors.
The ability of Hannibal was displayed again on this new occasion, by the plans
which he recommended for the prosecution of the war. He first War of AntieosC
and most strongly urged that he should be sent' with an army into court of Prtosis Lhi
Italy; there, he said, the Romans were most vulnerable; and an death.
attack made upon their own country might distract their counsels, and at least
lessen their means of carrying on hostilities in Greece or Asia. When this measure was abandoned, owing, as it is said, to the king's jealousy of the glory which
Hannibal would gain by its success, his next proposal was1Â~ that the alliance of
Philip, king of Macedon, should be purchased at any price. Macedon was a
power strong enough to take a substantial part in the war, and would be too important to escape, as the little second or third-rate states might do, by forsaking
its ally as soon as he should experience any reverses. This counsel was also
neglected; and Philip united himself with the Romans against Antiochus; so
that Hannibal, employed only in a subordinate naval command, a duty for which
his experience had in no way fitted him, could render the king no essential service;
and in a short time, when the Romans had brought the war to a triumphant end,
he was obliged to seek another asylum, as Antiochus had agreed, by one of the
articles1' of the treaty, to surrender him up to the Roman government. His last
refuge was the court of Prusias, king of Bithynia. With that prince he remained
about five years; and it is mentioned by Cornelius Nepos, that he gained a victory, while commanding his fleet, over his old enemy Eumenes, king of Pergamus. All his own prospects had long since been utterly ruined; and the condition of such a man, reduced to the state of a dependent exile, under the protection of so humble a sovereign as Prusias, might have satisfied the most violent
hatred of the Romans. But it seems they could not be free from uneasiness
while Hannibal lived; and when a Roman embassy was sent to the court of Pru.
1 Livy, XXXIV. 60.

Livy, XXXVI. ',

11 Polybius, XXI. 14.




ï~~616

HISTORY OF ROME.

[SUPPLEMENTh

sias, that king, whether spontaneously, or at the solicitation of the ambassadors,
promised to put their great enemy into their hands. His treachery, however, was
suspected by Hannibal; and when he found the avenues to his house secured by
the king's guards, he is said to have destroyed himself by a poison which he had
long carried about him for such an emergency. Some particulars are added by
Livy and Plutarch, which, not being credibly attested, nor likely to have become
publicly known, it is needless to insert here. It is sufficient to say, that Hannibal died by his own hand, to avoid falling into the power of the Romans, at
Nicomedia, in Bithynia; and, as nearly as we can ascertain, in the sixty-fourth
year of his age.
If the characters of men be estimated according to the steadiness with which.is charar.   they have followed the true principle of action, we cannot assign
a high place to Hannibal. But if patriotism were indeed the greatest of virtues, and a resolute devotion to the interests of his country were all the
duty that a public man can be expected to fulfil, he would then deserve the most
lavish praise. Nothing can be more unjust than the ridicule with which Juvenal
has treated his motives, as if he had been actuated merely by a romantic desire of glory.  On the contrary, his whole conduct displays the loftiest genius,
and the boldest spirit of enterprise, happily subdued and directed by a cool judgment to the furtherance of the honor and interests of his country; and his sacrifice of selfish pride and passion, when after the battle of Zama he urged the
acceptance of peace, and lived to support the disgrace of Carthage, with the patient hope of one day repairing it, affords a strong contrast to the cowardly despait
with which some of the best of the Romans deprived their country of their
service by suicide. Of the extent of his abilities, the history of his life is the
best evidence: as a general, his conduct remains uncharged with a single error;
for the idle censure which Livy presumes to pass on him for not marching to
Rome after the battle of Canne, is founded on such mere ignorance, that it does
not deserve any serious notice. His knowledge of human nature, and his ascendency
over men's minds, are shown by the uninterrupted authority which he exercised
alike in his prosperity and adversity over an army composed of so many various and
discordant materials, and which had no other bond than the personal character
of the leader. As a statesman, he was at once manly, disinterested, and sensible;
a real reformer of abuses in his domestic policy, and in his measures, with respect
to foreign enemies, keeping the just limit between weakness and blind obstinacy.
He stands reproached, however, with covetousness by the Carthaginians, and
with cruelty by the Romans. The first charge is sustained by no facts that have
been transmitted to us; and it is a curious circumstance, that the very same vice
was long imputed by party violence to the great duke of Marlborough, and that
the imputation has been lately proved by his biographer to have been utterly
calumnious. Of cruelty indeed, according to modern principles, he cannot be
acquitted; and his putting to death all the Romans whom he found on his march
through Italy, after the battle of the lake Thrasymenus, was a savage excess
of hostility. Yet many instances of courtesy are recorded of him, even by his
enemies, in his treatment of the bodies of the generals who fell in action against
him; and certainly, if compared with the ordinary proceedings of Roman commanders, his actions deserve no peculiar brand of barbarity. Still it is little to
his honor, that he was not more careless of human suffering than Marcellus or
Scipio; nor can the urgency of his circumstances, or the evil influence of his
friends, to both which Polybius attributes much of the cruelty ascribed to him,
be justly admitted as a defence. It is the prevailing crime of men in high station to be forgetful of individual misery, so long as it forwards their grand
objects; and it is most important, that our admiration of great public talents
and brilliant successes should not lead us to tolerate an indifference to human
suffering.




ï~~CONSULS ADiMILITARY TRIBUNES,
1RON THE BEGINNING OF THE COMMONWEALTH TO THE TAKM~
OF ROME BY THE GAULS.




ï~~CONSULS.AND MILITARY TRIBUNES.
Y ear of the Year of  Year
Comn-Rmattelhilypas.F i aioln.DIONtYSlUS.
weath-  omonChitiya    id.noi Cptoil                                           I.DIODORUS..
reckoning.  Era.
1      245     508     6841                                                                       EThe tenth book of Diodorus be- L. Junius Birutus
______  ____  _____-  _______________________________________________________ ing lost, we have no lists of Cost- L. Tarqninins Collatinus
2      246     507     68-2                                                                         snls from him earlier than the P. Valeries H.
2lstlyear of the Commonwealth, T. Lncretius Dionys. V.20
3      247.-1 506      68-3                                            L. Junius Brutus             according to Livy's Patti.]
L. Tarquinius Collatins,
afterwards, in lbs same year,                        P. Valerius III.
P. Valerius Pusblicola                                 M   oaisI~
M. Horatius PulvilinsM.HrtnII'                                               V21
4  248      503    68-4   M. Valer...       Cot.  CXLVIII        P. Valerins II.SpLatu
________P. Post...... Co..CCXLVIII        T. Lucrotins      Livy, If. 8.                         T. Herminius          V  6
5      249     504     69-1  P. Valeius...   Poplicol...           P. Lucretius                                            M. Valerins
____P. Valerins Publicola III. II. 15.                                                      P. Postnmius          V.37
6      250     303     69.2  P. Postumi...   Cos. II.... Ann. CCL  M. Valerius                                             P. Valeiuis lV.
_______  ___      ___Agrippa M...       Cot....  Ann. CCL     P. Postumins         II. 16.                           T.. Lucretus II.    V.40
7      251.    502     69-3                                           P. Valorius IV.                                         Agrippa Mettenins
____  ___  _______Sp. Cassins...         Co....  Ann. CCLI    T.. Lucretins II.     1I. 16.                           P. Postumins         V   4
8      252     501     69-4                                           Agrippa Menenius                                        Opiter Virginins
________P. Postnmins                                            IL.16. _____________              Sp. Cassius           V  9
9      253   - 500     70-1                                            Opiter Virginius                                       Postumus Cominins
S___  ____________________________                p. Cassins          II. 17.                           T. Lartins            V  0
10     254      499     70-2                                           Postumus Cominius                                      Ser. Sulpicius
____ ____________________                  T. Lartius           II. 18. ________________          M'. Tullins
11      255     498     70-3                                           Ser. Sulpicins                                          P. Veturius
____ ____ _____M'. Tullius                                            IT. 19. ________________P. Ai bntins
12      256  - 497      704                                            T.. chbuint                                           T. Lartins
______________________________0. Vetnrins                       if. 19. ______________            Q. Ckcelins Siculus   V.59
13     2.~7     496     71-1                                           Q. Clotlins                                             A. Sesmpronius
___ ____T. Lartius                                              II. 21. M____________. Minucins
14      2581    495     71-2                                            A. Sempronins                                          A. Postnmins
_____  _________  ____________________________M. Minncins             II. 21.  _______________          T. Virginins
15      259     494     71-3                                           A. Postumins                                            Ap. Clandius
____  _____________________________T. Virginins                       IL 21. ______________             P. Sesvilins         VI23
16      200     493     71-4                                           Ap. Claudius                                            A. Virginiuts
____  _____________________________P. Servilins                       IL. 21. ______________            T. Vetnrius          VL.
17      261- 492        724                                            A. Virginius                                           Postumus Cominius
_________  ________________________T______7. Veturius                       IL.28. ______________              Sp. Cassius IL.
18      262     491     72-2                                           Sp. Cassius                                            7.. Geganius
_______  ___________________Postumus Cominins                   11. 33._____________ P. MinucisV
19      263     490     72-3                                           T. Geganius                                            M. Minucius
____ ___ ____ _____________________P. Minucins                              IL 34. _____________               A. Sempronius       VIL 0
X20     264     489     72-4                                           M. Minucius                                            Q. Snipicins
A. Sempronius        II. 34.                           Ser. Lantins        VII68
~sisagrees also with Livy in making P. Valerius and H..IHoratius consuls in this year after the banishment of Collatinus and the death of Brutus

H
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0




ï~~Year f theYear
Year ofteYe fbefore the Olymiads.FastiCapitlini
omo- Rome.  ChristianOymid.kstCatonirT                                                                                                        IN     US
wealth.            Era.
21      265      488     73-1SpNatu                                                                                                     C. Julius
Sex. Furiua           IL.39._______________                P. Pinarius           VII. 1
22   -  266      487     73-2                                                T. Sicinius                                                Sp. Nautius
C. Aquillius           II. 40. _______________              Sex. Furius         VIII. 6
23    - 267      486     73-3                                                Sp. Cassius                                                C. Aquillius
____  ___  ______________________                    Proculue Virginiute   II. 41. _______________T. Siccius                         VII].4
24   -  268      485     73-4                                                Ser. Cornsliuts                                            Procuitts Virginius
____________________________________Q. Fasbius                       if. 41.________________              Sp. Cassius III.    VIII.68
2.3     269      484     74-1                                                L. 1tnilius                                                Q. Fabius
KFais14.Se.Creis                                                                                                                          VI26  270  483  74-2  M. Fabius  L. E milius
______________________L. Valerius                       II. 42.  ______________              K. Fabius           VIII.83
27      271      482     74-3                                                                                                           A.U.C. 270 according to Diosius
Q. Fabius                                                   M. Fabius.....____       ___                       Vibulanus IL.            C. Julius              If. 43.______________1               L. Valerius         VIII. 7
28   -  272     481     74-4                                                K. Fabius                                                  C. Julius..N,.. Fuses               Sp. Farina            II. 43.______________                Q. Fabius            VIII.90
29   -  273      480     75-1                                               M. Fabius                     Sp. Cassius                   K. Fabius IIL...ibulanus If.     Cn. Manlius            11. 43. Proclus Virginius     XI. 1. Sp. Furius             IX.1
S    274      479     75-2                                               K. Faboius                   Q. Fabius Silvansus           On. Manlius..T. N.... Tricost Ruth....  T. Virginius          IL. 48. Ser. Cornelius       XL 27. M. Fabius IL.           IX.5
31      275      478     75-3                                               L.  emlilius                  K. Fabius                     K. Fabius....._ __ctusn Ahala                               C. Servilius           II. 49. L.,Emilius          xr. 38. T.Virginius          IX. 4
32   -  276      477     75-4                                                C. Hloratius                 M. Fabius                     L. Emilius
_____. Lanatua                              T. Menenius            II. 51. L. Valerius          XI. 41. C. Servilius          IX. 6
33   -  277      476     76-1                                               A. Virginius                  Keaso Fabius                  C. H-oratius
____  ___    _____, uctus                                        Sp. Servilius         if. 51. Sp. Farina           XI. 48. T. Menenius           IX. 8
34      278      475     76-2.... utilus     C. Nautiua                   M. Fabius                     Ser. Servilius..._ _____________elaque Ann. CCLXXIIX                             P. Valerius            II. 52. Cn. Manlius         XI. 50. A. Vireinius          IX. 5
35   -  279      474     763... umn F VIII       L. Farina                    K. Fabius. P. Valerius....____________                               Ann. CCLXXIX      C. Manlius             II. 54. T. Virginius         XI. 51. C. Naulius           IX. 8
36   -  280      473     76-4   -                                            L. AIsnilins                 L. A~milius Mamnercus         A. Manlius
Opiler Virginius, or          C. Cornelius Lentulna  XL. 52. L. Farina            IX. 6
________ ________loins                                        Vopiscus Julius        If. 54.________________               _______________
37      281      472     77-1                                                L. Pinarius                 '1. Minucins                   I. }Ernilius...______.________                                     sus     P. Farina             II. 56. C. Iloraltius        XL. 53. Vopiscus Julius       IX. 7
38   -  282      471     77-2                                               Ap. Claudius                  A. Virginius Tricostus        L. Pinarius
_____ __________  _________________________________T. Quintius                   I1. 56. C. Serviliuas Structus  XI. 54. P. Farina          IX. 0
39      283      470     77-3   -                                            L. Valerius                  P. Valerius                   T. Quintius
_____ ________  ___  ________________________Ti. Alrnilins                        II. 61. C. Nantins Rufus     XL 60. Ap. Claudius           IX. 3
40   -  284      469     77-4   -                                           T. Nusnicius                  L. Furiust Mediolanust        L. Valerius II.
____ ________  ________________________                    A. Virginius           II. 63. M. Manlius Vaso      XI. 63. Ti. 4imilius         IX.51
41   -  285      48    7&-i                             A.CCXX...        T. Quintins                   L. AEmilins Maru'rcns         A. Virginius
____  _____________ __________________________Q. Servilius                        II. 64. L. t"Studinst Is.ass  XI. 65. T. Nurnicius       IX. 6
42      286      467     78-2                                               Ti. Altilins                  L. Pinariuis Mftnertinus    - T Qintins Capitolinns If.
43__     287_4__6_78               ____S____________A.F.P.N.  _________R__    Q. Fabius              III. 1, P. Furiustf Fifroni-  XI. 66. Q. Servilins Priscus  IX. 7
43 -  8   6       83-Sp. Porius A        PN AbsRgi............Q. Servilius                        Ap. Claudius                  Ti.Almilius IL.
____                                                        Sp. Postu~mius         11I. 2. T. Quintins Capitolinus  XL 67. Q. Fabius         IX. 9

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ï~~HISTORY OF ROME.
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ï~~Common- LRo.      Christia OiymnpiadFasti Capitotior.                                        LIVY.                        DIODORUS.                      DIONYSIUS.
wealth.   -or        ra.
60       3014     449      82-4... tius  IF.... Barbatus... Sabin..   The same Decemvirs     111. 38. M. Valerius Lactuca           Ap. Claudius, Q. Fabius, M.Cr
Ann: CCCIV VII K. Sept:                                  f8p. Virginius Tricostus  XII. 4.  nelius, M. Sergius, L. Mim:... ei.F.PN.ue is colaus Setil..An:.CCV.ceus, T. PAetoius, KMes.Butt
De. ns PF.P.N PopicolaPoxt. An.:CCIV                                                                  cius, T. PAntoius, NK'.soabu
lius, Sp. Oppius. Decemir
Legg. scribetadis.
X.5.
61:405      448      83-1                                                  L. Valerius                    T. Romilius Vatieanus  XI. 5. The Decemvirs as before.
MI. Horatius           ITT. 55 C. Veturius f~ichoriusi-                               X.61
62       30G      447      83-2                                                  Lar Hlerminius                 Sp. Tarpeius            XII. 6. L. Valerius Potitus
T. Virginius           III. 65 A. t-Asterius 1' Fontiniusi-   M. Horatius Barbatus   XI.45
63       307      446      83-3                                                  M. Geganius Macerinus          Sex. -Quintiust                 Lar Hlerminius
____C. Julius                                                                         III. 65...Trigeminus         XII. 7. T. Virginius          XI.
64       308      445      83-4                                                  TF. Quinctius Capitolinus IV  T. Menenius                     M. Ge[gauius           XLI.
Agrippa Furius         IL 66 P. Sestius Capitolinus  XII. 22. C. Julius] The names are almos
_                         lost in the MS.
65       309      444      84-1                                             __   M. Genucius                    Decemvirs: names given cur--       [This year is wanting.]
C. Curtius              IV. 1.   ruptly.              XII. 23._____________
60       310      443      84-2    nius MI..inus,... De....           A. Sempronius                  Decemvirs: names again corrupt. I. Genucius
Ann. CCCX.... nis Sep...      L. Atilius     Trihb. Mutit.                          XII. 24. C. Quintius            XI.52
T. Clcelius             I V. 7.________________
67       311      442      84-3                                                  M N. Geganius Macerinus II.    tCancus jt Horatius             A. Sempronius Atrat. Trib
T. Quinctius Capitolinus V.    L. Valerius f Turpinusi- XLI. 26. L. Atilius Longus  Mlti.
IV. 8.                                T. Clcelius Siculus  )  XI, 2
68       312      441      84-4                                                  MI. Fabius Vihulanus           Larinus Herminius-              NI. Geganius Macerinus II.
Postumus.lhbutius Cornicen    T. f Stertinius t Structus XIL 27. T. Quinctius Capitolinus V.
IV. 11. ________________XI.63
69       313      440      85-1-                                                 C. Furina Pacilus              L. Julius                       Here the regular history of DIo
MI. Papirius Crassus. IV. 12. M. Geganius           XII. 29.  nysius breaks off; the restbe
____________________  ____________________      tg lost, with the exception o
70       314      439      85-2- Proculus Geganius Macerinus                                                    T. Quintius                      fragments.
L. NMenenius Lanatus   IV. 12. Agrippa Furina         XII. 30. _____________
71       315      438      85-3- T. Quintius Capitolinus VI.                                                    M. Genucius
______  ___   _____  ______________________________            Agrippa NMenenius       IV. 3. Agrippa Curtius Chilo. XII. 31._____________
72        316       437     854.... us....                                      Main. oEmilius      Tribb.      A. Sempronius.,., Ann. CCCXVI Idib. Se....      L. Quinctius Cincin- Miltt.    L. Atilius     Tribb. Milit.
L. Julius    [natus)   IV. 16. T. Quintius   )        XII. 32.  ______________
73       317      436      86-1                                                  NI. Geganius NMacerin. III.    T. Quinctius           XII. 33.
L. Sergius Fidenas     IV. 17. NI. Geganius Macerinus          _____________
74         318      435      86-2                                                 M N. Cornelius Ialuginensis    MI. Fabius            XII. 34.
______  ________________________________________L. Papirius Crassus                   IV. 21. Postum. Albuitius 1' Vulecus t  _____________
75       319      434   -86-3- C. Julius II.                                                                    Q. Furius Fusus
____________- _____  _________________________________L. Virginius             IV. 21. M'. Papirius Crassus  XII. 35. _______________
76       320      433      86-4                                                  I. Manlius     (C. Julius III. T. Menenius
or   L. Virginius  Proclus Geganius Macerinus
"0Q. Sulpicius)      II.                               XIL 36.
IV. 23. ______________                  _________               __
77       321      432   I  87-1                         -                        AI.  Fahius Vihulanus Tribb.   T. Quinctius
NIM. Foslius                                             Miitt.    - Nittus Â~-NMenenius   XII. 37.
I_ ___    ____L, Sergius Fidlenas                                                       IV. 25.

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ï~~622

HISTORY OF ROME.

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ï~~Yea
Ya  t    Ye        ar oYear af before the O01mpiads.  stCpione                   I                        DORU                         INYUS
Common-  Rome.  Christian                      FatCaioiiLI.DOORJ                                                                            INYlS
92      336     417     90-4   P. Lucretia us H iF....                 L. Sergius Fidens          L. Furius
M. Papirius Mugilla- Tribb.  L. Quintius  Tribb. Milit.
Agrippa Menenius T.F...                    nus             Milit.    A. Sempronius)      XII. 81.
337 41,9-1       A.Semroi,    LF..NC. Servilius Pt-locus J                     IV. 45.______________
93      37      41      9-,Smrnu.......Arp Menenius La- 1                               T. Claudius
Q. Fabius Q.F.M.N....                     L. Servilius Structus II. Tribb.  L. t8entiusP. Lucretius Trcpi    ii     e.NJulius.}     XMul. 82.
94      338     415     91-2  - P. Cornelius P.N....                    A. Sempronius Atra- }         Sergius Lucius t),,,,,,tinus III.                                  I        M. Papirius      Tribb. Milt.
C. Valerius L.F. Volusi N....           M. Papirius Mugilla-  }Ti 1.A. Servilius   )    XIII. 2...nus II.                                            it
Sp. Nautius Rutilus II.) IV. 47.
95   - 339      413      1-   Q. Fabius Q.F.1Vi.N.                    P. Cornelius Cossus         P. Lucretius
C. Valerius Potitus  Trb   C. Servilius
P. Posturnius A.F.A.N...                 Q. Quintius Cisacinna-  Trbb1W  Agrippa Mene- }Tribb. Milit.
tus                 ii      nina
N. Fabius Vibulanus J IV. 49. Sp. Veturius  J    XIII. 7.
96   - 340      413     91-4                                            Co. Curnelisa Cossus}      A. Sempronius
L. Valerius Potitus         M. Papirius   Tribb. Miliii.
Q. Fabius Vibulains Tribb.  Q. Fabius
iI.(Miliii.               Sp. Nautius  J       XIII. 9.
M. Poctumnins Regillensis         )   IV. 49.-______________               _____________
97   - 341      412     92-1                                            A. Cornelius Cossus s      P. Cornelius)
L. Furius MedullinusCo.     C. Fabius   Tib.lii
I V. 51..         I
XIII. 34. _____________
98    342       411     92-2                                            Q. Fabis Amnbustus Coss.   T. Postumius
C. Furius Pacilus           C. Cornelius  Tribb. Miliii.
1V. 52. C. Valerius
K. Fabius  J        XIII. 38._____________
99      343     410     92-3                                            M. Papirius Atr.atinus Coca.  AF. Cornelius  Cuss. XIII. 43.
C. Nautins Rutilus  IV. 5 2. L. Furius______________
100     344     409     92-4..              A.F.M.N F..                   '. Ymilins    Cuss.      Q abius Cuss. XIII. 54.
______ _____   ____..      Medullin: IT                  C. Valerius Potitua  IV. 53. C. Furius                   ______________
101-    345     408     93-1      TN. MILL..........Vospisci N. halos  Co. Cornelius Coccus Cs.    M: Papirius Cuss.  XIIL 68..... A.F.M.N. Cossus        L. Furins Medulli-         S oa  p. Nautius.... F.Q.N. Ahala           nesII.             IV. 54.
102     340     407     93-2... Pot: Volusus II.                C. Juliucis     Trius      C. "f ManiusIC. Servilius P.F.Q.N. Alsala II.          P. Cornelius Coccus Mliibb.     rnilius ~Cuss. XIII. 76.
TR. Mar.  C. Serviiua Ahala  Mlt     C. Valerius...............Meduilinna                               IV. 56.
______   ______         ~N. Fabioc Q.F.M.N. Vibulanauc IT._____________                                                   _____________
103     347     406      933 3.. thuse Coccsus                         I. Fanrins Medollinus       L. Furius
L. Valerins L.F. P. N. Potitus II.          III.              Tib      n    o-Cs.         XI.0.....  ossC. Valer-inc PotitnsaIT                 Tribb   o.Â~por-ius  oc.      II.t0
N. Fabins 5M.F.Q.N.  Aombucts.         N. Fabiua Vibulanus IlNIl
____1      ___    ___________________________                              C. Servilius Ahala II. J IV. 57.

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ï~~Year of theYero    Year                                          I
before- the              'ads.               Footi Capitolini.                       u-r                        IODORUs.                    DIONYS1US.
Coneloh. Rome.  Christian 0 9 p                       p1TF
wealth.Era.
5' Alonilius Slam. F.M.N. Mamercinus.     Cn. Cornelius Cossus Tribb.  P. Cornelius  Tribb. Milit............. un. Barb:              N. Fabius Ambustus }Milit.   C. Servilius)      XIII. 104.
L. Puriea L. F. Sp.: N. Medullinus II.     L. Valerius Potitus  J  IV. 58....unatus. TR. MIL.
_____  ______ ______  _____A. Manlius A.F. On: N. Vulso Capolin.    ____________                 _____________
1115    349     404      94-1.... uginensis                   TF. Quintius Capitolinus  -  C. Fres
Sp:Nautius Sp: F. Sp: N.... utilus III. Q. Quintius Cincinna- I C. Servilius }rb.Pllt.. sus iI.                    tus-                        C. Valerins, bb  lii
C. Valerius L. F. Vol: N. Pot: Volus: III.  C. Julius lulus IL. rb.  N. Fabius J         XIV. 3.....      F.Q.N. Ambustus                  A. Manlius          'Mliii.
5' Serg...Fidenas               Ta. Mil. L. Formus Medullinus iit
III.
5'. elmilins Mamerci-l
94-2                                   nus              J IV. 61.______________
106     3501     4113    9-... issAMan. F.M.N.. n. II.   C. Valerius Potitus IlI.     P. Cornelius
tM. Fur.....IFuus                    5'. Sergius Fidenas         N. Fabius...dine P.F. Ap: N...s.         P. Cornelius Melugi-  Tribb.  L. Valerius   }Tribb. Mliii.
TR. Mil.  nensis            }Mit.   j- Terentius    I
L. Juli...   lulus                        Cu. Cornelius Cossus  Ai          Maximus f 1     XIV. 12... clneilins L.F.L.N...,.S.      K. Fabins Ambustus
L. Valr...   P.N. Potitus III           Sp. Nautius blutilus II. J IV. 01...ens. 51. Formus L.F. Sp: N.C...
31Postumius A F.A.N. Albinus Ilegillens. L.F. XVI. _________                       ________________
107     35       4021    94-3... rvilius P.F.Q.N. Ahal...             51'. e lmilius Mamerci-j    T. CQuintius1
Ql. Sulpicius Ser: F. Ser: N. Camerin. Cornul.  fnus II.               C. Julius  I....     Q.F.P.N. Fiden.                L. Valerius Potitus III.     A. Manlius 1Tribb. Miliii.
A. Manlius A.F. Cu: N. Vulso Capitol: I.  Ap. Claudius Cressus  Trbb...irginins L. F. Opeir. N. Tricosi: Esqut.. N51. Quintillus Verne  Tribb.
M'Sergius L.F.L.N. Fidenes If.            L. Julius Zulus...                XVI. 17.
Ta. MIL.                  M. Postumius
51. Furius Ceamillus
_______________________________  5. Postumius AlbinusJ  V. 1.______________                 _____________
18  352      401     94-4  -... urine L.F. Sp: N. Cemillus            C. Servilius Ahale IIIL      P. Cornelius
L. Julius L.F. Vopisfi N. Zines             Q. Servilius                K. Fabius.. ruelius P.F.A.N. Cossus III.           L. Virginius         Tribb.  Sp. Nautins        Tribb.
5' Aimilius Main: F.M.N. Memercins III.   CQ. Solpicius      (Millt.  C. Velerins        r Milil.... rins L.F.P.N.   Potitus LV.            A. Manlius II.               M'. Sergius       3_____________
K. Febius M.F.Q.N. Ambustus II.   Ta. MIL. M. Sergius Fidenas II. J  V. 8. 1j Junius Lucullus t  XIV. 19.
109      353     400     95-1.. lius M.F. Cu: N. Vulso                 L. Valerius Potitus IV.      M'. Claudius
P. Meelius Sp: F. O.N. Cepitolinus         M. Furius Camillus II.       M. Qluintius I. us P.F.P.N. Calvus Esquilinus         5'. Emilius Memerci- Tribb.  L. Julius  }Tribb. Miliii.
Sp. F... ins L.F. Sp: N. Medullinus     nus ITT fiit                M. Furins  (... us L.F.M'N.      Pause Seccus          Cu. Cornelius Cossus HI Ti.  L. VeleriusJ      XIV. 35.
L. Poblilius L.F. Voler. N. Philo Vulcus   K. Fabius Ambusus II.
Ta. MIL.         L. Julius Inlus    J V. 10.
110     354      399     95-2... clue M.F.M.N. Augurinus           P. Licinius Celvus           C. Servilius
C. Duilius K.F.K.N. Longus                 P. Mmnius                    L. Virginius... s L.F.L.N. Priscus                     L. Tetinius           Tribb. Q. Sulpicius       Tribb.
M. Veturius Ti. F. Sp. N. Cress. Cicurin.  P. Meelius           Milil.  A. Manlius         Milit...onius L.F.L.N.   Rufus                  L. Furius Medullinus II.     t- Cepitus 1- ludius
_____ _________________ -Voler. Poblilius P.F. Voler. N. Philo.  Ta. MIL. L. Publilius Volcus J V. 12. M.1- Ancus 1-  J XIV. 38. -_____________

02
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ï~~CONSULS AND MILITARY TRIBUNES.

625

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02.600




ï~~Year '"'the    Yearofbor
Y a. eoeChristian e olympiads.    Fasti Capitoltes.-                       LIY.                       DIODORUS.                     DIO  YSJUS.
11   621     391     97-2                                                 1. Valerius Potilus           M. Furius       Tribb.
M. Manlius Capitoli- ~ Coss.  C. Imilius  ~   Milil.
16 36nuts                                                                         V. 31-'-t Catulus Verus 1)  XIV. 97._______________
11   6.      390      97-3                                                L. Lucretius                  L. Lucretius   Cots.
Ser. Sulpicius                Ser. t Casson t      XIV. 99.
M.  militos             ribb.
Agrippa Furius
120  34  38  -  ___________________________________C.mZnilius IL.                 V. 32. ______________
12  6  8  74Q. Fabius Ambustus                                                           L. Valerius Cots.
Fabius Ambustus             A. Manlint          XIV. 103.
Fabius Ambustus   Tribb.
Q. Sutlpicius Lonus MilitL
Q. Servilius IV.
Ser. Cornelius Maugi____________   _______________________________                nenis                 V.36   ____________________           __________V.___36._
121      365    -388      8-1                                                L. Valerius Publicola IL.      L. Lucretius
L. Virginius                  Ser. Sulpicius 1Tribb. Milit.
P. Cornlius    Trbb. C.iiius
A. ornlius          ( Mil1t.C. -Rfst             XIV. 107.
L. lnilius
______  ____  _____  _____ _________________________________ L. Postumius         J VL1..   _____________               ______________
122      366      387     98-2                                                                               Q. t Kmso t
t s~nus 1 Sulpiciu
K. Fabius           Tribb.
Q. Servilius        Milt.
123;367       386     938-3                                                                                                1 M.____Furius_______
1- Caine t  Tribb. Millt.
124  -  6  8  8-m.Â~silius 1-                                                                            XV. 2.
121      369     31845     9-   -L.Lucretis                                                                              Cost.    X.8     _____________
125  3 9  384 99-1. Valerius 1Cots.
_____  ____  __________  _____________________________A. Manlius                                         XV. 14._____________
126      370      383     99-2                                                                               L. Luscretios
- Senlius t-Sulpicius Tribb.
L.   snlus         Milil.
127  71                                            ______________________L. FormusJ                     XV. 15.______________
182,                                                                            Q. Sulpicius
IC. Fabius                                                                I
Servilius Cornelius Tribb.
_____  __________________________________  ______________________Caius 1 Marcus t  XV. 20.______________
128      372      381     99i                                                                               P. Cornelius
L. Virginius
L. Papirius
M. Furius    }Tribb. Milit.
A. Valerius
L:..PotMaius                                                                                    J        XV. 22. __________

w
O




ï~~EXPLANATION OF THE FIRST TABLES.
Tae preceding tables exhibit a view of the lists of consuls and military tribunes from
me beginning of the commonwealth to the Gaulish invasion, according to four distinct
authorities: the remains of the Fasti Capitolini, Livy, Diodorus Sieulus, and Dionysius
of Halicarnassus. And I have endeavored to arrange each list according to the chronology adopted by its own particular author; so that as this chronology varies, the same
year will be found marked by the names of different sets of consuls, according as we
prefer one of these four authorities to the other.
I. The principal fragments of the Fasti Capitolini were dise,,vered in the year 1546,
in the course of some excavations which were then being made on the ground of the
ancient Forum. They have been preserved in the museum of the Capitol, and their
contents have been long known to the world, as they have been often published. My
extracts have been taken from the edition of Sigonius; and I have been careful to give
them in their genuine state, without noticing the additions by which Sigonius attempted
to supply from conjecture the lost or effaced words of the original marble.
It happened, however, that about two hundred and seventy years after the discovery
of these fragments, two other fragments of the same marble were brought to light in
the course of a new excavation in the Forum, on the very spot where the former remains had been found. This was in the years 1817 and 1818; and Signor Borghesi, an
eminent Italian antiquary, published a fac-simile of these new portions of the Fasti, and
illustrated them in two able memoirs published at Milan in the year 1818. The new
pieces joined on exactly with those discovered before; so that in several instances a
word, of which only one syllable had been preserved in the former fragments, was now
completed by the discovery of the remaining syllable, after an interval of nearly three
centuries. I have, therefore, copied their contents from Borghesi's edition, and incorporated them with the older fragments published long ago by Sigonius.
These Fasti do not notice the Greek Olympiads; but they preserve in several places
notices of the years from the foundation of Rome. Thus the consulship of Sex. Quinetilius and P. Curiatus is placed in the year 300, and the triumph of the consuls who immediately succeeded the decemvirate, M. Horatius and L. Valerius, is assigned to the
month of August, 304. It appears, then, that these Fasti only allow two years to the
decemvirate, and not three; and, moreover, that they place its commencement in the
year 302, agreeing in that respect with the chronology of Livy.
II. Livy also makes no mention of the Greek chronology; but he too, from time to
time, notices the years from the building of Rome. Thus he places the first institution
of the military tribuneship in 310 (IV. 7), and the beginning of the decemvirate in 302
(III. 33). Taking these two dates for my starting points, I have cJculated from them
the dates of the years before and after them, according to Livy's list of consuls. This
brings the date of the expulsion of the Tarquins to the year 247; but then it seems
probable that Livy has omitted the consuls of the fourth year of the commonwealth by
accident; and it seems as if he had omitted those of one or two years more at the beginning of the great Volseian war of Coriolanus. With the addition of these three
years, the first year of the commonwealth would become the year 244, which would
agree with Livy's own calculation of the reigns of the several kings; but as my object
in these tables was rather to give the actual chronology of the several authorities than
to endeavor to correct it, I have reckoned no greater number of consulships in the table
of the Fasti according to Livy, than Livy himself allows for.
III. Dionysius regularly gives the Olympiads along with the Roman consulships, so
that the synchronistic part of his chronology can be ascertained with certainty. With
him, the first year of the commonwealth is the first year of the sixty-eighth Olympiad
(I. 74); and the Gaulish invasion falls in the first year of the ninety-eighth Olympiad;
co that there were just one hundred and twenty years between them. Again, the first




ï~~628

HISTORY OF ROME.

year of the (ommonwealth is the two hundred and forty-fifth from the foundation of
Rome (I. 75); so that the Gaulish invasion falls, according to Dionysius, in the year of
Rome 365, and the intermediate years can, therefore, be determined without difficulty
But as the remaining part of Dionysius' history ends at the year of Rome 312, we can
not compare his lists of the consuls and military tribunes, from 313 to 365, with those
of the Fasti Capitolini, of Livy, and of Diodorus.
SIV. Diodorus gives the Olympiads also, but his synchronistic system does not agree
with that of Dionysius. We have not his list of the early consulships, because his tenth
book which contained them is lost: but the seventy-fifth Olympiad fail,- according to
him, in the consulship of Sp. Cassius and Proclus Virginius, whereas that sah'e consul.
ship is by Dionysius placed five years earlier, in the last year of the seventy-third Olympiad. Accordingly, if the list of consuls in the two writers had continued to agree with
one another, the invasion of the Gauls would have fallen, by Diodorus' reckoning, in
the second year of the ninety-ninth Olympiad. And yet he does place it in the second
year of the ninety-eighth Olympiad. This is the date assigned to it by Polybius (I. 6),
and it was probably so generally agreed upon, that Diodorus thought himself obliged to
conform his reckoning to it. He had already introduced into his list several variations
from the Fasti followed by Dionysius. For instance, he had omitted the consulship of
C. Julius and Q. Fabius, which Dionysius places in Olymp. 74-4; and he had then inserted two consulships unknown to Dionysius, to Livy, and to the Fasti Capitolini, in
Olymp. 82-2, and 82-3. Thus the first year of the decemvirate, which according to Dionysius was Olymp. 82-3, is with Diodorus Olymp. 84-1. The difference is then reduced
by one year, because Diodorus assigns only two years to the decemvirate instead of
three; and thus the famous consulship of L. Valerius and M. Horatius is placed by him
five years later than by Dionysius, in Olymp. 84-3 instead of Olymp. 83-2. But after
this he inserts another consulship in Olymp. 90-1, so that the difference is again raised
to six years, and the Gaulish invasion ought consequently to have been placed in Olymp.
99-3. To prevent this, and to bring it to Olymp. 98-2, he strikes out the consulships
and military tribuneships of five years from Olymp. 91-2 to Olymp. 92-2 inclusive, so that
the tribunes whom he places in Olymp. 91-2 are L. Sergius, M. Papirius, and M. Servilius,
whom he ought, according to his own system, to have placed in Olymp. 92-3. The obiect desired is thus accomplished, and the Gaulish invasion is in this manner thrown back
to Olymp. 98-2. But so resolved was Diodorus to follow his own system in his general
chronology, although he had felt himself in a manner forced to depart from it in giving
the date of the Gaulish invasion, that, in order to return to it, he fills up the five years
following Olymp. 98-2 with the very same consulships and tribuneships which he had
already given for it and the four years preceding it; so that the military tribunes of
Olymp. 99-4 are, in fact, the tribunes of the year next after the Gaulish invasion, and
those of Olymp. 99-3 are evidently, although the names are grievously corrupted, the
very same with the tribunes whom he had before placed in Olymp. 98-2, and under whose
tribuneship he had given his account of the Gaulish war.
Thus much will suffice in illustration of the table. It may be observed, however, as
a proof of the confusion of the early chronology of Rome, that the only instance in which
the Roman annals of this period attempted any synchronism with the events of foreign
history, tends but to perplex the subject still more. The annals of the year of Rome
323, according to Livy's reckoning, that is, the year of the consulship of T. Quintius and
C. Julius, had recorded that in that year the Carthaginians first crossed over with an army
into Sicily, having been invited to take part in the domestic wars of the Sicilian states.
Now this year, according to Dionysius, was Olymp. 87-4, and according to Diodorus it
would be Olymp. 89-1. But the Carthaginians crossed over into Sicily, for the first time
since the reign of Gelon, in Olymp. 92-3, according to Diodorus, XIII. 43, and this is confirmed by Xenophon, Hellenic. I. 1, ad finem, so that the true date of this event is nineteen years later than the date assigned to it in the Roman annals, if we follow the reckoning of Dionysius, and fourteen years later if we follow that of Diodorus. Niebuhr
supposes that the Roman annalists confused the Carthaginian invasion with the first appearance of an Athenian fleet in Sicily, namely, with the expedition of Laches, in the fifth
year of the Peloponnesian war (Thucydides, III. 86), that is, in Olymp. 88-2. But this
is one of the very few conjectures of Niebuhr which appear to me quite improbable. The
expedition of Laches consisted only of twenty ships, and its operations were so insignificant that it cannot be conceived to have attracted the attention of the Romans. But the
Carthaginian expedition which Hannibal led against Selinus consisted, according to the
lowest computation, of one hundred thousand men and sixty ships of war; and his great
success in the destruction of so powerful a city as Selinus was likely to have spread terror through all the neighboring countries. Yet how is it possible to make the ninety



ï~~EXPLANATION OF THE FIRST TABLES.

629

second Olympiad synchronize with the consulship of T. Quinctius and C. Iulius, flthat is,
with the year 323 or 324 of Rome?
Note.-I have said that Livy places the beginning of the decemvirate in the year 302.
His words are, "Anno trecentesimo altero quam condita Roma erat." III. 33. But Sigonius understands this to mean the year 301, although he finds it difficult to make out
nine years in Livy's narrative between the first decemvirate and the institution of the
military tribuneship, which Livy places beyond all dispute in the year 310. As to the
grammatical question, although I am aware that the point has been contested, yet it
seems to me certain that "Anno trecentesimo altero" must signify the year 302, and not
301. For "alter" must immediately precede "tertius," and there can be no doubt that
"Anno trecentesimo tertio" would signify the year 303. The confusion seems to have
arisen from such expressions as "alter ab undecimo," which, although Servius interprets
even this to mean the "thirteenth," may yet, I suppose, be fairly understood to be the
twelfth, because here the inclusive system of reckoning is followed, and the eleventh
year itself is counted as the first, the twe'fth as the second from the eleventh, the
thirteenth as the third, and so on. Thus the thirteenth of March is, according to the
Roman reckoning, the third day before the Ides, or fifteenth, because the fifteenth itself
is reckoned as the first. But in abstract numeral expressions, such as "trecentesimo
altero," it is different, for here the inclusive system is not followed, and "alter" is therefore the "second" in our sense of the word, and "trecentesimo primo" would be the
date of the year preceding it. The usage of the Greek word aetrepo is exactly analogous to this. AÂ~uvrpE isT era TfV dx v would be the year next after the battle, which we
should more naturally call the "first year" after it. But 'olvwrtas evripa ps raS;arv
is not the one hundred and first, but the one hundred and second Olympiad. If Sigonius' interpretation could be shown to be right, it would only embarrass his system still
more; for if "trecentesimo altero" means what we should call "the three hundred and
first," then "trecentesimo decimo" in Livy, IV. 7, must be what we should call the
1 three hundred and ninth," it being certain that in all reekonings "alter" is immediately
followed by "tertius."




ï~~630

630               ISTORY OF ROME.

z
z

I ~~

I.
U2w




ï~~YCaomfmeonr-              Olympiad.               F sasti Capiiouani                  setonoR..                                   Fasli Seerli.
Ca-  ltcme    Era.LIY

Fasli Cuspiajani sine
1V risiaai.
Fidenas & Crasso.

129

373

381

99-4

Trill,..1ilit.-XV. 22.
F. Corneliua
L. Virginius
L. Papirius
M. Furius
A. Valerius
Li. Manlius
Q. Posiummius
Tribb..lIilit.-XV. 23.
T. Quintius
L. Servilius
L. Julius
Aquillius Decius
Lucretius Ancus
&Ser Sulnicius

Tribb..Aiiit.- VI. 22.
Sp. Papirius
L. Papirius
Ser. Cornelius Maluginensis
IV.
Q1. Servilius
Ser. Suilpicius
L. Almilius IV.
Tribb..Miit.-V I. 22.
M. Furius Camillus VII.
A. Postumius Regillensis
L. Postumius Regillensis
L. Furius
L. Lucretius
M. Fabiua Ambss

MacrnusIT. & Capitolinus IV.

130      374

1-     'l II
-1                                  1

380

100-1

Vibulanus & Elva

Publi cola IV. & Trcipitino.

Tribbl. liiil.-XV. 24.       T rill. MiliI.-VI. 27.
131      375       379      100-2                                                  L. Palpirius                L. Valerius V.              f Pacelaus - & Cras- Publicola V. &c Ma
C. Cornelius                P. Valerius III.              sus                 mertino VI.
L. llailius                C. Sergius III.
C. Servilius                L. Menenius II.
A. Valerius                 Sp. Papirius
______  ______  _____  ____________________________________     Q. Fabius                   Ser. Curnelius Malugineusis  _________          _________
Trill. 'lili.-XV. 25.     Trill. Milit.-VI. 30.
132      376       378      100-3  -                                               M. Cornelius                P. Manlius                  Macrnus IlL. & Lce- Capitolino & Albi
Q1. Servilius               C. Manlius                    nas                 no.
M. Formus                   L. Julius
L. Quintius                 C. Sextilius
M. Albinius
Trill..Mili.-XV. 28.      Trill. Milit.-VI. 31.
133      377       377      100-4                                                  L. Papirius                 Sp. Furius                  j- Manlius -t & Capi- Fidenas II. & Siculo
M. 1' Publius -             0Q. Servilius If.            tolinus V.
T. Cornelius                C: Licinius
L. Quintius                 P. Clcelius
M. Iloratius
Tribll ilit.-XV. 30.      Trill..Mlilit.-V1. 32.
134      378       376      101-1                                                  Ser. Sulpicius              L. Allcilius'              Macrinus IV. & Fl- Mamertino &    CiL. Papirius                 P. Valerius IV.              denas                cinnato.
T. Cornelius                C. Veturius
M. Quintius                 Ser. Sulpicius
L. Quintius Cincinnati
Trill..lilit.-XV. 38.
135      379       375      101-2                                                  L. Valerius Crispus         [Omitted in Livy. through   Malogennesius &     Lauato III. & Pr"e
f Manlius Fabius jf           some confusion in his reck-  Crassus            textato.
Sen. Sulpicius                oning.]
Lucretius

0
z
w1




ï~~lv mAuof the1yarobeeth0
Comn Yoe. of  i~ia  Olympiad.

Fasti Capstoltm.

i

136

380

374

101-3

DIODOIIUS.
Tribb..lli li.-XV. 41.
Q. Crassus
f Servilias t Cornelius
Sp. Papirius
t" Fabius t Albusj
LIVE'.

Fasti Siculi.

Fati Cuspinisni sive
Naoiati.

V1. 35.1
No curule Magistrates       Julius & Virginius  Bacho t Solo

-    I                                  I

137

381

373

1014

138  1 382  1  372  1 102-1:. actus est.. t.. dedicavit

Tribb. SIdtit.-X V. 48.
M. Formus
L. Formus
A. Postumius
L. Lucretius
M. Fabius
L. Postumius
Tribb. JIiit.-XV. 50.
L. Valerius
P. 1 Ancus t
C. Terentius
L. Menensius
C. Salpicius
T. Papirius
M6. Fabius

-                     i

VI. 35.
No curule Magistrates

VI. d35.
No curule Magistrates

Capitolinus VL.
Camnerinus

Peenus & f Melito t

Papirio & - I iulo t
f- Scarabiense f &
Celinsontano.
Prisco & Corno.

i

- f

I-                   -I-.-       I
-    -  - --

1 139

383

371

102-2... opilcola V...ext. III..luginensis VI.
TRe. Mir..

Tribb..Milit.-XV. 51.
P. Manlius
C. f Eren ucius t
C. tF Sextus t
Tib. Julius
L. Albinius
P. Trebonius
C. tilallius
L. Anthestiue

VI. 33.
No curule Magistrates

Crassus & Tullius

H
0
0
0

140

384

370

102-3...Cossus...uginensis.
M. Fabius K.F.M.N. Ainbustus II.

Tribb lli Miit.-XV. 57.
Q. Servilius
L. Furius
C. Licinius
P. C(celixu

Vt. 35.
No curule Magistrates

Tricipitinus & Fide- Mamsertino &'t Snas IIl.         lto t

Tribb..Milit.-XV. 61.     Truli..iiit-V. 36.
141      385      369     102-4..... pitolin.                            L. hlnmilias              L. Furius                 Cossus & Pcsnus 11. Medullino & Polio...luginensis VII.                     C. Virginius               A. Manlius
exist. IV.                 TR. MIL. Ser. Sulpicius            Ser. Sulpicius
Sp. Servilius C.F.C.N. Structus              L. Quintius               Ser. Cornelius
L. Papirius Sp. F.C.N. Crassus.              C. Cornelius              P. Valerius
L. Veturius L.F. Sp. N. Crassus Cicurinus.   C. Valerius               C. Valerius..Ilus IV. Diet.    Re   eudeCua.... amercinus Meg. Eq.   RtGrn~Cue.... urn in Milites ex. S.C. ebdicarunt.
In enrurn locum facti sunt... pitolinus. Diet. Seditionis sedau&ret R.G.C.
inns e Plebe Mag. eq.
______  _   _____________                                            _________                   _  __    f                     _  _   __   _




ï~~CONSULS AND MILITARY TRIBUNES.

633

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ï~~6334                      HISTORY OF ROME.




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ï~~638                       HISTORY OF ROME.




ï~~Ysear of theYerI-____________                                                                                                           _   ____Cnno-Yeareof  before the Oypa.FoiCptlss                                            PDRI.LV.FsiSol.                                                Fasti Coeptolni ir
wealth.  Rome    Christian Oypa.Fs CpioiReIDRS                                                                     LY                    at kl.Nrisiasi.
wealth.Era.
oos.-XX. 27.            Cos.-IX. 42.
201      445      309     117-4                                              Q. Fabius If.             Ap. Claudiua              Muso II. & Rullus IL Rulliano IIL &  uP. Decius P.F.Q.N. Muns.                    C. M~arcitns              L. Volumnnius                                  lo il
______      Q. Fatbius M.P.N.N. Mttximus Peuilian. III.  ____________                                         ________           _______
-_____  --t Coso. t-XX. 36.                                                                Cos.-IX. 42.
202      446      308     118-1  Ap. Claudiue CF. Ap. N. Cocus.            1- Ap. Claudius f         P. Cornelius Arvina       Appius & Violons  - Hoc anno Dicao
L. Volumnnius C.F.C.N. Flamnia Violens.     t- L. Plautius j-         Q. Marcius Tremulus                            res non fuerun
Cons. M. Valeriuss M.F.M.N. Maxims.
C. Juniua C.F.C.N. Bubulcus Brutus. L. F. XXVII.
Coss.-XX. 45.             Cos-IX. 44.
203      447      307     118-2.... Tr.. ulus                  Ap. Claudius              L. Postumius             t- Romulus 1- & f Al- 1- Mure II. & pula
P. Corn....                                L. Volumniuts             Ti. Minucius                binus t            no0.1. t
Q. Marcius Q.F.Q.N. Tremulus Coo. De Anagni-J
nois Ilerniceisq. Ann. CI)XLVIJ. Prid. K.
Quint...N. Scipio JBarbatus....MIlus.
Coss.-XX. 73.              Cos-IX. 45.
204      448      306     118-3..Mogllus                            Q. Marcius                P. Sulpicius Savorrion       Motollus - & Minn- COeco & Violense
Ti. Mi...                                P. Cornelius              P. Sempronius Sophus        cius
M..
MI. Fulvius L.F.L.N. Curves. Piotinus Cos. Do
Samnitibus. Ann. CDXLOiX. III. Non. Oct.
Coss.-XX. 81.              Cos.-X. 1.
205      4:       0        1-.. C. N.Su.                                L. Postumiuos            L. Genucius               Sempronius & 1 Fa- Tramulo & Arina
P. 30S11.4. ophs.Ti. Minucius                                        Ser. Cornelius              voritlat.. N. N. Maxims Rullanun.
P. Sempronius P.F.C.N. Sophus Cos. doelqneis
Ann. CDXLIX. VII. K. Oct.
P. Sulpicius Ser. F.P.N. Saverrio. Cos. De Samnitiboo. Ann. CDXLIX. 1111. K. Nov.
Coss.-XX. 91.              Coss.-X. 1.
206      450      304     119-1..... n. F. Cn. N. Lentulus.             P. Sempronius             M. Livius Dentor          Lentulus & - Aven- Megello & Aui-,P. Snlpicius                                          K. A~mliis                 teamus -f          no.
Cos.-XX. 102.             Coss.-X. 6
207      451      303     119-2            C. N. Dn...                     Sor. Cornelius            M. Valorius V.            Dontonius & lmii- Sofo & Saborlo....L. Genucius                                          Q. Appuleius                lius
SN. Dubulcu B......
C. Janius C.F.C.N. Bubulcus Drutus IL. Diot. Do.qnois Ann. CDLLILLII K. Sott,
Cos--IX. 108.            Coss.-X. 9.
208      452      302     119-3.... M.F.NN. Max.. e.,O. Livius                                    M. Fulvius Piolinus       Corvinus & Pansa   Rufn  &   Adloni.... thius L.F.L.N....                     K1. sEmuius               T. Manlius Torquatus.                         nense...,.. no Dicat....                                                 IHnic suffectus M. Valorius......os. M.F.M.N..
____  ____  ___               alr_...IVDt.11.._.X. K.De..             ________                 ________                                         ____

0
z
H



ï~~.         _           ___...                                                                                                                             i

i

Year of the Yearaof
Commzon-   Rome.
wealth.
'2093     453
210       454

Yeai
before the
Christian
Era.
301
300

Cw{
IJ
f

Olympiad.
119-4
1201
*120-2
120-3

Fooli Capitolini.....F.C.N..
11, 13ovioo Co. F. Co. N. Piatinus Cos.
B~e Sameiltihus Neqoinatibuoque. Ann. CD.
VII. K. Oct.
Coi. Fulvius Co. F. Cn. N. Max. Centumalus.
Coo. De Samonitibus Etrusceioque. Ann. CDLV. Idibus Nov.

DIODORUJS.
[The regular hiotory of Dindotiencda with the 20th
boolk, at the third year oo
the 119th Olympiad, and
hios lotsof consuls here
terminate.]

LIVY.
Cos.-X. 11.
L. Cornelius Scipio
Co. Fulvius
Cos-N. 14.
Q. Fabiuos Maximus IV.
P. Decius III.

Petitus &Torquatus
Scipin & Maximus

t    eto-        al.t Corvo II. &  RIlliattn II.t

Fasti Strati.         Fasti Coopiotani alve
Nariotaut.

0

(sos--A. 00.

211  I 455 299

L. Volumolus
Ap. Claudius

2i12
213
214
215
216
20.7
218

456

298
217
296

v                                                        COs-L. 22....                                                  Q. Fahius Maximus V.
P. Decius IV.

j- Rullus III. & Muso
III. "t
f~ Claudius & Violens jRullus IV. & Muso
IV.

Corvo V. & Pansa.
Petino & Torquato.
Scipione & Centom alo.

-

457
418
459

120-4
121-1

L. Posloomius Megellus
MI. Atilius Reguolus.ens........... III (JOCS."-A  O0r 0N......M. Roll.......e deovyt.
Q. Fahius M.F.N.N. Maximus Rullianous III. Cos.
V. Do Samnitihus et Etrusceis Galleis. Ann.
COJLTIX. Prid. Noo. Sept.

L. Papirino Cursor
ISp. Carvilius

Claudius & Violeos Rulliaoo IV. &- Mure
It.                 III.

i
0

_                        I

i                                                                                                                                    i

f. {__ ___ __ ___ ___..-, * i

231

121-2
121-3..N. Megello....lots..... Cornelius A.F.P.N. Arvin.... est..XX.
L. Postumnius L.F. Sp. N..egel1. Cosa. II.
Do Samnnitih. et Etruaceis VI. K. April. CDLIX.
M. Atiliua 11 F l N. Regutua Coo. De
Volsonihus et Samnitib. A. CDLIX. V. K. Apr.

GIos.-X. 47.
Q. Fahius Gorges
D. Junis Brutus

Ruallus V. & Muo V. ICiaco & Violense.

460      294
461      293
462      2

I___________________I__________________ I              I

L. Papirius L.F. Sp. N. Cursor
S.......ms
Sp. Carvilius C.F.C.N. Maximus Cos. Do
Samoitihua. Ano. CDLX. Idihus Jan... L.F. Sp. N. Cursor..itihus... Ann.
CDLX. Idihus Fehr.

[Here the 10th hook of Livy
ends; and the ten followin0 hooks being loot, his
lists of consuols are wanting
till the period of the secoud
Paoic war.]

jMetellus j- & Re-u- Itulliano V. & Mure
los                 IV.
tCursor & Maximus Megello IL. & ReguIn.
Mtaximus & Grac- Curgio 0& Scasyola.
thuts

121-4

122-1..xmu... Ann. D. CDLXII. K. Sext.

_ _                _                                                         _:   -,




ï~~Year
Yearotho year of  before the                                                                                                                         FsiCsiin
Common-   Porno   Christian Olympiad.              Fasti Capitorin.                   DIODORIUS.V.                                     Fasti Sicoli.  FetNooiini BV
wealth.           Era.                                                                                                                                    Nrsni
219      463     291      122- '                                                                                                 Metellus 11. & Bual- Megello 111. & Bn
bus             jto.
2209  I464        299     12.2-3                                                                                                 Maximus 11. & Mu- Dentato & Rufino
221      465      289   - 122-4                                                                                                  t Cremolue t & t Al- Corvino II. & Noc
_____  ____ ____  - ____  ___________________________  ________________  _______binus____           tinu t             ue
222     4665    288      123-1                                                                                                  Marcellus & Rutilius Tremulo 11. & Ar2
na.
223      467     28"      123-2                                                                                                  Potitus & t Petitusej- Marcellino & Rlio
224      468      286     123.3                                                                                                  Lepidus & t Cecin- Maximo & Pielo.
____  ___________________________  ______________    _______________             at               __________
225      469      28:)    123-4                                                                                                  t Tacitus t & t Den- Canina & Lepido
______________  ______ ______________________________________  _____________________  __________________  toÂ~  _________to__t
226       470      284l  14-1-                                                                                                   Dolabella & Maxi- Tucca & Metello
__________________ _______________      mus
227      471     283    + 124-2.. eisque... III. Non. Mart.                                                                 t Lucius & Pappus Calvo & Maximo
228      472      28-2    124-3..clue Q.F.Q.N. Philippu...                                                                   Barbula & Philippus Luscinio & Labo
Etrueceis. Ann. CDLXXII. K. Apr.
229      473      281     124-4... uncantue Ti. F. Ti. N. Cos.. e Vuleinieneibus et                                           Levinut & Cornca- Barbula & Filippo
Vulcientib. Ann. CDLXXIII. K. Febr.                                                             nius.. milius Q.F.Q.N. Barbalu Pro Cos. De Tarenlineis
Samnitibus et Sallentineis.
Ann. DCLXXIIL    VL Idus Quint.
230      474      285     125.h                                                                                                  Severio & Mum      levino & Coruna
2,31   - 475      279!    125-2  C. Fabricitis C.F.C.N. Luscinus II. Cos. II. De                                                 Luecinet & Pappus  8aberio &  fPILucaneis Bruttieis Tarentin. Samnilibue.                                                                           co t.
Ann. CDLXXV. Idibue Decembr.
232      476      278     125-3  C. Juniue C.F.C.N. Brutus Bubulc. Cos. If. De                                                   Rufinus & Bubulcus Litecino IL. & Pino
-    Lucaneis et Bruttieis. Ann. CDLXXVL. Non.
Jan.
233      477     277      125-4  Q. Fabins Q.F.11.N. Maximnus. Gui-gee II. Cos.                                                  Gorges & Clepsinue  Riefino IIL & Brut
II.                                                                                                                II.
De Samnitibus Lucaneie Bruttleis. An  DXVI  urnlb
234      478     276      126-1  M ' Curio M'F.M'N. Dental. IV..nitib. etlj- Benacus t & Len- Gurgle If. & CeIlRege Pyrrho. A. CDLXXIIX.... ebr.                                                             tulus              na...Ti. F. Ser. N. Lentul... on. Do Samnitibus et
__ ___  ___      ___         Ann. CDLXXIIX. K. Mart.                                                                                    _
-235   -  479      275     126-2                                                                                                 1- Benacue t & Me- Dentato II. & Ln
____  ___   nn  DXC Qiinlbu.renda                                                                       tubo.
j26     480      274    11226 3... C. N. Canin.... neie Samnitibus.                                                        Liciniue & t Cam- Dentato III. &Me

C
qwi




ï~~42                      HISTORY OF ROME.




ï~~CONSULS AND MILITARY TRIBUNES.            643




ï~~644                       HISTORY OF ROME.




ï~~Year of the          Year                                                                                                                                       FsiCsiin
Common-   Year of  before the  al a.                Fati Capitolini.                      DIODORUS.                     LIMY.                                     Noriatani.li.
wealth.       *     Era.
W14.508       246      133-3   M, Fabius M.F.M.N. Buteo.                                                                             Torquatua & Biesus Grasso LI. & Liin
C. Atilius A.F.A.N. Bulbus.                  _________                                                           ats    Bto&Plo
2G5      59        245     1334   A. Manlius T.F.T.N. Torquat. Attic.                                                                  F4undulus&GalsBto&Pl.
C. Semprofius Ti. F. Ti. N. Bliesus II.
266      510)      244     134-1- C. Fundanius C.F.Q.N. Fundulus                                                                         Catulus & Albinus   Attico & Blaiso.
C. Sulpicius C.F. Ser. N. Gallus
267      511       243     134-2   0. Lutatius C.F.C.N. Catulus                                                                         Torquatus  & f Ca- Fundulo & Ga.
A. Postumius A.F.L.N. Albinus,.o
268      512       242     134-3  - A. Manlius T.F.T.N. To. Attic. 11.                                                                 Cento & f Tudinta- Catuto & Albino
Q. Lutatius... C.N. Ce...                                                                             tus t
Cens. C. Aurelius L..
C. Lutatius C.F.C.N. Catulus Pro Cos. De Pcenis
cx Scil... e... egit. 1111. Non. Oct. A. DXII.
Q. Valerius Q.F.P.N. Falto Pro Pr. ex Sicilia Navalem egit Prid. Non. Octob. An. DXIL
Q. Lutatius C.F.C.N. Cerco Cos. De Falisceis K.
Mart. An. DXII.
A. Manlius T.F.T.N. Torquatus Atticus. Cos. II.
De Falisceis IV. Non. M... Ann. DXIIL
269      513      241      134-4   C. Claudius. Ap. F.ON. Centho.                                                                        t Toncinus f & I{al- Attico II. & Cero
M. Sempronius C.F.M.N. Tuditanus.                                                                       co

O
0i
td
cIl




ï~~EXPLANATION OF THE SECOND TABLES.
1 HAVE continued the tables of military tribunes and consuls from the point of time
at which they ended in the preceding ones, to the end of the first Punic war. I have
given, as before, the lists of consuls from Livy and Diodorus so far as their remaining
works contain them; and I have now given the fragments of the Fasti Capitolini which
relate to the period contained in the tables without any omission, and at the same time
without adding to the words or even letters which exist on the fragments of the marble
hitherto discovered.
The Fasti of Diodorus end with the year 452, and those of Livy with the year 459;
and the Fasti Capitolini are wanting for several years here and the e both before and
after that period. I have, therefore, given two other sets of Fasti, one of which goes by
the name of the Sicilian Fasti, because Onufrio Panvini found the MS. containing it in
Sicily. Casaubon copied the MS. and gave his copy to Scaliger, who published it in his
edition of Eusebius, pp. 227-299, under the title of itrLro1 x#p6=v.
The other Fasti were first made known by John Cuspiniani, who published extracts
from them in his commentary on Cassiodorus in the sixteenth century. They have been
since published entirely by Noris towards the end of the seventeenth century, and they
may be found, with his dissertation on them, in the eleventh volume of Grmvius' Collection of Roman Antiquities. The MS. containing them is in the imperial library at Vienna,
and, according to Noris, they were compiled about the year 354 of the Christian era.
These last Fasti are no doubt older and more correct than the Sicilian, which are full
of errors; but both are useless for the period of the military tribuneships, because, representing all the years of the commonwealth as marked by consulships, they never give
to any year the names of more than two magistrates. But the author of the Sicilian
Fasti seems to have copied his lists from some writer who, like Cassiodorus, gave only
the consulships, and purposely omitted the years of military tribuneships; and not being
aware of this, and supposing that the lists of consuls were continuous in point of time,
he has marked the years immediately preceding the first plebeian consulship with the
names of the consuls who preceded the Gaulish invasion; insomuch that, placing that
invasion in the third year of the 99th Olympiad, he notwithstanding makes it fall in the
consulship of M. Genucius and C. Curtius, who were consuls only five years after the
expulsion of the decemvirs. Both the Sicilian Fasti and those of Noris give merely the
cognomen, or last name, of each consul: it seems as if they had looked hastily up some
Fasti where all the names were given at length, and had, to save trouble, merely copied
down the name which came last. Sometimes the recurrence of the same names near to
each other has misled them; as, for instance, in the third Samnite war, the Sicilian Fasti
give three consulships of Q. Fabius and P. Decius instead of two, and two of Ap. Claudius and Volumnius instead of one. The corruptions of the Roman names are as bad
as those in the Fasti of Diodorus: Calatinus is corrupted into "Catacion," Dentatus
into "Benacus," Cadicius into "Decius," Caudex into " Thaugatus," Canina, a rather uncommon cognomen of one branch of the Claudian house, becomes "Cambius" in the Sicilian Fasti, and "Cinna" in those of Noris; and many others recur which it is in general
easy to correct from the corresponding years in the Fasti Capitolini, or from any correct
list of the consuls. Some corruptions, however, cannot easily be restored, nor is it always easy to ascertain how much must be ascribed to mere errors of the copyist, and
where the authors really meant to give different consuls from those named in the other
Fasti.
With regard to Livy's Chronology, the fixed point from which we must set out is the
year of Rome 400, which, according to his express statement, VII. 18, was the thirtyfifth year after the expulsion of the Gauls, and was marked by the consulship of C. Sulpicius Peticus and M. Valerius Publicola. Reckoning the years from this point, according to Livy's own statement of events, the consulship of Q. Fabius Gurges and D. Junius




ï~~EXPLANATION OF THE SECOND TABLES.

647

Brutus, the last mentioned in his tenth book, would fall in the year 459. But Sigonius
places it one year later, and makes the year 422 to have been wholly taken up by interregna, and so to have been marked by no consuls' names. This he does, in order to reconcile Livy with himself, because his reckonings elsewhere require, as he thinks, the
insertion of a year more than he has actually accounted for. That is to say, Livy, in the
beginning of the 31st book, says that the sixty-three years which passed between the
beginning of the first Punic war and the end of the second, had furnished him with matter for as many books as the four hundred and seventy-eight years which had elapsed
from the foundation of Rome to the consulship of Ap. Claudius, when the first Punic
war began. Such are the numbers in almost all the MSS. But as the number four
hundred and seventy-eight would agree with no system of chronology, it has been long
since corrected in the printed editions to "four hundred and eighty-eight."  Sigonius,
however, argued that the true reading was four hundred and eighty-six, the Roman numerals CDLXXVIII. having, as he thinks, been corrupted from CDLXXXVI. the third
X having been altered to V, and the V separated into II. He therefore places the beginning of the first Punic war in 486, having, as I have above mentioned, inserted a
whole year of interregna, not noticed by Livy, which he makes out to be the year 422.
Now, without this additional year, the first Punic war does actually, as I think, according to IAvy, begin in 487; for Sigonius omits two consulships between the retreat of
Pyrrhus and the consulship of Ap. Claudius and M. Fulvius, namely, those of Q. Ogulnius and C. Fabius in 485, and of Q. Fabius Gurges and L. Mamilius in 489. The first
of these is mentioned expressly by Pliny, Hist. Natur. XXXIII. 44, as well as by Zonaras, VIII. 7, and by the Sicilian Fasti and those of Noris, and is admitted by Sigonius
himself in his commentary on the Fasti Capitolini. The consulship of Q. Fabius and L.
Mamilius is mentioned by the Sicilian Fasti and by those of Noris, and is required by
the dates of the Fasti Capitolini, which place the consulship of D. Junius Pera and N.
Fabius in 487, and that of Ap. Claudius and M. Fulvius in 489, manifestly making an
interval of a year between them, although the names of the intermediate consuls are lost.
Zonaras speaks of Fabius as being sent against the Volsinians, and expressly says that
he was consul in that year with " Emilius," according to the present text of Zonaras in
the edition of Du Cange, Venice, 1729. But in the second chapter of the same eighth
book of Zonaras, L. iEmilius, the colleague of Q. Marcius Philippus in 473, is in one
MS. called MavtXov, which shows how readily the names ApdXeos and Ma,(oA may be
confounded with each other. And further, Sigonius acknowledges this consulship of Q.
Fabius and L. Mamilius in his commentary on the Fasti Capitolini. Thus, according to
Livy, there would be, in fact, the events of 486 years related in his fifteen first books,
and the sixteenth book began with the year 487-that is, with the consulship of Ap. Clau.
dius and M. Fulvius; and the fifteen next books did contain also the events of sixty
three years-from the year 487 to the year 550, the consulship of Cn. Cornelius and P.
Elius Pntus, before the expiration of which the war with Carthage was concluded-as
the first Punic war had begun about the middle of 487. And thus the correctness of
Sigonius' alteration of Livy's date from CDLXXVIII. to CDLXXXVI. is indeed established, although, as I think, his way of justifying it is erroneous, and so also is his interpretation of it; for Livy does not say that App. Claudius was consul in 486, but that his
own fifteen first books, which stopped at the beginning of App. Claudius' consulship,
had contained the events of 486 years. And, therefore, according to Livy, the first year
of the war with Pyrrhus would fall in 471, the first year of the first Punic war in 487,
and the end of the second Punic war in 550.
Meantime I follow the common chronology of the years of Rome, because it is hopeless now to endeavor to supersede it by any other system, and it would be a mere perplexity to my readers if they were to find every action recorded in this history fixed to
a different year from that with which they had been accustomed to connect it. Nor
does there seem any adequate object to be gained by the attempt. The era of the foundation of Rome is itself a point impossible to fix accurately; nor can we determine the
chronology of the fourth and fifth centuries of Rome either in itself or as compared with
the chronology of Greece. Our existing authorities are too uncertain and too conflicting to allow of this; and, as I have said already in another place, the uncertainty of the
history and chronology act mutually on each other, and a sure standing-place is not to
be found. The five years of anarchy during the discussions on the Licinian laws are,
indeed, utterly improbable, and we may safely assume that they could not have happened exactly as they are represented. But Cn. Flavius, in the middle of the fifth century,
recorded on his Temple of Concord' that it was dedicated 204 years after the dedication

Pliny, Hist. Natur. XXXIII. $ 19. Ed. Sillig.




ï~~648

HISTORY OF ROME.

of the Capitol; and this agrees exactly with the Fasti Capitolini, which place the edile.
ship of Flavius and the censorship of Fabius and Decius in the year of Rome 449. It
is, indeed, probable that the Gaulish invasion should be placed later than its common
date; and the five years of the anarchy may well be inserted in the early part of the commonwealth, a period for which we have neither a history nor a chronology that will bear
any inquiry. Yet Polybius followed the common date of the Gaulish invasion, and his
chronology of the subsequent Gaulish wars is all based on the assumption that Rome
was taken in the 98th Olympiad, and not later. Polybius doubtless may have been misled, and Cn. Fulvius may have had no sufficient authority for fixing the interval between
the dedication of his temple of Concord and that of the Capitol; but if they were both
mistaken, where are we to find surer guides? and if the records on which they relied
were uncertain, as indeed they very possibly were, what evidence or what probability
can we find now, so as to be enabled to arrive at a more certain conclusion?
I follow, then, the common chronology of Rome; not, indeed, as thinking with the
authors of "L'Art de verifier les Dates," that it is possible to fix the very year, and even
the day of the month, on which the several consuls of the fifth century entered upon
their office, but because it is a convenient standard of referenlce; and if not correct,
which in all probability it is not, yet is quite as much so as any other system which
could be set up in its room. And this has determined me not to adopt Niebuhr's dates
even on his authority, because I cannot persuade myself that the certainty of his amended chronology is so clear as to compensate for the manifest inconvenience of departing
from a system which is fixed in the memories of all the readers of Roman history
throughout Europe.
CORRECTION OF NOTE 15.-PAGE 37.
I might have spared the first part of this note had I known, when I wrote it, ihat the
reading, "Turrianum a Fregellis accitum," is undoubtedly corrupt. The Bamberg MS
reads "vulcaniveis accitum;" one of those at Paris (called by HIarduin and Brotier "Re.
gius II." and numbered at present in the Catalogue of the Library, 6797) reads "at vul
gamulis accitum:" both show that the common text, like so many others in Pliny, i
merely a false restoration of a passage which in the oldest and best MSS. is unintelligi
ble, but which clearly contained a meaning very different from that exhibited in the later
MSS. Sillig, in his Dictionary of ancient Artists, has conjectured that the true reading
was "et Volsiniis accitum;" but in his edition of Pliny he approves rather of Jahn's conjecture, "Vulcanium a Veils accitum," as agreeing more nearly with the traces preserved
in the Bamberg MS. At any rate, Pliny is relieved from an apparent contradiction, and
Turrianus or Turianus should no longer be quoted as an artist on Pliny's authority. I
find that Mr. Millingen had already anticipated me in correcting "Fregenis" instead of
"Fregellis," he not knowing, I suppose, any more than I did, that we were but fighting.
with a shadow.




ï~~ADDENDA.
THE following notes are extracted from manuscripts of. the Author's, some of them
written while he was collecting materials for the latter portion of this history, but the
chief part in 1833, when he was thinking of converting the series of Biographies in the
Encyclopedia Metropolitana into a continuous history of Rome, which was to open
with the first Punic war, the period where Niebuhr's great work had just been broken
off by his death. As they contain information, and express opinions on several interesting questions connected with Roman history, it has been thought expedient to insert them.
NOTE A, to p. 455, 1. 54.
If we endeavor to picture to ourselves what the Roman people were at the
beginning of the sixth century of their history; to represent to ourselves the size
and aspect of their city and its neighborhood; their language, their manners,
their social and domestic habits, their wealth, private and public, their principles
of religion and of law; their character and condition, in short, as men and as
citizens; where are the eyes so piercing as to discern the almost vanishing forms
of these objects amidst the dimness of antiquity? or how can we supply, and
arrange into an intelligible whole, the disjointed and seemingly unmeaning images,
which our fragments of information offer, as perplexing and incongruous as the
chaos of a dream?
The city of Rome, properly so called, was still contained at the beginning of
the sixth century, and for some centuries afterwards, within the walls ascribed
to Servius Tullius. Its circumference was about seven miles; but this enclosure
was far from being all built over. Sacred groves, the remains of the forest
which in the earliest times had covered all the higher grounds, were still very
numerous; gardens, orchards, perhaps copse-wood, such as still grows on the
sides of the Monte Testaccio, also occupied a considerable space.' As in so many
other towns in their original state, the walls did not come down close to the
river,2 but ran parallel to it at some distance, passing from the Capitol to the
Aventine by what is called the Janus Quadrifons, and the western extremity of
the Circus Maximus. But, as was natural, one of the earliest suburbs sprang up
in this quarter; and the space between the walls and the Tiber, without the
Porta Flumentana, was already covered with houses in the time of the second
Punic war.3 Buildings had probably grown up beyond the Tiber also, connecting the fortress on the Janiculus with the city: on the eastern side of Rome,
from the Esquiline to the end of the Quirinal, the space before the walls seems
to have been open.
The streets were narrow and winding,4 and the houses lofty; the different
floors5 being occupied by different families, according to the practice still so common in Scotland and on the continent. There was as yet little of ornamental
I Bunsen's Beschreibung der Stacdt Rom,  Niebuhr, Abriss der Geschichte de Stadt
Vol. I. p. 678.                        [in Bunsen's Rome, p. 112].
2 Bunsen, p. 628, &c. Niebuhr, Rom. Hist.  4 Tacitus, Annal. XV. 43.
Vol. III. p. 36G, note 525.             5 This is said expressly by Dionysius, X. 32,
of the houses on the Aventine.




ï~~650

ADDENDA.

architecture, such as was introduced at a later period from Greece; and of the
style of the older temples we have no means of judging. Those great works
which peculiarly characterize Rome, her aqueducts and her roads, were as yet
in their infancy. Of the former, only two were in existence, the Appia and the
Anio Vetus; but these were not carried upon a long line of magnificent arches,
like the aqueducts of a later age; their course was almost wholly underground;
for it was not yet beyond possibility that the Romans might see an invading
enemy in the neighborhood of their city, and it was of the utmost importance to
conceal the line by which they obtained their supplies of water: Of the roads
there existed the Appian, which in the year 459 had been paved with basalt,' as
far as Boville, that is, to the foot of the Alban hills, ten miles from Rome; and
according to Niebuhr, there must also have existed the Latin, the Salarian, the
Nomentan, and the oldest Tiburtine. Whether these were as yet paved, we
have, I believe, no information.
If we look to the neighborhood of Rome, we shall find that many of the old
towns with which Latium was so thickly set in early times, had already been
utterly destroyed. Nothing more surprises those who fancy the Campagna of
Rome to be like Champagne, or like the great chalk plains of Hampshire and
Wiltshire, than the sight of its actual scenery. The swellings of the ground continually end in little precipitous cliffs; and the numerous streams flow between
deep rocky banks, offering exactly such situations as the old Italians loved to
choose for the citadels of their towns. Accordingly, Pliny reckons up the names
of fifty-three8 people of Latium, who had all perished without leaving a trace of
their existence behind. Many of these indeed were destroyed at a period not
only beyond historical memory, but even beyohd the reach of those traditions
which once passed for history; some, however, occur in the early annals of the
commonwealth, and are afterwards lost to us altogether, as Crustimeria, Corioli,
Longula, Polusca, &c., while others, as Gabii and Fidenm, though not actually
destroyed, fell into such a state of decay that they became a proverb to express
the extremity of loneliness and desolateness.9 No doubt the law of conquest had
been applied to these states in its full extent; and their lands, having been taken
in war, had mostly been occupied by the patricians, and thus became, in fact,
though not in law, the property of individual Romans. Thus, at a very early
period, we find that the fortunes of the nobility consisted chiefly in land0 conquered from an enemy; the old Ager Romanus, or original territory of Rome,
extending only about five milesu from the city towards Alba, and still less in
other directions.  Accordingly, Strabo says expressly that Antemnae and Fidens,
the latter five miles from Rome, the former less than three, were in his time the
property of private persons.   By property, xrsig, he meant possessiones, land
which had been originally won from an enemy, and never divided out as a colony;
which was the possession of individuals, sold, let, and bequeathed, like actual
property, so long as the state did not choose to exercise its right of resuming it.
Polybius has remarked," that the old Latin language differed so much from
6 Frontinus, de Aqunductibus, 7, 18. The of its course was forty-three miles, all of which,
Aqua Appia had its source near the road to except 221 paces, was underground. FrontiPraneste, between the seventh and eighth mile- nus, c. 6.
stones from Rome; and the whole length of its  Livy X. 47. Silice perstrata est. Silex is
course to the point at which the distribution lava basaltina, of a blackish gray color, made
of the water took place, near the Porta Tri- up of a crystallized mass of augite, leucite, zegemina (at the foot of the Aventine, looking elite, &c. See Bunsen's Rome, p. 50, note.
towards the Palatine), was 11 miles and 190  8 III. 5.
paces. It was carried underground the whole  9 Gabiis desertior atque Fidenis Vicus. See
of the distance, except for sixty paces close to also Cicero, pro Plancio.
the Porta Capena (in the low ground, just un-  1o Livy, IV. 48. Nec enim ferme quicquam
der the southern end of the Celian). The Anio agri, ut in urbe alieno solo posita, non armis
Vetus was contracted for in the year 482 (481 partum erat.
according to Frontinus), and completed a few  n Strabo, V. p. 159. Compare Livy, I. 28,
years afterwards. Its source was twenty miles and II. 39.
from Rome, above Tibur; and the whole length  1 III. 22.




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651

that spoken in his time, that even those of the Romans who understood it best
met with expressions in it which they found great difficulty in interpreting. This
refers to the language spoken at the beginning of the commonwealth; and the
famous hymn of the Fratres Arvales, which has been preserved to our own times,
enables us to confirm the truth of the statement. But in the Punic wars the
Latin language was substantially the same as in the age of Cicero and Virgil:
the inscription on the Duillian column, and that on the tomb of L. Scipio, who
was consul in 495, are both perfectly intelligible to us, and only differ in the
forms of the words from the writings of the Augustan age.
The free male population of Italy of an age to bear arms, exclusive of Bruttium,
of the Greek cities of Magna Grmcia, and of the whole country north of the Rubicon
and the Macra, is said by Polybius to have amounted to 770,000 men, in the year
529. It is not clear however whether there is not some confusion13 in the reckoning, and whether the sum total ought not to be reduced by nearly 50,000.
Even adopting the lower number, we get a free population of 1,440,000 persons
in the vigor of life; and if we add half as many for those of both sexes who
were under seventeen or above sixty, it makes the whole free population of Italy,
with the important omissions already noticed, to amount to 2,120,000 souls. The
slave population it is impossible to calculate. In Campania the slaves must have
been numerous: in Etruria those who were not reckoned amongst the citizens,
that subject population who, though not strictly slaves, are often carelessly
called so, must have greatly outnumbered those properly called Etruscans. But
in Latium, in Samnium, amongst the Sabines, and in Rome itself, the slaves
were as yet perhaps a minority of the whole population. Still, if we reckon the
whole population, free and slave together, at five millions, and consider the number and populousness of the Greek cities, of which no account is given, the sum
for the whole peninsula south of the Macra and the Rubicon will appear sufficiently great. No doubt it had once been far greater; but the long and bloody
wars which led to the Roman conquest of Italy, must have diminished it enormously, to say nothing of the wasting invasions of the Gauls.
SExtensive tracts of land had been seized by the Romans, and were mostly held
in occupation by a small number of proprietors; nor must we conceive of these
large estates, as of the large farms of modern times, which are supposed to be so
favorable to agriculture. On the contrary, they were cultivated carelessly and
partially: and ground, which the necessities of the small proprietor had forced
into productiveness, was allowed to return to its natural barrenness. Besides,
the extent of the woodlands must have been much greater than at present; and if
some spots were then well peopled, which the malaria has now rendered uninhabitable, yet, on the other hand, there were places, as particularly in the valley of th&
Arno, which have only been reclaimed in later times from the state of impracticable marshes; and the number of individuals supported by trade, or by any
other means than agriculture, was beyond all comparison smaller than in modern
Italy.
I know of only one fact which seems to indicate the existence of a commercial spirit among the Romans at the period with which we are now engaged.
This is the law of Q. Claudius,14 one of the tribunes, passed a short time before
the second Punic war, which made it unlawful for any senator, or father of a
senator, to possess a ship of the burden of more than three hundred amphorm.
13 Polybius reckons the four Roman legions citizens of foreign states, who were mun'cipes
employed in the field, and the reserve which of Rome, it would on this occasion comprise
covered the city, as exclusive of the census of the Campanians; and we thus get a number
the Romans and Campanians; that is, the corn- very closely agreeing with the sum of the Roplete census, including the legions stationed in mans and Campanians as given by Polybius,
Sicily and Tarentum, would have given a sum 273,000, if we suppose that he ought to have
total of 324,900. But the census for the year included the soldiers actually employed in this
532, gives only 270,213 citizens. Now if, as amount, instead of reckoning them separately
Niebuhr supposes, the census included all those  " Livy, XXI. 63.




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The avowed object of this law was to exclude the nobility from engaging in
maritime commerce; the professed reason for the exclusion was, that trade was
degrading to the dignity of a senator: but the circumstance that it was resisted
strenuously by the whole senate, and carried in despite of their opposition, proves
that they felt the restriction much more as an injury than an honor, and makes
it probable that the real object of the friends of the law was to monopolize the
profits of trade to the middling classes, and to exclude the competition of the
nobility, whose superior wealth would have given them great advantages in every
market. But the commercial spirit of the Romans had no time to develop itself;
the invasion of Hannibal was fatal to the security, and much more to the acquisition of capital; and after the struggle was over, society had undergone a change
which fixed the attention of the people on other objects. Trade therefore contributed but little to the greatness of Rome: indeed it is ridiculous to speak of
the trade of a country, where some of the simplest callings'5 were as yet unknown,
and where silver money had been coined"6 for the first time only five years before
the first Punic war.
Were the manners of Rome, then, as pure as those writers would imagine,
who consider an agricultural people to be placed in so much healthier a moral
condition than a commercial or manufacturing one?   Undoubtedly the Roman
character before the second Punic war was full of nobleness; but it is idle to
connect its excellence with the preference given to agriculture, rather than to
trade. The Roman people were as yet in the youth of their existence; and
their minds enjoyed a youthful freshness. They had not lost the feelings of admiration and veneration; feelings which knowledge and experience, inasmuch as
their field is an evil world, surely lessen; feelings whose destruction is the worst
degradation of human nature. Respect for the gods, respect for the laws, respect for the aged, respect for the judgment of the good and the wise, powerfully influenced a Roman's mind; and, opposed to these, self-confidence and
self-indulgence could as yet do nothing. What there was of crime was not the
mere wickedness of individual gratification: of whatever offences a Roman was
guilty, his idol was not that vilest of all, his own single pleasure or pride. He
was cruel and treacherous to foreigners; for such conduct might save the majesty of Rome from humiliation: if a patrician, he might be oppressive and insolent to the commons, or the mob of the forum, turba forensis; but he was
striving against the confusion of sacred things with vile, against dishonoring the
images of his ancestors, whose spirits watched over the welfare of their race, and
required of their descendants in every generation to transmit its honor and dignity to their children unimpaired. So in Rome, as ih more corrupted states, there
was violence and injustice, and towards foreigners cruelty and falsehood; but
there was, withal, a surrender of self to some more general interest; and where
the commands of that interest were in accordance with truth and justice, there
was exhibited virtue in some of its most heroic forms, resolute control of appetite, obedience even to death, unshaken fortitude, and entire self-devotion in the
cause of duty.
In such a state of things the domestic relations are purely and faithfully discharged; for on these points law and public opinion always speak the language
of nature and of truth; it is only individual wickedness that leads to the violation of these plain duties. Accordingly we find that the marriage tie was seldom broken, either by adultery or by divorce;17 and the obedience of children
15 Barbers were unknown at Rome, accord-   17 It is a well-known story that Sp. Carvilius
ing to Varro (Pliny, VII. 59), till the year 554; was the first Roman who divorced his wife;
bakers, or rather bread-makers, till the year and that this took place after the end of the
580. (Pliny, XVIII. 11.) But the oldest food first Punic war (See Aul. Gellius, IV. 3. Valor.
of the Romrnans was puls, a sort of paste made Maximus, II. 1, i4). Niebuhr (Rom. Hist.Vol.
of spelt (far); like the polenta of maize, so com- III. p. 414) and Hugo (Geschichte des Rom.
snonly eaten in Italy now.             Rechts, p. 114) consider this as a mistake; and
I Pliny, XXXIII. 3.                  possibly it is not to be taken to the letter. But




ï~~ADDENDA.

653

to their parents was secured at once by the general feeling and by law. The
laws indeed relating to the patriapotestas confer on the parent an exclusive authority, and even profane one of the most sacred of human relations by placing it on
the footing of that of master and slave. Yet so strong is parental affection, that
there is little danger of a father's tyrannizing over his children; and this natural
love makes the great distinction between domestic government and political;
neglect and disobedience on the part of the child being the evil most to be dreaded
in the one, as oppression on the part of the rulers is in the other.
But although in the early times of Rome, the marriage tie was most rarely
broken, yet we are not to imagine that the standard of morals approached nearly
to the purity required by Christianity. As if compromising with passions which
it could not wholly extirpate, public opinion almost tolerated some kinds of sensual indulgence, in order more effectually to put down others. The plays of
Plautus, although the stories are of Greek origin, could not have been relished
by a Roman audience, had not the state of morals which they describe resembled actual life at Rome, no less than that at Athens. So universal is the tendency of our nature to impurity, that we could readily believe, even without
express testimony," that the conversation of the Romans at their entertainments,
even in the most ancient times, was unfit for a modest woman to hear. Nor can
we wonder that the young Romans acted in the entertainments known by the
name of Fabule Atellanee,'9 without any degradation, although these0 in the
coarseness of their ribaldry went far beyond the regular drama. It seems as
if the ancient commonwealths acted on the famous principle of Aristotle, and
deemed it wise to give the passions their full range on particular occasions, that
their violence might so be exhausted, and the general course of life preserved
safe from their dominion. Thus, while the purity of the Athenian tragedy has
been guarded with such scrupulous care, the comedy of the same people indulged in the grossest indecencies; and thus, as the slaves had their season of
liberty at the Saturnalia, so the Floralia, the Liberalia, and other religious festivals, gave free license to the lowest and most slavish passions of our nature; and
abominations were then practised and publicly sanctioned, which would be utterly
inconsistent with the severity of the Roman discipline in other respects, did we
not believe that they were looked upon as a sort of safety-valve, whereby it was
possible to regulate the escape of feelings too powerful to be repressed altogether
NOTE B, to page 460, 1. 39.
The expression in Varro is remarkable, "T. Manlio Consule bello Carthaginiensi primo confecto" (Ling. Lat. IV. p. 39, Ed. Varior. 1619), and again in Livy,

if, as the story seems to imply, Carvilius divorced his wife in order to marry another (and
this is the notion of the word " Divortium,"
given in Scholium on Cicero de Oratore, I. 40,
Divortium est, quoties dissoluto matrimonio
alter eorum alteras nuptias sequitur), then it
may have been one of the earliest instances of
such a divorce, if not absolutely the very earliest. For the Romans in early times, no less
than the Germans in the days of Tacitus, abhorred second marriages (Valor. Maxim. II. 1,
3). Again, marriages celebrated with the religious ceremonies known by the name of Conf arreatio were held to be indissoluble, except
by the performance of certain other ceremonies,
which were purposely made horrid and revolting, in order to deter any one from having recourse to them. This shows the old feeling
with regard to divorce; for marriage by Confarreatio was doubtless considered originally
as the only true and solemn marriage. And

therefore, in later times, when divorces were
frequent, it fell into disuse, as did, in fact, the
Conventio in M.aaum altogether; and a less formal marriage came into general use, founded
merely on the consent of the parties, which
could be dissolved more readily.
1s See Fragm. Varro, Satyr. Menipp. in
Agathon.
19 Livy, VII. 2. Festus in Personata Fabula.
2Â~0 Augustine, Civit. Dei, II. 8. " Hme sunt
scenicorum tolerabilia ludorum, comcedin scilicet et tragrediu, hoc est, fabulm, poetarum
agenda in spectaculis, multa rerum turpitudine, sed nulla saltem, sicut alia multa, verborum obscoenitate composito." That the " alia
multa" include the Atellau m FabulI is clear
from the distinction between them and regular
comedy, and from Livy's words, " Juventus,
histrionibus fabellarum actu relicto, ipsa inter
se more antiquo ridicule intexta versibus jactitare coepit."




ï~~654

ADDENDA.

I. 19, "T. Manlio Consule, post Punicum primum perfectum bellum."      This
cannot allude to the first treaty concluded by Catulus six years before, but must
relate to the apparently entire termination of all disputes by the solemn confirmation of it in 518-19. And thus, according to the expression of Paterculus,
" Certa pacis argumentum Janus geminus clausus dedit."   The gate of Janus
was the Porta Janualis, one of the gates of the original Rome on the Palatine.
Afterwards, by the addition of the Sabine settlemcnt on the Quirinal and Capitol, it became a passage gate, rather than an entrance gate, being now in the
middle of the city, just like Temple Bar. It stood near the present arch of Sep.
timius Severus, on the edge of the Forum, and close upon the Via Sacra. Livy
places it in the Argiletum; that is, in the low ground between the Capitol and
the Tiber, near the site of the existing arch of Janus Quadrifons; but this is
probably a confusion, as we read of a temple of Janus in this quarter, but one
which had been built by C. Duillius in the first Punic nar.  (Tacitus, Annal. II.
49.) The notion of opening the gates of Janus in war was, that this god, who
under his name of Quirinus was worshipped by the old Italians, as the god of
battles, might go out to war in defence of his people. And his statue was set
up at the Porta Janualis, rather than at any other place, because tradition recorded, that in the battle between the Romans and Sabines, in the reign of Romulus, he had wrought a signal deliverance for Rome on that very spot. See
Macrobius, Saturnal. I. 9. I am aware that Niebuhr (Vol. I. p. 202, 2d edit.)
gives a different explanation of the origin of the custom, and supposes that the
Porta Janualis, connecting the Roman and Sabine towns with each other, was
closed in peace, to show that they were distinct and independent states, but
opened in war to imply that then they were allies, and rendered one another
mutual aid. This seems to me rather forced; whereas the statement given
above from Macrobius is simple and probable. Besides, Virgil, a high authority in such matters, declares that the custom of opening the gates of Janus in
time of war was not of Roman origin, but borrowed from the general practice of
the Latins. (.En. VII. 601.) It could not, therefore, have referred to any local
peculiarities in the situation of Rome.
NOTE C, to p. 461, 1. 19.
Nothing is known of the language or customs of the Illyrians, by which we
can confidently ascertain their race. A legend recorded by Appian (Illyrica,
c. I.), which makes Keltus, Illyrius, and Gala to have been three brothers, the
sons of the Cyclops Polyphemus, is grounded probably on the known intermixture of Keltic tribes, the Boii, the Scordisci, and the Taurisci, amongst the Illyrians at a later period; and the Japodes, a tribe on the borders of Istria, are
described by Strabo (IV. p. 143) as half Kelts, half Illyrians. In the practice
of tattooing their bodies, the Illyrians resembled the Thracians (Strabo, VII. p.
218, Herodot. V. 6); the custom of one of their tribes, the Dalmatians, to have
a new division of their lands every seven years (Strabo, VII. p. 218) resembles
the well-known practice of the Germans, only advanced somewhat further towards civilized life; and the names of Teuta and Teutus might make us fancy a
connection between them and the Teutonic race. The author of the Periplus
ascribed to Scylax speaks of the great influence enjoyed by their women, whose
lives in consequence he describes as highly licentious; but Scymnus Chius, writing about a hundred years before the Christian era, calls them "a religious people, just and kind to strangers, loving to be liberal, and desiring to live orderly
and soberly," a character which often marks the first growth of the virtues of
peace amongst a people newly reclaimed from barbarism; while they yet retain
the simplicity of their earlier state, but have laid aside its lawlessness and cruelty.
These happy fruits of Roman conquest and dominion were exhib'ted in Illyria in




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the time of Scymnus Chius, as at a later period they were displayed among the
Cisalpine Gauls, who in the time of Pliny preserved a simplicity and purity of
manners unknown in the rest of Italy. (Pliny, Epist. I. 14.) But at the time
of the first Illyrian war, the Illyrians were as yet merely barbarous, dreaded for
their ferocity, and with that low sense of justice or true nobleness which commonly characterizes the barbarian.
NOTE D, to p. 463, 1. 3.
The Spaniards value the harbor of Carthagena so highly, that, according to
their proverb, "there are four harbors in the Mediterranean:-Carthagena, June,
July, and August."
NOTE E, to p. 464, 1. 29.
From the mention of Greeks on this and other similar occasions (as in Livy,
XXII. 57), Niebuhr concludes that the prophecies referred to cannot have been
of Greek origin, and therefore not what were properly called " Sibylline books,"
but rather of Etruscan origin, or Latin, some of which were kept together with
the Sibylline books, under the care of the same officers. But it does not appear
that the prophecy and the method of evading it were contained in the same books;
nor is it likely, for no prophecy would seek to render itself nugatory. If the
books were Greek, they were likely to contain prophecies of Greek triumphs;
and such must undoubtedly have been the meaning of the declaration, that the
Greeks should take possession of Rome. Prophecies relating to the Gauls may
have been of Etruscan origin, dictated by that fear of the Gaulish arms, which
the Etruscans had learnt in earlier ages, when the Gauls had driven them from
their settlements on the north of the Apennines. The evasion of these prophecies was merely the commentary of the Roman pontifices, such as was generally
practised in order to avert a prediction, whose authority it was not thought
proper to deny. Niebuhr refers to a similar trick practised by the Apulians
against the Brundisians. An oracle had declared that the.Â~tolians, the followers of Diomedes, should possess Brundisium forever; so, when the Apulians had
expelled them from Brundisium, and they on the assurance of this oracle sent an
embassy to reclaim it, the Apulians put the ambassadors to death, and buried
them within the city; thus fulfilling the prophecy, and preventing its fulfilment
in any other sense. (Justin, XII. 2.)
NOTE F, to p. 465, 1. 23.
Nothing shows more clearly the great rarity of geographical talent, than the
praise which has been commonly bestowed on Polybius as a good geographer.
He seems indeed to have been aware of the importance of geography to history,
and to have taken considerable pains to gain information on the subject; but this
very circumstance proves the more the difficulty of the task; for his descriptions
are so vague and imperfect, and so totally devoid of painting, that it is scarcely
possible to understand them. For instance, in his account of the march of the
Gauls into Italy, and of the subsequent movements of their army and of the
Romans, there is an obscurity, which never could have existed, had he conceived
in his own mind a lively image of the seat of war as a whole, of the connection
of the rivers and chains of mountains with each other, and of the consequent direction of the roads and most frequented passes. The Gauls, he tells us, crossed
the Apennines into Tuscany, and advanced to Clusium; and thus placed themselves on the rear of the pretor's army, which had been destined to cover th




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ADDENDA.,

Etruscan frontier. We must suppose, then, that the prator's army was posted
between Fasule and Pistoria, expecting the Gauls to cross the Apennines nearly
by the line of the present road from Modena to Florence by Pistoria; and that the
Gauls, instead of taking this line, came in the direction of the modern road from
Bologna; except that after descending the main chain of the Apennines, near
Moncarelli, they followed the Val Mugello, or Valley of the Sieve, to their left,
and thus came out on the Valdarno, about half way between Florence and Incisa: from thence they may either have ascended the Valdarno, till they crossed
over from it to the Val di Chiana by the line of the Valdambra; or else, as is
more probable, they may have moved at once in the direction of Sienna, and
then crossed from Sienna, by the upper part of the Val d'Ombrone, and Montepulciano, to Chiusi or Clusium.
NOTE G, to p. 466, 1. 38.
The text of Polybius (II. 25) places this battle at Fce sulce; this should clearly
',e corrected into Rusalce. The Italian names of places in our manuscripts of
Polybius are continually corrupt, as the Constantinople copyist knew nothing
about them.
Note H, to p. 466, 1. 1.
In Polybius, the Gauls are said to be intercepted, gsgI TerXcagcv,r i  Tu1vviae. This is evidently a mistake. Frontinus (I. 2, 7) places the scene of the
battle at Poplonia, which is far more intelligible.
NOTE I, to p. 466, 1. 20.
It was probably about eighty years after this period that the historian Polybius travelled through Cisalpine Gaul, and was struck with the unrivalled productiveness of the country. It yielded wine and all sorts of grain in the greatest
abundance; its oak woods, scattered at intervals over the plain, fed the largest
part of those immense droves of swine which were annually consumed in Italy,
or required for the use of the Roman army; and travellers at the inns were provided plentifully with every thing that they wanted after their day's journey, at
the rate of a quarter of an obulus for each person. Such are the fruits of the
first application of the security and energy of civilization to a soil highly favored
by nature. The earth is in its first freshness and vigor; the woods. thinned, but
not destroyed: the population flourishing and increasing, but far below the number' of inhabitants capable of being maintained in comfort; and whilst the vices
of barbarism have been put down, those of corrupted and ill-watched civilization
have not yet had time to grow up. But this was the state of Cisalpine Gaul
after it had been subjected for more than half a century to the dominion of Rome.
It must have presented a very different aspect to the first Roman settlers of the
year 534. The roads or tracts were cut through a wide extent of forest and
marshes; and only a small space of the most inviting character had been hardly
recovered from its natural wildness by the lazy and careless cultivation of the
Gauls. Towns were nowhere to be seen; the population was scattered about in
unwalled villages, if the name of village may be given to a collection of wretched
huts, so devoid of the commonest articles of furniture, that "man's life" spent in
them was literally "as cheap as beasts'."  And along with this state of physical
degradation, there was the total absence of civil society. There were men in the
country; there were families, bands, and hordes; but there was no commonwealth. One relation alone, beyond those of blood, seems to have been ac



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657

knowledged; the same which, introduced into Europe six hundred years afterwards by the victories of the German barbarians, has deeply tainted modern
society down to this hour; the relation of chief and followers, or, as it was called
in its subsequent form, lord and vassals. The head of a family distinguished for
his strength and courage, gathered around him a numerous train of followers
from other families; and they formed his clan, or band, or followers, bound to
him for life and death, bestowing on him those feelings of devoted attachment,
which can be safely entertained only towards the commonwealth and its laws, and
rendering him that blind obedience, which is wickedness when paid to any less
than God. This evil and degrading bond is well described by the Greek and
Roman writers, by words expressive of unlawful and antisocial combinations
(" Factio," Caesar, de Bell. Gallic. VI. 11;  cJgsia, Polybius, II. 17): it is the
same which in other times and countries has appeared in the shape of sworn
brotherhoods, factions, parties, sects, clubs, secret societies, and unions, everywhere and in every form the worst enemy both of individual and of social excellence, as it substitutes other objects in place of those to which as men and citi.
zens we ought only to be bound, namely, GOD and LAW.
NOTE K, to p. 468, 1. 42.
The remova of the freedmen into the four city tribes is recorded in the Epi
tome of the 20th book, nearly in the same words as in the Epitome of the 9th.
There it is said, "forensis factio cum comitia et campum turbaret... a Q.
Fabio censore in quatuor tribus redacta est, quas urbanas appellavit." In the
20th Epitome it is said, "libertini in quatuor tribus redacti sunt, cum antea dispersi per omnes fuissent, Esquilinam, Palatinam, Suburranam, Collinam." The
" forensis factio" of the 9th book is said to have consisted of "humiles," "humillimi;" and they are called also "forensis turba," as if their occupation were
described rather than their birth. In the 20th book, the persons removed are
called simply "libertini."  But libertini in general must have followed city employments from the necessity of the case; few can have had landed property.
We must therefore suppose that Fabius' measure was considered as a remedy
for a crying evil, rather than a general rule for the time to come; and that, when
slaves were set free, they were generally entered in their late master's tribe,
which, as he was still in a close relation with them, that of patronus, would be the
most natural course to take, when no particular political excitement was stirring.
But that such an excitement was stirring in the years immediately preceding the
second Punic war, appears from what Livy says of C. Varro: "Proclamando pro
sordidis hominibus causisque adversus rem et famam bonorum primum in notitiam populi, deinde ad honores pervenit." XXII. 26. Varro was praetor in 53G,
and before that time had been qurestor, redile, and curule eedile; so that he must
have come into notice before the censorship of Flaminius. Now it is easy to
conceive that, under such circumstances, the aristocracy would wish to lessen
the influence of the poorer citizens in the tribes; but the wonder is, how C. Flaminius should have become their instrument in doing this, after his violent contests with them about his Agrarian law, and afterwards about his recall from
Cisalpine Gaul, both of which took place before his censorship. Nor could his
colleague have done it against his will, according to the well-known law, "Me.
lior est conditio prohibentis."
The solution can only be, that Flaminius was a very honest man, and, whilst
he liked the agricultural commons, did not like the populace of the Forum. He
was like M. Curius, who also vehemently upheld an Agrarian law, yet sold
as a slave a citizen who refused to serve as a soldier. He was, like P. Decius,
the colleague of Fabius in the former clearing of the tribes, yet forward as a
supporter of the Ogulnian law. He was, like Marius, the stoutest opposer of the
42




ï~~658

ADDENDA.

aristocracy, yet a resolute opposer also of a Lex Frumentaria. (Plutarch, Ma.
rius, 4.) Perhaps, too, his notions were wholly against giving political influence
to any thing but agriculture; and his support of the Claudian law, the object of
which was to prevent the senators from becoming merchants, was perhaps conceived in the same spirit as his removing the freedmen into the four city tribes.
In this, and perhaps in the vehemence of his temper, he seems to have resembled Cato the censor.
NOTE L, to p. 478, 1. 25.
The question, in what direction this famous march was taken, has been agitated for more than eighteen hundred years; and who can undertake to decide it?
The difficulty to modern inquirers has arisen chiefly from the total absence of
geographical talent in Polybius. That this historian indeed should ever have
gained the reputation of a good geographer, only proves how few there are w1 o
have any notion what a geographical instinct is. Polybius indeed labored with
praiseworthy diligence to become a geographer; but he labored against nature;
and the unpoetical character of his mind has in his writings actually lessened the
accuracy, as it has totally destroyed the beauty of history. To any man who
comprehended the whole character of a mountain country, and the nature of its
passes, nothing could have been easier than to have conveyed at once a clear idea
of Hannibal's route, by naming the valley by which he had ascended to the main
chain, and afterwards that which he followed in descending from it. Or admitting that the names of barbarian rivers would have conveyed little information to
Greek readers, still the several Alpine valleys have each their peculiar character,
and an observer with the least power of description could have given such lively
touches of the varying scenery of the march, that future travellers must at once
have recognized his description. Whereas the account of Polybius is at once so
unscientific and so deficient in truth and liveliness of painting, that persons who
have gone over the several Alpine passes for the very purpose of identifying his
descriptions, can still reasonably doubt whether they were meant to apply to
Mont Genevre, or Mont Cenis, or to the Little St. Bernard.
On the whole, it appears to me most probable, that the pass by which Hannibal entered Italy was that which was known to the Romans by the name of the
Graian Alps, and to us as the Little St. Bernard. Nor was this so circuitous a
line as we may at first imagine. For Hannibal's object was not simply to get
into Italy, but to arrive in the country of those Cisalpine Gauls with whom he
had been corresponding, and who had long been engaged in wars with the Romans. Now these were the Boii and Insubrians; and as the Insubrians, who
were the more westerly of the two, lived between the Addi and the Ticinus, the
pass of the Little St. Bernard led more directly into the country of his expected
allies, than the shorter passage into Italy by the Cottian Alps, or Mont Genevre.
NOTE M, to p. 481, 1. 2.
Such is the story of the earliest recorded passage of the Alps by civilized men,
the earliest and the most memorable. Accustomed as we are, since the completion of the great Alpine roads in the present century, to regard the crossing
of the Alps as an easy summer excursion, we can even less than our fathers conceive the difficulties of Hannibal's march, and the enormous sacrifices by which
it was accomplished. He himself declared that he had lost above thirty thousand men since he had crossed the Pyrenees, and that the remnant of his army,
when he reached the plains of Italy, amounted to no more than twenty thou.
sand foot, and six thousand horsemen: nor does Polybius seem to suspect any




ï~~ADDENDA.

659

exaggeration in the statement. Yet eleven years afterwards Hasdrubal crossed
the Alps in his brother's track without sustaining any loss deserving of notice;
and "a few accidents""' are all that occurred in the most memorable passage of
modern times, that of Napoleon over the Great St. Bernard. It is evident that
Hannibal could have found nothing deserving the name of a road, no bridges
over the rivers, torrents, and gorges, nothing but mere mountain-paths, liable to
be destroyed by the first avalanche or landslip, and which the barbarians neither
could nor cared to repair, but on the destruction of which they looked out for
another line, such as for their purposes of communication it was not difficult to
find. It is clear also, either that Hannibal passed by some much higher point
than the present roads over the Little St. Bernard, or Mount Cenis; or else, as
is highly probable,"2 that the limit of perpetual snow reached to a much lower
level in the Alps than it does at present. For the passage of the main chain is
described as wholly within this limit; and the "old snow" which Polybius speaks
of was no accidental patch, such as will linger through the summer at a very
low level in crevices or sunless ravines; but it was the general covering of the
pass, which forbade all vegetation, and remained alike in summer as in winter.
How great a contrast to the blue lake, the green turf, the sheep and cattle freely
feeding on every side tended by their shepherds, and the bright hues of the thousand flowers which now delight the summer traveller on the Col of the Little
St. Bernard!
I have little doubt as to Hannibal's march up the Tarentaise; but the Val
d'Aosta puzzles me. According to any ordinary rate of marching, an army could
never get in three days from the Little St. Bernard to the plains of Ivrea; not
to mention that the Salassians of that valley were such untameable robbers,
that they once even plundered Cesar's baggage, and Augustus at last extirpated
them by wholesale. And yet Hannibal, on the Italian side of the main chain,
sustains little or no annoyance. I have often wished to examine the pass which
goes by the actual head of the Isere, by Mont Iseran, and descends by Usseglio,
not exactly on Turin, but nearly at Chivasso, where the Po, from running N. and
S., turns to run E. and W. In some respects also, I think, Mont Cenis suits the
description of the march better than any other pass. I lay no stress on the
Roche blanche; it did not strike me when I saw it as at all conspicuous; nor
does the Xsux~rs-pov mean any remarkably white cliff, but simply one of those
bare limestone cliffs, which are so common both in the Alps and Apennines
NOTE N, to p. 484, 1. 2.
There is a passage in the third volume of Niebuhr's life, in a letter to the
Count de Serre, in which he says that Hannibal at the Trebia acted like Napoleon at Marengo, throwing himself between the Romans and the line of their retreat, by Placentia and Ariminum. I believe that this is right, and that Hannibal was on the right bank of the Trebia between the Romans and Placentia, so
that the expression in Livy is correct. The Romans had several emporia on the
right bank of the Po, above Placentia, Clastidium, Victumvie, &c. From these,
their army, I suppose, was fed; and the taking of Clastidium thus helped to
force them to a battle. Polybius' words are equally clear with Livy's. The front
2 "On n'eut que pen d'accidens." Napo- luxuriant about the village, that the road seems
leon's Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 261.        to run through an ornamental park. And
2s3 Even as late as the year 1646, Evelyn's again above Sempione, Evelyn was told by the
description of the passage of the Simplon in country people that "the way had been covered
September can scarcely be recognized by those with snow since the creation; no man remeinmwho know only its present state. He speaks of bered it to be without." And he speaks of the
the house in which he lodged at Sempione, as descent towards Brieg by the old road as being
" half covered with snow," and says that made for some way "through an ocean of
" there is not a tree or bush growing within snow." Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 220, 221.
many miles;" whereas now the pines are so




ï~~660

ADDENDA.

of the Roman centre, he says, despaired of retreating to their own camp xiupSvOi 1i& q v ro r'c v xca l'-v i0pog v vcd duc rgocv 'r ou xac cxs aX v i', 3igou (the
rain having made the river deeper than it had been in the morning:) 'govrvs; 6S
'd   ' ds;  gJ 6o  s-pr'd~Xao i  casxwgo dacv r  HIZaxsvr v.  It is still a difficulty how Sempronius could have been allowed to effect his junction with Scipio,
while Hannibal was actually lying between them; but I suppose that he must
have turned off to the hills before he approached Placentia, and so have left
Hannibal in the plain on his right.
NOTE 0O, p. 486, 1. 35.
Niebuhr in the same letter speaks of the following view of Thrasymenus
as absolutely certain.  Flaminius, with Servilius, was originally at Ariminum,
expecting Hannibal by that road. But when he heard that Hannibal had entered Etruria by the marshes of the Lower Arno, he hastened over the Apennines to Arezzo, eager to cover the road to Rome. He moved then by Cortona
upon Perugia; but Hannibal turned to the right, and followed the western side
of the lake towards Chiusi; then turning short round, occupied the defile of
Passignano, and spreading out his right upon the hills, forced the long Roman
column by a flank attack into the lake, while he engaged the head of it in the
defile. Polybius and Livy differ decidedly as to the scene of the main battle:
the latter represents it as taking place in the defile of Passignano, where the
Romans had their right flank to the lake. But Polybius says, that only the rear
was caught there; most of the army had cleared the defile, and turned to the
left into a valley running down at right angles to the lake, so that the lake was
exactly on their rear. And the modern road does so turn from the lake tc
ascend the hills towards Perugia: the only difficulty is (I have been twice on
the ground), that there is nothing that can be called a valley; for the road
ascends almost from the edge of the lake: still it is true that the hills do form
a small comb, so that an army ascending from the lake might have an enemy on
both its flanks on the hill-sides above it.
NOTE P, to p. 505, 1. 43.
It seems to me that the Latin colonies and Hannibal's want of artillery were
the main causes of his failure. The Romans had in these colonies, not one of
which he ever took, fortresses in the heart of the countries which revolted to him.
Thus Apulia revolted; but the Romans still held Luceria, Venusia, and Brundisium: Samnium revolted; but the Romans held.Esernia and Beneventum; and
so on, Casilinum cost him a siege of several weeks, but the Romans recovered it
in a much shorter time. If he had engaged Archimedes as his engineer in chief,
and got Philip to send him artillery, he would have done far better; for the
Macedonian princes seemed to have carried their artillery to great perfection.
As it was, his only very strong arm was his cavalry: for his infantry, veterans
as they were, could never beat the Roman raw levies behind works. It appears
to me that the sieges are the great defect of Hannibal's operations in Italy;
and thus as soon as his army moved from any place, the inhabitants who had
joined him were at the mercy of the Roman garrisons. And their colonies were
very strong garrisons: Venusia was originally settled with 20,000 colonists.
NoTE Q, to p. 536, 1. 25.
According to Livy, Hannibal collects all the boats which are to be found on
the Vulturnus, orders his men to provide themselves with provisions for ten
days, and crosses in the night. (XXVI. 7.)




ï~~ADDENDA.

661

He remains on the right bank the next day and night, then moves by Cales in
Agrum Sidicinum, and there remains one day plundering.
He advances by the Latin road, per Suessanum, Allifanumque et Casinatem
agrum. He then remains for two days under Casinum, plundering the country
in all directions.
He goes on by Interamna and Aquinum to Fregelle, where he finds the
bridges over the Liris broken down; he ravages the ager Fregellanus with peculiar spite for that reason; and then advances by Frusino, Ferentinum, and
Anagnia, in Agrum Lavicanum.
From thence he goes over Algidus to Tusculum, descends to Gabii, thence
marches down in Pupiniam, and pitches his camp eight miles from Rome.
He moves his camp ad Anienem, three miles from Rome, and there estab.
lishes stativa; he himself advancing along under the walls from the Colline gate
to the temple of Hercules, to look about him.
On the next day he crosses the Anio, and offers battle to the enemy; a storm
breaks off the action.
Next day he offers battle again, and there comes a second storm. He falls
back ad Tutiam fluvium, six miles from Rome.
He plunders the temple of Feronia, and marches to Eretum: from thence he
goes to Reate, Cutilie, and Amiternum. From thence through the Marsian and
Marrucinian territory by Sulmo, through the Pelignian territory into Samnium,
and from Samnium into Campania. From Campania into Lucania, thence into
Bruttium, and thence to Rhegium.
Here are traces of two accounts jumbled together. The march from the Yulturnus, as far as the camp in Pupinia, eight miles from Rome, is all highly consistent and probable, and comes, I suspect, either from Fabius or Cincius. But
the advance to the Anio, the crossing it to offer battle, and then the retreat ad
Tutiam, belong to a different story, that namely which made Hannibal advance
upon Rome from Reate. For in advancing by the Latin road, or the Via Gabina, he had nothing to do with the Anio; and if he crossed the Anio to offer
battle, he must have been between Rome and the Roman army, and the Roman
army would have been between him and the Tutia. This then is all absurd and
inconsistent.
Again, according to Livy, Fulvius had heard beforehand of Hannibal's design,
and had warned the senate of it; he receives an answer from Rome, selects
15,000 foot, and 1000 horse, crosses the Vulturnus on rafts after a long delay,
because Hannibal had burnt all the boats, advances to Rome by the Appian way,
and arrives by the Porta Capena just as Hannibal had reached Pupinia. Now,
according to Polybius, Hannibal set out for Rome only five days after his arrival
before Capua: there was no time therefore for Fulvius to send to Rome and get
an answer before Hannibal set out. Again, Casilinum being in the power of the
Romans, the passage of the Vulturnus was in their own hands, and the story
about the rafts is an absurdity.
Appian says, that Hannibal marched with urgent haste through many and
hostile nations, some of whom could not and some did not try to stop him; and
thus he arrived on the Anio, and encamped at 32 stadia from Rome. The Ro.
mans break down the bridge over the Anio; and two thousand men from Alba
Marsorum come valiantly to the aid of Rome. This all agrees with Camlius, and
supposes evidently that Hannibal advanced through Samnium and by Reate.
The "many and hostile, nations" are the Pelignians, Marsians, Marrucinians, and
Sabines. Thus, too, he arrives naturally on the Anio; and the Albensians, seeing him pass through their country, set off at once by the Valerian road to Rome,
to be ready to meet him. Had he advanced by the Latin road, they would
have known nothing about his march, and he would have been between them
miand Rome.
Fulvius then, according to Appian, hastens to Rome, and meets Hannibal on




ï~~662

ADDENDA.

the Anio, with the river between them. Hannibal ascends the right bank of the
river to turn it by its source. Fulvius ascends the left bank watching him.
Hannibal leaves some Numidians behind, who cross the river when Fulvius was
gone, plunder all the country round the walls, and then rejoin Hannibal. Hannibal goes round by the sources of the river; and, as it was only a little way to
Rome, he steals out by night with three squires to have a look at it, and then
takes fright and returns to Capua. Fulvius follows him; and Hannibal, in attempting to surprise his camp on the road, is sadly foiled. He then marches off
to winter in Lucania; and Fulvius rejoins Appius before Capua. This is beneath criticism; but I observe that the story of Fulvius being too cunning for
Hannibal is given by Livy at the assault of the Roman lines before Capua, and
is probably as true of one as of the other. Again, the line of retreat here indicated is by the Latin road; the ascending the Anio shows this, and is inconsistent with the retreat by Reate.
Calius Antipater had expressly given Hannibal's advance upon Rome thus:From Campania into Samnium, and thence to the Pelignians, that is, by the
present great road up the Vulturnus to Venafro; thence by Isernia and Castel
di Sangro to the Five Mile plain; then passing by Sulmo to the Marrucinians
thence by Alba to the Marsians; thence to Amiternum and Foruli: from Amiternum, by Cutilim, Reate, and Eretum, upon the Anio.
What a confusion! which neither Nauta nor Prinsterer meddle with. The
road from Sulmo to Amiternum is simple enough; descending along the Gizio
to the Aterno or Peseara at Popoli, thence ascending to the high upland plain
by Navelli and Citth Retenga, and so by Aquila to Amiternum, S. Vittorino.
But conceive a man,-to say nothing of an army in a hurry,-going down from
Popoli to Chieti, then turning back to Sulmona, and going over by the Forchetta
to Celano, and thence by Rocca di Mezzo into the valley of Aquila. All this
folly arises from the untimely correction where the MS. gives corruptly in Marrucinos, Martinos, Martianos, Maceranos, &c. OCmlius supposed that Hannibal,
instead of descending from Sulmo towards Popoli, turned to his left, and crossed
the mountains by the Forchetta3 to Cilano, and thence either by Rocca di Mezzo
over the mountains to Aquila, or else by the Cicolano, and down the valley of
Tornimparte. Instead of Marrucinos, the better condition would be Marrubios,
or Marruvios; the people of Marruvium, a Pelignian town on the E. or S. E. shore
of the lake Fucinus.
According to Polybius, Hannibal, five days after his arrival before Capua, left
his fires burning at night, and set off after supper. He marched by vigorous
and uninterrupted marches through Samnium, always exploring and preoccupying the ground near the road with his advanced guard; and whilst all at
Rome were thinking only of Capua, he suddenly crossed the Anio, and encamped
at a distance of not more than four miles from Rome. He intended the next day
to assault the city; but the consuls with their two newly raised legions en-,camped before the walls. He then gives up the assault, and sets about plundering the country and burning the houses in all directions. After this (how
long after is not said, nor why, but we must suppose after Fulvius had arrived
from Capua) the consuls advance boldly, and encamp within ten stadii of Hannibal. Then Hannibal, having filled his army with plunder, and thinking that his
diversion must now have taken effect at Capua, commenced his retreat. But the
bridges over the Anio had been broken down; and in fording the river he was
attacked and sustained some loss: his cavalry, however, served him so well, that
the Romans returned to their camp, iar~ax-os. He continued his march hastily,
'which the enemy thought was through fear; so they followed him close, but
keeping to the higher grounds. He was moving in haste upon Capua; but on
the fifth day of his retreat, learning that the Romans there were still in their
a  At Raiano. This is still a carriageable road. Keppel Craven calls the pass, Furca Caruso,




ï~~ADDENDA.                             663
lines, he halted to wait for his pursuers, and turning upon them attacked their
camp by night, and stormed it. The Romans rallied by daybreak on a steep hill
which he could not force; so he would not wait to besiege them, but marched
through Apulia and Bruttium, and nearly succeeded in surprising Rhegium.
Again what a narrative! with no details of time or place, jumping at once
from a five days' march from Rome into Apulia, and merely implying that Hannibal's retreat was on the right bank of the Anio. But this mention of the Anio,
connected with the expression " marching through Samnium," seems to show
that Polybius, like Celius, made Hannibal advance by a circuitous route upon
Rome, and not by the Latin road.
The season of the year must have been early, according to the Roman calendar, not later than April, whatever that was by true time; because the levy of
the two city legions was only half finished. But, unless the Roman calendar
was at least two months behind true time, how could Hannibal have passed
such defiles as that of Rocca, Vall' Osuira; or such passes as those between
Isernia and Castel di Sangro? Would not the snow have covered the ground
at such a season?




ï~~


ï~~APPENDIX.
I.-NOTE ON THE TRIAL AND DEATH OF MANLIUS.
ZONARAS, whose history is taken generally from Dion Cassius, relates that Manlius
was holding the Capitol against the government, and that a slave, having offered to betray him, went up to the Capitol as a deserter, and begged to speak with Manlius. He
professed to be come to him on the part of the slaves of Rome, who were ready to rise
and join him; and while Manlius was speaking to him apart on the edge of the cliff, the
slave suddenly pushed him down it, and he was then seized by some men who had been
previously placed there in ambush, and was by them carried off as a prisoner. Then he
was tried in the Campus Martius; and as the people could not ecudemn him in sight of
the Capitol, the trial was adjourned, and the peop Te met again in another place out of
sight of the Capitol, and then condemned him. The scene of the second trial is said by
Livy to have been the Peteline Grove. Now we find that on two other occasions after
a secession assemblies were held in groves without the city walls, and not in the Campus Martius; once after the revolt of the soldiers and secession of the commons in 413,
in this very Peteline Grove (Livy, VII. 41), and once after the last secession to the Janiculum, in the Oak Grove, "in Eseuleto." (Pliny, Hist. Nat. XVI. 37.)  Now as there
is little reason to doubt that there was a secession also in the disturbance caused by
Manlius, it is likely that when peace was restored the terms would have been settled in
an assembly held in some sacred grove, and that there a general amnesty would be passed, and any exceptions to the amnesty discussed and determined. And if Manlius had
fallen into the power of his enemies in the manner described by Zonaras, his partisans,
having thus lost their leader, would have been ready to submit, and could not have opposed his execution, if it were insisted upon by the government as a necessary sacrifice
to public justice. The story of his trial before the centuries in the Campus Martius is
every way suspicious, and may possibly have been invented to account for the fact of
his death having been decreed in an assembly held in the Peteline Grove. It was obvious that trials before the centuries, the only tribunal which could legally try a Roman
citizen capitally, were held in the Campus Martius; and as the fact of the secession was
more and more glossed over, so the real nature of the assembly in the Peteline Grove
would be less understood; and then it was attempted to be explained as a mere adjourned meeting of the centuries, held in an unusual place, because the deliverer of the
Capitol could not be condemned in the Campus Martius, where his judges had the Capitol directly before their eyes.
I may observe that the law which forbade any patrician's residing from henceforth in
the Capitol strongly confirms the fact of an actual secession. Manlius had occupied the
citadel as a fortified position, and had held it with an armed force against the government; and this pointed out the danger of allowing any one to reside within its precincts.
II.-ON THE LATER CONSTITUTION OF THE CENTURIES.
THE constitution of the comitia of the centuries, as it originally existed, is perfectly
familiar to every reader. But it is remarkable that this well-known form of it never ex..
isted during those times of which we have a real history; and the form which had sue.
ceeded to it is a complete mystery. It is strange, but true, that we know how the cen.
turies were constituted in the times of the later kings, but that we do not know what
was their constitution in the time of Cicero and Caesar.
It is quite clear that the old constitution of the centuries gave a decided ascendency
to wealth. The first class, together with the centuries of the knights, formed a majority




ï~~666

APPENDIX.

of the whole comitia. Thus every election would have been in the hands of the rickh
and such a state of things as existed in the last years of the commonwealth, when the
aristocracy had no other decided influence than what they could gain by bribery, is alto
gether inconceivable.
Again, the division of the people into tribes had nothing to do with the earlier constitution of the centuries; the votes were taken by classes, and a man's class depended on
the amount of his property. But in the later constitution the votes were taken by tribes,
and a man's tribe, except in the case of the four city tribes, implied nothing as to his rank
or fortune. The agents employed to purchase votes were called divisores tribuum; such
and such tribes are mentioned as interested in behalf of particular candidates (Cicero pro
Plancio); and some one tribe was determined by lot to exercise the privilege of voting
before the rest. In short, the tribes are mentioned as commonly at the comitia in the
Campus Martius, whether held for trials or for elections, as at the comitia held in the
Forum.
On the other hand, the division by classes continued to exist in the later constitution.
Cicero speaks of the comitia of centuries differing from the comitia of tribes, inasmuch as
in the former, he says, "the people are arranged according to property, rank, and age,
while in the latter no such distinctions are observed."  De Legibus, III. 19. The centuries of the first class are spoken of both in trials (Livy, XLIII. 16) and in elections
(Cicero, Philippic. II. 33); and in the second oration of the pseudo-Sallust to Caesar, de
Republica Ordinanda, the author notices, as a desirable change in the actual constitution,
that a law formerly proposed by C. Gracchus should be again brought forward and enacted, that the centuries should be called by lot from all the five classes indiscriminately.
This proves not only that the division into classes existed to the end of the commonwealth, but also that the first class continued to enjoy certain advantages above the
others. The problem, therefore, is to determine how the system of classes was blended
with that of tribes, and in what degree the centuries of the historical period of the commonwealth retained or had forfeited the strong aristocratical character impressed on
them by their original constitution.
Various solutions of this problem have been offered at different times by scholars of
great ability. Octavius Pantagathus in the 16th century supposed that each of the five
classes had two centuries belonging to it in each of the tribes, and that the Equites had
one century in each tribe, making the whole number of centuries to amount to 385, out
of which those of the Equites and the first class together would amount to 105, while
those of the other classes were 280; so that the two former, instead of being a majority
of the whole comitia, stood to the other centuries only in the proportion of 3 to 8. This
notion of seventy centuries in each class, or ten centuries in each tribe, has been maintained also by Savigny, according to Zumpt; and by Walther, in his History of the Roman Law, Vol. I. p. 136. This also is the opinion of another living autiority of the
highest order, who has expressed to me his full acquiescence in it.
Niebuhr, on the contrary, held that the whole division into five classes was done away
with; that each tribe contained two centuries only, one of older men, the other of younger; that the thirty-one country tribes constituted the first class under this altered system, and the four city tribes the second class; and that besides these two classes there
were no more. He held the aristocratical character of the comitia of centuries, as compared with the assembly of the tribes, to consist in the following points: that the plebeian knights voted distinctly from the rest of the commons, and that the patricians also
had their separate votes in the sex suffragia, or six old centuries of knights; 2d, that
the centuries of each tribe were divided according to their age, one of older men, and
the other of younger; 3d, that the proletarians, or those who possessed property under
four thousand ases, were altogether excluded; and 4th, that the auspices were necessa.
rily taken at the comitia of centuries, and that they were thus subjected to the influence
of the augurs. Niebuhr held also that the prerogative century could only be chosen out
of the tribes of the first class, and never out of the four city tribes.
Zumpt, in a recent essay on the constitution of the comitia of centuries, read before
the Prussian academy in 1836, maintains that the old centuries of Ser. Tullius subsisted
to the end of the commonwealth without any material alteration, except that those of
the first class were reduced from eighty to seventy. He then supposes that two of these
centuries were allotted to each of the thirty-five tribes, together with three centuries.
from the four remaining classes; and of these three one, he thinks, was taken from the
fifth class, and two-thirds of a century from the second, third, and fourth classes. Thus
the richer citizens still retained an influence in the comitia more than in proportion to
their numbers, although much less than it had been in the original constitution of Ser:
Tullius.




ï~~APPENDIX.

667

Lastly, Professor Huschke, of Breslau, in his work on the constitution of Ser. Tulius, published in 1838, agrees with Niebuhr in supposing that the whole number of
centuries was reduced to seventy, each tribe containing two, one of older men and the
other of younger; but these seventy centuries were divided, he thinks, into five classes;
so that about ten tribes, or twenty centuries, would contain the citizens of the first
class, a certain number of tribes would, in like manner, contain all the citizens of the
second class, and so on to the end: some tribes, according to this hypothesis, consisting only of richer citizens, and others only of poorer.
But I confess that all these solutions, including even that of Niebuhr himself, are to me
unsatisfactory. If the first class had contained thirty-one out of the thirty-five tribes,
while each tribe contained only two centuries, we should hear rather of the tribes of
the first class, than of the centuries; whilst on the other hand the positive tesaimony of
the pseudo-Sallust, who, according to Niebuhr himself, could not have lived later than
the second century after the Christian era, to the existence of five classes down to the
time of the civil war, seems to be on that point an irresistible authority.
It appears to me to be impossible to ascertain with certainty either the number.f the
centuries in the later constitution, or their connection with the five classes. To guess
at points of mere detail seems hopeless, and positive information on the subject there
is none. But we know that the comitia of centuries differed from those of the tribes
expressly in this, that whereas all the members of a tribe voted in the comitia tributa
without any further distinction between them, and, as far as appears, without any subdivisions within the tribe itself, so in the comitia of centuries the members of the same
tribe were distinguished from each other; the older men certainly voted distinctly from
the younger men, and probably the richer men also voted distinctly from the poorer:
so that the centuries were a less democratical body than the tribes.
In the account given by Polybius of the composition of the Roman army, we find
traces at once of the existence of something like the old system of classes, and of the
changes which it must have undergone. All citizens whose property exceeded four
thousand ases, were now enlisted into the legions, whereas in old times none had been
required to provide themselves with arms whose property fell short of twelve thousand
five hundred ases. But one hundred thousand ases still appear to have been the qualification for the first class; and it is remarkable that the peculiar distinction of this class,
the coat of mail, was the same as it had been in the oldest known system of the classes.
All distinctions of arms, offensive or defensive, between the second, third, and fourth
classes, seem to have been abolished: but the fifth class still, as in old times, supplied
the light-armed soldiers of the legions, or the velites.
But however much of the old system of the classes was preserved in the later constitution of the centuries, the difference in the political spirit of the tribes and centuries
is scarcely, I think, perceivable. We do not find the votes of the centuries ever relied
upon by the aristocracy to counterbalance the popular feeling of the tribes. It might
have been conceived that a popular assembly, where wealth conferred any ascendency,
would have been decidedly opposed to one of a character purely democratical; that the
centuries, in short, like our own House of Commons, during more than one period of
our history, should have sympathized more and more with the senate, and have counteracted to the utmost of their power on the Campus Martius the policy embraced by the
tribes in the Forum. But this is not the case; the spirit of the Roman people, as distinguished from the senate and the equestrian order, appears to have been much the
same whether they were assembled in one sort of comitia or another; the centuries
elected Flaminius and Varro to the consulship in the second Punic war, although their
opposition to the aristocracy seems to have been one of their chief recommendations;
and in later times the centuries elected many consuls who advocated the popular cause
not less violently than the most violent of the tribunes elected by the tribes.
The cause of this is to be found in the great wealth of the equestrian order and of the
senate, which drew a broad line of separation between them and the richest of the plebeians, and thus drove the members of the first class to sympathize with those below
them rather than with those above them. While the possession of the judicial power
was disputed by the senate and the equestrian order, it was only after many years that
any share of it was communicated to the richest of the plebeians. Thus it is probable
that the middle classes at Rome, as elsewhere, repelled by the pride of the highest
classes, were forced back, as it were, into the mass of the lower; and entered as bitterly
into all measures galling to the aristocracy, as the poorest citizens of the tribes.
If this be so, the question as to the exact form of the comitia of centuries in later
times, however curious in itself, is of no great importance to our right understanding
of the subsequent history. For whether the influence of the first class as compared




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APPENDIX.

with that of the lower classes was greater or less, it does not appear that the character
of the comitia was altered from what it would have been otherwise; the first class was
as little attached to the aristocracy as the fourth or fifth. After the unsuccessful at.
tempts of so many men of ability and learning, I have no confidence that I could approach more nearly to the true solution of the problem; and, in fact, there seem difficulties in the way of every theory, which our present knowledge can hardly enable us
to remove. I must at present express my belief that the exact arrangement of the
classes in the later comitia of centuries is a problem no less inexplicable than that of
the disposition of the rowers in the ancient ships of war.
III.-OF THE ROMAN LEGION IN THE FIFTH CENTUrY OF ROME.
THE accounts of the Roman legion in the fourth and fifth centuries of Rome are full of
perplexity. Nor is this to be wondered at, for as there were no contemporary historians, and as the military system afterwards underwent considerable changes, the older
state of things could be known only from accidental notices of it in the stories of the
early wars, or from uncertain memory. How little help in these inquiries is to be expected from Livy, may be understood from this single fact: that although he himself in
two several places (I. 43 and VIII. 8) has expressly stated that the ancient Roman tactic was that of the phalanx, yet in no one of his descriptions of battles are any traces
to be found of such a system; but the sword and not the pike is spoken of as the most
efficient weapon, just as it was in the tactic of the second Punic war, or of the age of
Marius and of Casar.
Livy, however, has preserved in one place a detailed account of the earlier legion, as
it existed in the great Latin war in the beginning of the fifth century. And Polybius,
as is well known, has described at length the arms and organization of the legion of his
time, that is, of the latter part of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh century of
Rome. I shall notice the similar and dissimilar points in these two accounts, and then
see how far we can explain the changes implied in them; and, finally, notice some
statements in other writers which relate to the same subject.
Both accounts acknowledge the existence of four divisions of fighting men in the
legion: the light-armed (ypovp6,axoL, Polyb. rorarii, Livy), the hastati, the principes, and
the triarii. But to these there was in the older legion a fifth added, the accensi, or supernumeraries; who, in ordinary cases, were not armed, but went to the field to be
ready to take arms and supply the places of those who fell.
In both accounts the hastati, when the legion is drawn up in order of battle, are
placed in front of the principes, and the principes in front of the triarii. But in the old
legion the greater part of the light-armed soldiers are described as stationed with the
triarii in the third line, and only about a fourth part of them are with the hastati in the
front. Whereas, in the later legion, the light troops are divided equally among the
three lines.
Again, in the older legion the triarii were equal in numbers to the hastati and principes, respectively, each division consisting of somewhat more than nine hundred men.
Whereas, in the later legion, the triarii were never more than six hundred men; while
the hastati and principes were regularly twelve hundred each, and sometimes exceeded
this number.
In the older legion the light-armed troops carried each man a pike, "hasta," and two
or more javelins, "gesa.'  These were the arms of the fourth class in the Servian constitution, "nihil praeter hastam et verutum datum:" verutum and gaesa alike signifying
missile weapons or javelins as opposed to the hasta or pike. But in the later legion,
the light-armed soldier carried no pike, but had a round shield,,rdpp, and a dirk or cutlass, pdxaq a, together with his javelins.
In the older legion again the hastati, principes, and triarii, all bore the arms of the
second and third classes in the Servian constitution; that is to say, the large oblong
shield, "scutum," the pike, and the sword, "gladius."  But in the later legion, the hastati and principes had both dropped the pike, and were armed instead of it with two
large javelins, of about six feet in length, which Polybius calls,aot, and which were no
ether than the formidable pila.




ï~~APPENDIX.

669

Further, we have a remarkable notice that there was a time when the triarli alone
carried pila, and were called pilani, while the hastati and principes still carried pikes.2
Again, the older legion was divided into forty-five maniples or ordines; fifteen of
hastati, fifteen of principes, and fifteen of triarii; but as the triarii were, in fact, a triple
division, so their maniples contained one hundred and eighty-six, or possibly one hundred and eighty-nine men each, while those of the hastati and principes contained only
sixty-three men each.
In the later legion, the hastati, principes, and triarii contained ten maniples each; and
those of the two former divisions consisted of one hundred and twenty men each, while
those of the triarii contained only sixty. The light troops were divided into thirty
divisions, one of which was added to each maniple of the heavy-armed troops, in just
proportion to its respective strength; that is, that twenty-four light-armed men were
added to each maniple of the triarii, and forty-eight to each maniple of the hastati and
principes. It may be, however, that the divisions of the light-armed troops were all
equal: in which case they would have raised each maniple of the triarii to one hundred
men, and each maniple of the hastati and principes to one hundred and sixty.
In the older legion, each maniple contained two centurions; that is, it consisted of
two centuries. Therefore the century of the old legion consisted of thirty men.
In the later legion each maniple also had two centurions; but the maniples being of
unequal numbers, the centuries were unequal also; the centuries of the triarii contained
thirty men each, as in the older legion, but those of the hastati and principes had each
sixty.
On comparing these two forms of the legion, it is manifest that in the older there is
retained one of the characterestic points of the system of the phalanx, or of fighting in
columns, the keeping of the light-armed or worst-armed men mostly in the rear. The
old legion consisted of a first division of about nineteen hundred men, of whom only
three hundred and fifteen had inferior arms; and of a second division of nearly twentyeight hundred men, of whom only nine hundred and thirty were well armed; nine hundred and thirty were light armed, and the remaining nine hundred and thirty, the accensi,
were not armed at all. Nay, it appears doubtful whether even the triarii, properly so
called, were quite equal to the hastati and principes; for in the Latin war it seems to
be a mistake of Livy's to suppose that, they carried pikes; they appear at that time to
have borne only pila and swords, and were therefore less fitted than the hastati and
principes for the peculiar manner of fighting then in use in the Roman army.
But even in this earlier form of the legion there seems to have been some change
introduced from a form still earlier. The mixture of light-armed soldiers in the front
ranks of the phalanx, unless we are to suppose that they were always thrown forward
as mere skirmishers, and had no place in the line, seems to show that a modification ot
the tactic of the phalanx had already been found necessary, and that the use of the
javelin instead of the pike was already rising in estimation.
This alteration seems to derive its origin from the Gaulish wars. The Gauls used
javelins themselves, and the weight of their charge was such that the full-armed soldiers of the Roman legions were not numerous enough to withstand them; it became
of importance, therefore, to improve the efficiency of the light-armed soldiers, and at
the same time to enable the Roman line to reply to the Gaulish missiles, if the enemy
preferred a distant combat to fighting hand to hand.
That something of this sort was done is directly stated; but as usual the accounts
are conflicting and inconsistent with themselves. Dionysius makes Camillus say to his
soldiers, that whereas "the Gauls had only javelins, they had arrows, a weapon of
deadly effect." 'Avri, yxns dia, E pvxroy J &s. Fragm. Vatic. XXX. Plutarch says
that Camillus instructed his soldiers "to use their long javelins as weapons for close
fight," roc eots aIpois %Lxcipas xpeat, Camill. 40, and in the next chapter he describes
the Gauls as grappling with the Romans, and trying to push aside their javelins, which
evidently supposes them to have been used as pikes. And yet in the very sentence before he talks of the Gaulish shields as being weighed down by the Roman javelins, which
had run through them, and hung upon them, roT as  Ovpeov; opvrerapOa cai f3apivaeOat rr
eciaiv k  op vwv (Camill. 41), a description applicable only to weapons thrown at the
enemy, and not used as pikes.
A passage i Livy seems to offer the solution of this difficrity. When the Gauls
attacked the Roman camp in their invasion of the Roman territory in the year 405, only
ten years before the Latin war, the triarii were engaged in throwing up works, and the
2 Livy says that the hastati and principes were called ler) and Ovid (Fasti, III. 129) call the triarli expressly
antepilani-VIII. 8. Varro (Ling. Lat. V. Â~ Ed. Mill- pilani.




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APPENDIX.

hastati and princilpes covered them. Then, as the Gauls advanced up hill to attack the
Roman position, "all the pila and spears," "pila omnia hasteque," "took effect," says
Livy, "from their own weight; and the Gauls had either their bodies run through, or
their shields weighed down by the darts that were sticking in them."  VII. 23. It
appears, then, that both the pilum and hasta could be used as missiles; but both also
could be used as pikes, for the pilum was six feet in length, and therefore it is very
possible that Camillus may have shortened the spear of the hastati, to render it available as a missile, and also strengthened and lengthened the pilum to make it serve on
occasion the purposes of a pike.
Thus the hastati and principes were armed with swords, with large oblong shields,
scuta, and with spears, hastee; but the large shield already fitted them for a more independent and personal mode of fighting than that of the phalanx, and the spear might be
used as a javelin, no less than as a pike. The Samnite wars, following so soon afterwards, decided the Romans to give up the tactic of the phalanx still more entirely: the
spear which might be used as a javelin, but was more fitted for close fight, was now
given only to the soldiers of the third line; while the pilum, which might be used as
a pike, but was properly a missile, was taken from the third line, and given to the soldiers of the first and second lines. At the same time those citizens whose properties
were rated between four thousand ases and twelve thousand five hundred, and who
were not formerly required to provide themselves with arms, were now called upon to
do so, and therefore the accensi are no more heard of; while the rorarii, who seem to
have belonged to the fifth class of the old Servian division, and to have gone to battle
with no other weapons than slings, were now called upon to provide themselves with
light arms of a better description, and became the velites of the new legion. Why
the triarii should have been also" reduced in number does not certainly appear; except
that as the whole Roman tactic was now become a very active system of personal combats along the whole line, it was necessary to have as many men as possible available
for the two first divisions, and that the mere reserve, which was not to form any part
of the fighting force, except on emergency, should be kept low, and confined to the
older soldiers who had no longer sufficient activity to be employed in the constantly
moving battle of the regular line.
Niebuhr has attempted to explain the number of centuries in the legion, and of men
in each century, by a reference to the varying number of tribes, and to the centuries in
the classes of the Servian constitution. But his explanation does not seem to me satisfactory; and the question is not essential to our understanding of the military character of the legion. It may be observed, however, that the germ of the division of the
legion into ten cohorts, may be traced already in the legion of the time of Polybius,
as a tenfold division existed in it in each of the three lines of the hastati, principes,
and triarii. A cohort then would be merely one maniple of each of these three lines;
a miniature legion, presenting the same variety of force on a small scale, which the
legion itself did on a large scale. And thus the cohorts of the legion of four thousand
two hundred men would consist of four hundred and twenty men each, as afterwards
in the imperial legion they consisted properly of six hundred men each.
Sallust, it is well known, makes Caesar say that the Romans had borrowed their
arms, offensive and defensive, from the Samnites. (Bell. Catilinar. 51.) And although
the Samnites are not named, yet the order of time seems to show that they must, partly
at least, be intended, where Diodorus says, Fragm. Vatic. XXIII. 1, that the Romans,
having first adopted the tactic of the phalanx irf their wars with the Etruscans, afterwards exchanged it for the system of fighting in cohorts (urepal being a certain correction for rupais, which has no meaning at all), and with the large oblong shield, upe a,
because the nations whom they subsequently encountered used this tactic. And it
probably is true, that the peculiar form of the Roman legion was owing to the wars
with the Gauls and Samnites, which led to the total disuse of the phalanx, and to the
perfecting of those weapons, such as the sword and the javelin, which, in the system of
the phalanx, are of the least importance.

THE END.




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