But notwithstanding these enlargements of the powers of the

burgess-assemblies, their practical influence on state affairs began,

particularly towards the close of this period, to wane. First of all,

the extension of the bounds of Rome deprived her primary assembly of

its true basis. As an assembly of the freeholders of the community,

it formerly might very well meet in sufficiently full numbers, and

might very well know its own wishes, even without discussion; but the

Roman burgess-body had now become less a civic community than a state.

The fact that those dwelling together voted also with each other, no

doubt, introduced into the Roman comitia, at least when the voting

was by tribes, a sort of inward connection and into the voting now

and then energy and independence; but under ordinary circumstances

the composition of the comitia and their decision were left dependent

on the person who presided or on accident, or were committed to the

hands of the burgesses domiciled in the capital. It is, therefore,

quite easy to understand how the assemblies of the burgesses, which

had great practical importance during the first two centuries of

the republic, gradually became a mere instrument in the hands of

the presiding magistrate, and in truth a very dangerous instrument,

because the magistrates called to preside were so numerous, and

every resolution of the community was regarded as the ultimate legal

expression of the will of the people. But the enlargement of the

constitutional rights of the burgesses was not of much moment,

inasmuch as these were less than formerly capable of a will and action

of their own, and there was as yet no demagogism, in the proper sense

of that term, in Rome. Had any such demagogic spirit existed, it

would have attempted not to extend the powers of the burgesses, but to

remove the restrictions on political debate in their presence; whereas

throughout this whole period there was undeviating acquiescence in the

old maxims, that the magistrate alone could convoke the burgesses,

and that he was entitled to exclude all debate and all proposal

of amendments. At the time this incipient breaking up of the

constitution made itself felt chiefly in the circumstance that

the primary assemblies assumed an essentially passive attitude,

and did not on the whole interfere in government either to help

or to hinder it.

The Magistrates. Partition and Weakening of the Consular Powers

As regards the power of the magistrates, its diminution, although not

the direct design of the struggles between the old and new burgesses,

was doubtless one of their most important results. At the beginning

of the struggle between the orders or, in other words, of the strife

for the possession of the consular power, the consulate was still

the one and indivisible, essentially regal, magistracy; and the

consul, like the king in former times, still had the appointment

of all subordinate functionaries left to his own free choice.

At the termination of that contest its most important functions

--jurisdiction, street-police, election of senators and equites,

the census and financial administration --were separated from the

consulship and transferred to magistrates, who like the consul

were nominated by the community and occupied a position far more

co-ordinate than subordinate. The consulate, formerly the single

ordinary magistracy of the state, was now no longer even absolutely

the first. In the new arrangement as to the ranking and usual order

of succession of the public offices the consulate stood indeed above

the praetorship, aedileship, and quaestorship, but beneath the

censorship, which--in addition to the most important financial duties

--was charged with the adjustment of the rolls of burgesses, equites,

and senators, and thereby wielded a wholly arbitrary moral control

over the entire community and every individual burgess, the humblest

as well as the most prominent. The conception of limited magisterial

power or special function, which seemed to the original Roman state-law

irreconcilable with the conception of supreme office, gradually

gained a footing and mutilated and destroyed the earlier idea of the

one and indivisible -imperium-. A first step was already taken in

this direction by the institution of the standing collateral offices,

particularly the quaestorship;(14) it was completely carried out by

the Licinian laws (387), which prescribed the functions of the three

supreme magistrates, and assigned administration and the conduct of

war to the two first, and the management of justice to the third. But

the change did not stop here. The consuls, although they were in law

wholly and everywhere co-ordinate, naturally from the earliest times

divided between them in practice the different departments of duty

(-provinciae-). Originally this was done simply by mutual concert, or

in default of it by casting lots; but by degrees the other constituent

authorities in the commonwealth interfered with this practical

definition of functions. It became usual for the senate to define

annually the spheres of duty; and, while it did not directly

distribute them among the co-ordinate magistrates, it exercised

decided influence on the personal distribution by advice and request.

In an extreme case the senate doubtless obtained a decree of the

community, definitively to settle the question of distribution;(15)

the government, however, very seldom employed this dangerous

expedient. Further, the most important affairs, such as the

concluding of peace, were withdrawn from the consuls, and they

were in such matters obliged to have recourse to the senate and

to act according to its instructions. Lastly, in cases of extremity

the senate could at any time suspend the consuls from office; for,

according to an usage never established by law but never violated

in practice, the creation of a dictatorship depended simply upon

the resolution of the senate, and the fixing of the person to be

nominated, although constitutionally vested in the nominating

consul, really under ordinary circumstances lay with the senate.

Limitation of the Dictatorship

The old unity and plenary legal power of the -imperium- were retained

longer in the case of the dictatorship than in that of the consulship.

Although of course as an extraordinary magistracy it had in reality

from the first its special functions, it had in law far less of a

special character than the consulate. But it also was gradually

affected by the new idea of definite powers and functions introduced

into the legal life of Rome. In 391 we first meet with a dictator

expressly nominated from theological scruples for the mere

accomplishment of a religious ceremony; and though that dictator

himself, doubtless in formal accordance with the constitution,

treated the restriction of his powers as null and took the command

of the army in spite of it, such an opposition on the part of the

magistrate was not repeated on occasion of the subsequent similarly

restricted nominations, which occurred in 403 and thenceforward very

frequently. On the contrary, the dictators thenceforth accounted

themselves bound by their powers as specially defined.

Restriction as to the Accumulation and the Reoccupation of Offices

Lastly, further seriously felt restrictions of the magistracy were

involved in the prohibition issued in 412 against the accumulation

of the ordinary curule offices, and in the enactment of the same date,

that the same person should not again administer the same office under

ordinary circumstances before an interval of ten years had elapsed, as

well as in the subsequent regulation that the office which practically

was the highest, the censorship, should not be held a second time

at all (489). But the government was still strong enough not to be

afraid of its instruments or to desist purposely on that account

from employing those who were the most serviceable. Brave officers

were very frequently released from these rules,(16) and cases still

occurred like those of Quintus Fabius Rullianus, who was five times

consul in twenty-eight years, and of Marcus Valerius Corvus (384-483)

who, after he had filled six consulships, the first in his twenty-third,

the last in his seventy-second year, and had been throughout three

generations the protector of his countrymen and the terror

of the foe, descended to the grave at the age of a hundred.

The Tribunate of the People as an Instrument of Government

While the Roman magistrate was thus more and more completely and

definitely transformed from the absolute lord into the limited

commissioner and administrator of the community, the old

counter-magistracy, the tribunate of the people, was undergoing at

the same time a similar transformation internal rather than external.

It served a double purpose in the commonwealth. It had been from

the beginning intended to protect the humble and the weak by a

somewhat revolutionary assistance (-auxilium-) against the overbearing

violence of the magistrates; it had subsequently been employed to get

rid of the legal disabilities of the commons and the privileges of the

gentile nobility. The latter end was attained. The original object

was not only in itself a democratic ideal rather than a political

possibility, but it was also quite as obnoxious to the plebeian

aristocracy into whose hands the tribunate necessarily fell, and

quite as incompatible with the new organization which originated

in the equalization of the orders and had if possible a still more

decided aristocratic hue than that which preceded it, as it was

obnoxious to the gentile nobility and incompatible with the patrician

consular constitution. But instead of abolishing the tribunate, they

preferred to convert it from a weapon of opposition into an instrument

of government, and now introduced the tribunes of the people, who were

originally excluded from all share in administration and were neither

magistrates nor members of the senate, into the class of governing

authorities.

While in jurisdiction they stood from the beginning on an equality

with the consuls and in the early stages of the conflicts between the

orders acquired like the consuls the right of initiating legislation,

they now received--we know not exactly when, but presumably at or soon

after the final equalization of the orders--a position of equality

with the consuls as confronting the practically governing authority,

the senate. Hitherto they had been present at the proceedings of the

senate, sitting on a bench at the door; now they obtained, like the

other magistrates and by their side, a place in the senate itself and

the right to interpose their word in its discussions. If they were

precluded from the right of voting, this was simply an application of

the general principle of Roman state-law, that those only should give

counsel who were not called to act; in accordance with which the whole

of the acting magistrates possessed during their year of office only a

seat, not a vote, in the council of the state.(17) But concession did

not rest here. The tribunes received the distinctive prerogative of

supreme magistracy, which among the ordinary magistrates belonged

only to the consuls and praetors besides--the right of convoking the

senate, of consulting it, and of procuring decrees from it.(18) This

was only as it should be; the heads of the plebeian aristocracy

could not but be placed on an equality with those of the patrician

aristocracy in the senate, when once the government had passed

from the clan-nobility to the united aristocracy. Now that this

opposition-college, originally excluded from all share in the public

administration, became--particularly with reference to strictly urban

affairs--a second supreme executive and one of the most usual and most

serviceable instruments of the government, or in other words of the

senate, for managing the burgesses and especially for checking the

excesses of the magistrates, it was certainly, as respected its

original character, absorbed and politically annihilated; but this

course was really enjoined by necessity. Clearly as the defects of

the Roman aristocracy were apparent, and decidedly as the steady

growth of aristocratic ascendency was connected with the practical

setting aside of the tribunate, none can fail to see that government

could not be long carried on with an authority which was not only

aimless and virtually calculated to put off the suffering proletariate

with a deceitful prospect of relief, but was at the same time

decidedly revolutionary and possessed of a--strictly speaking

--anarchical prerogative of obstruction to the authority of the

magistrates and even of the state itself. But that faith in an ideal,

which is the foundation of all the power and of all the impotence

of democracy, had come to be closely associated in the minds of the

Romans with the tribunate of the plebs; and we do not need to

recall the case of Cola Rienzi in order to perceive that, however

unsubstantial might be the advantage thence arising to the multitude,

it could not be abolished without a formidable convulsion of the

state. Accordingly with genuine political prudence they contented

themselves with reducing it to a nullity under forms that should

attract as little attention as possible. The mere name of this

essentially revolutionary magistracy was still retained within

the aristocratically governed commonwealth--an incongruity for the

present, and for the future, in the hands of a coming revolutionary

party, a sharp and dangerous weapon. For the moment, however, and for

a long time to come the aristocracy was so absolutely powerful and

so completely possessed control over the tribunate, that no trace at

all is to be met with of a collegiate opposition on the part of

the tribunes to the senate; and the government overcame the forlorn

movements of opposition that now and then proceeded from individual

tribunes, always without difficulty, and ordinarily by means of

the tribunate itself.

The Senate. Its Composition

In reality it was the senate that governed the commonwealth, and did

so almost without opposition after the equalization of the orders.

Its very composition had undergone a change. The free prerogative of

the chief magistrates in this matter, as it had been exercised after

the setting aside of the old clan-representation,(19) had been already

subjected to very material restrictions on the abolition of the

presidency for life.(20)

A further step towards the emancipation of the senate from the power

of the magistrates took place, when the adjustment of the senatorial

lists was transferred from the supreme magistrates to subordinate

functionaries--from the consuls to the censors.(21) Certainly,

whether immediately at that time or soon afterwards, the right of

the magistrate entrusted with the preparation of the list to omit

from it individual senators on account of a stain attaching to them

and thereby to exclude them from the senate was, if not introduced,

at least more precisely defined,(22) and in this way the foundations

were laid of that peculiar jurisdiction over morals on which the high

repute of the censors was chiefly based.(23) But censures of that

sort--especially since the two censors had to be at one on the matter

--might doubtless serve to remove particular persons who did not

contribute to the credit of the assembly or were hostile to the spirit

prevailing there, but could not bring the body itself into dependence

on the magistracy.

But the right of the magistrates to constitute the senate according

to their judgment was decidedly restricted by the Ovinian law, which

was passed about the middle of this period, probably soon after the

Licinian laws. That law at once conferred a seat and vote in the

senate provisionally on every one who had been curule aedile, praetor,

or consul, and bound the next censors either formally to inscribe

these expectants in the senatorial roll, or at any rate to exclude

them from the roll only for such reasons as sufficed for the rejection

of an actual senator. The number of those, however, who had been

magistrates was far from sufficing to keep the senate up to the normal

number of three hundred; and below that point it could not be allowed

to fall, especially as the list of senators was at the same time that

of jurymen. Considerable room was thus always left for the exercise

of the censorial right of election; but those senators who were chosen

not in consequence of having held office, but by selection on the part

of the censor--frequently burgesses who had filled a non-curule public

office, or distinguished themselves by personal valour, who had killed

an enemy in battle or saved the life of a burgess--took part in

voting, but not in debate.(24) The main body of the senate, and

that portion of it into whose hands government and administration

were concentrated, was thus according to the Ovinian law substantially

based no longer on the arbitrary will of a magistrate, but indirectly

on election by the people. The Roman state in this way made some

approach to, although it did not reach, the great institution of

modern times, representative popular government, while the aggregate

of the non-debating senators furnished--what it is so necessary and

yet so difficult to get in governing corporations--a compact mass

of members capable of forming and entitled to pronounce an opinion,

but voting in silence.

Powers of the Senate

The powers of the senate underwent scarcely any change in form. The

senate carefully avoided giving a handle to opposition or to ambition

by unpopular changes, or manifest violations, of the constitution; it

permitted, though it did nor promote, the enlargement in a democratic

direction of the power of the burgesses. But while the burgesses

acquired the semblance, the senate acquired the substance of power

--a decisive influence over legislation and the official elections,

and the whole control of the state.

Its Influence in Legislation

Every new project of law was subjected to a preliminary deliberation

in the senate, and scarcely ever did a magistrate venture to lay a

proposal before the community without or in opposition to the senate's

opinion. If he did so, the senate had--in the intercessory powers of

the magistrates and the annulling powers of the priests--an ample set

of means at hand to nip in the bud, or subsequently to get rid of,

obnoxious proposals; and in case of extremity it had in its hands

as the supreme administrative authority not only the executing, but

the power of refusing to execute, the decrees of the community. The

senate further with tacit consent of the community claimed the right

in urgent cases of absolving from the laws, under the reservation that

the community should ratify the proceeding--a reservation which from

the first was of little moment, and became by degrees so entirely a

form that in later times they did not even take the trouble to propose

the ratifying decree.

Influence on the Elections

As to the elections, they passed, so far as they depended on the

magistrates and were of political importance, practically into the

hands of the senate. In this way it acquired, as has been mentioned

already,(25) the right to appoint the dictator. Great regard had

certainly to be shown to the community; the right of bestowing the

public magistracies could not be withdrawn from it; but, as has

likewise been already observed, care was taken that this election of

magistrates should not be constructed into the conferring of definite

functions, especially of the posts of supreme command when war was

imminent. Moreover the newly introduced idea of special functions on

the one hand, and on the other the right practically conceded to the

senate of dispensation from the laws, gave to it an important share

in official appointments. Of the influence which the senate exercised

in settling the official spheres of the consuls in particular, we have

already spoken.(26) One of the most important applications of the

dispensing right was the dispensation of the magistrate from the legal

term of his tenure of office--a dispensation which, as contrary to the

fundamental laws of the community, might not according to Roman state-law

be granted in the precincts of the city proper, but beyond these

was at least so far valid that the consul or praetor, whose term was

prolonged, continued after its expiry to discharge his functions

"in a consul's or praetor's stead" (-pro consule- -pro praetore-).

Of course this important right of extending the term of office

--essentially on a par with the right of nomination--belonged by

law to the community alone, and at the beginning was in fact exercised

by it; but in 447, and regularly thenceforward, the command of the

commander-in-chief was prolonged by mere decree of the senate. To this

was added, in fine, the preponderating and skilfully concerted influence

of the aristocracy over the elections, which guided them ordinarily,

although not always, to the choice of candidates agreeable to

the government.

Senatorial Government

Finally as regards administration, war, peace and alliances, the

founding of colonies, the assignation of lands, building, in fact

every matter of permanent and general importance, and in particular

the whole system of finance, depended absolutely on the senate.

It was the senate which annually issued general instructions to the

magistrates, settling their spheres of duty and limiting the troops

and moneys to be placed at the disposal of each; and recourse was

had to its counsel in every case of importance. The keepers of the

state-chest could make no payment to any magistrate with the exception

of the consul, or to any private person, unless authorized by a previous

decree of the senate. In the management, however, of current affairs

and in the details of judicial and military administration the supreme

governing corporation did not interfere; the Roman aristocracy had too

much political judgment and tact to desire to convert the control of

the commonwealth into a guardianship over the individual official,

or to turn the instrument into a machine.

That this new government of the senate amidst all its retention

of existing forms involved a complete revolutionizing of the old

commonwealth, is clear. That the free action of the burgesses should

be arrested and benumbed; that the magistrates should be reduced to

be the presidents of its sittings and its executive commissioners;

that a corporation for the mere tendering of advice should seize the

inheritance of both the authorities sanctioned by the constitution

and should become, although under very modest forms, the central

government of the state--these were steps of revolution and

usurpation. Nevertheless, if any revolution or any usurpation appears

justified before the bar of history by exclusive ability to govern,

even its rigorous judgment must acknowledge that this corporation

timeously comprehended and worthily fulfilled its great task. Called

to power not by the empty accident of birth, but substantially by the

free choice of the nation; confirmed every fifth year by the stern

moral judgment of the worthiest men; holding office for life, and so

not dependent on the expiration of its commission or on the varying

opinion of the people; having its ranks close and united ever after

the equalization of the orders; embracing in it all the political

intelligence and practical statesmanship that the people possessed;

absolute in dealing with all financial questions and in the guidance

of foreign policy; having complete power over the executive by virtue

of its brief duration and of the tribunician intercession which was

at the service of the senate after the termination of the quarrels

between the orders--the Roman senate was the noblest organ of the

nation, and in consistency and political sagacity, in unanimity and

patriotism, in grasp of power and unwavering courage, the foremost

political corporation of all times--still even now an "assembly of

kings," which knew well how to combine despotic energy with republican

self-devotion. Never was a state represented in its external

relations more firmly and worthily than Rome in its best times by

its senate. In matters of internal administration it certainly

cannot be concealed that the moneyed and landed aristocracy, which

was especially represented in the senate, acted with partiality in

affairs that bore upon its peculiar interests, and that the sagacity

and energy of the body were often in such cases employed far from

beneficially to the state. Nevertheless the great principle

established amidst severe conflicts, that all Roman burgesses were

equal in the eye of the law as respected rights and duties, and the

opening up of a political career (or in other words, of admission

to the senate) to every one, which was the result of that principle,

concurred with the brilliance of military and political successes in

preserving the harmony of the state and of the nation, and relieved

the distinction of classes from that bitterness and malignity which

marked the struggle of the patricians and plebeians. And, as the

fortunate turn taken by external politics had the effect of giving the

rich for more than a century ample space for themselves and rendered

it unnecessary that they should oppress the middle class, the Roman

people was enabled by means of its senate to carry out for a longer

term than is usually granted to a people the grandest of all human

undertakings--a wise and happy self-government.

Notes for Book II Chapter III

1. The hypothesis that legally the full -imperium- belonged to the

patrician, and only the military -imperium- to the plebeian, consular

tribunes, not only provokes various questions to which there is no

answer--as to the course followed, for example, in the event of the

election falling, as was by law quite possible, wholly on plebeians

--but specially conflicts with the fundamental principle of Roman

constitutional law, that the -imperium-, that is to say, the right

of commanding the burgess in name of the community, was functionally

indivisible and capable of no other limitation at all than a

territorial one. There was a province of urban law and a province

of military law, in the latter of which the -provocatio- and other

regulations of urban law were not applicable; there were magistrates,

such as the proconsuls, who were empowered to discharge functions

simply in the latter; but there were, in the strict sense of law,

no magistrates with merely jurisdictional, as there were none with

merely military, -imperium-. The proconsul was in his province, just

like the consul, at once commander-in-chief and supreme judge, and was

entitled to send to trial actions not only between non-burgesses and

soldiers, but also between one burgess and another. Even when, on the

institution of the praetorship, the idea rose of apportioning special

functions to the -magistratus maiores-, this division of powers had

more of a practical than of a strictly legal force; the -praetor

urbanus- was primarily indeed the supreme judge, but he could also

convoke the centuries, at least for certain cases, and could

command an army; the consul in the city held primarily the supreme

administration and the supreme command, but he too acted as a judge

in cases of emancipation and adoption--the functional indivisibility

of the supreme magistracy was therefore, even in these instances,

very strictly adhered to on both sides. Thus the military as well as

jurisdictional authority, or, laying aside these abstractions foreign

to the Roman law of this period, the absolute magisterial power, must

have virtually pertained to the plebeian consular tribunes as well as

to the patrician. But it may well be, as Becker supposes (Handb. ii.

2, 137), that, for the same reasons, for which at a subsequent period

there was placed alongside of the consulship common to both orders

the praetorship actually reserved for a considerable time for the

patricians, even during the consular tribunate the plebeian members

of the college were -de facto- kept aloof from jurisdiction, and so

far the consular tribunate prepared the way for the subsequent actual

division of jurisdiction between consuls and praetors.

2. I. VI. Political Effects of the Servian Military Organization

3. The defence, that the aristocracy clung to the exclusion of

the plebeians from religious prejudice, mistakes the fundamental

character of the Roman religion, and imports into antiquity the modern

distinction between church and state. The admittance of a non-burgess

to a religious ceremony of the citizens could not indeed but appear

sinful to the orthodox Roman; but even the most rigid orthodoxy never

doubted that admittance to civic communion, which absolutely and

solely depended on the state, involved also full religious equality.

All such scruples of conscience, the honesty of which in themselves

we do not mean to doubt, were precluded, when once they granted to the

plebeians -en masse- at the right time the patriciate. This only may

perhaps be alleged by way of excuse for the nobility, that after it

had neglected the right moment for this purpose at the abolition of

the monarchy, it was no longer in a position subsequently of itself

to retrieve the neglect (II. I. The New Community).

4. Whether this distinction between these "curule houses" and the

other families embraced within the patriciate was ever of serious

political importance, cannot with certainty be either affirmed or

denied; and as little do we know whether at this epoch there really

was any considerable number of patrician families that were not yet

curule.

5. II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws

6. I. XII. Foreign Worships

7. II. I. Senate,

8. II. I. Senate, II. III. Opposition of the Patriciate

9. II. II. Legislation of the Twelve Tables

10. II. III. Equivalence Law and Plebiscitum

11. The statements as to the poverty of the consulars of this period,

which play so great a part in the moral anecdote-books of a later age,

mainly rest on a misunderstanding on the one hand of the old frugal

economy--which might very well consist with considerable prosperity

--and on the other hand of the beautiful old custom of burying men who

had deserved well of the state from the proceeds of penny collections

--which was far from being a pauper burial. The method also of

explaining surnames by etymological guess-work, which has imported

so many absurdities into Roman history, has furnished its quota to

this belief (-Serranus-).

12. II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws

13. II. III. Equivalence Law and Plebiscitum

14. II. I. Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers

15. II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses

16. Any one who compares the consular Fasti before and after 412

will have no doubt as to the existence of the above-mentioned law

respecting re-election to the consulate; for, while before that year

a return to office, especially after three or four years, was a

common occurrence, afterwards intervals of ten years and more were

as frequent. Exceptions, however, occur in very great numbers,

particularly during the severe years of war 434-443. On the other

hand, the principle of not allowing a plurality of offices was

strictly adhered to. There is no certain instance of the combination

of two of the three ordinary curule (Liv. xxxix. 39, 4) offices (the

consulate, praetorship, and curule aedileship), but instances occur

of other combinations, such as of the curule aedileship and the office

of master of the horse (Liv. xxiii. 24, 30); of the praetorship

and censorship (Fast. Cap. a. 501); of the praetorship and the

dictatorship (Liv. viii. 12); of the consulate and the dictatorship

(Liv. viii. 12).

17. II. I. Senate

18. Hence despatches intended for the senate were addressed to

Consuls, Praetors, Tribunes of the Plebs, and Senate (Cicero, ad

Fam. xv. 2, et al.)

19. I. V. The Senate

20. II. I. Senate

21. II. III. Censorship

22. This prerogative and the similar ones with reference to the

equestrian and burgess-lists were perhaps not formally and legally

assigned to the censors, but were always practically implied in

their powers. It was the community, not the censor, that conferred

burgess-rights; but the person, to whom the latter in making up the

list of persons entitled to vote did not assign a place or assigned an

inferior one, did not lose his burgess-right, but could not exercise

the privileges of a burgess, or could only exercise them in the

inferior place, till the preparation of a new list. The same was the

case with the senate; the person omitted by the censor from his list

ceased to attend the senate, as long as the list in question remained

valid--unless the presiding magistrate should reject it and reinstate

the earlier list. Evidently therefore the important question in this

respect was not so much what was the legal liberty of the censors,

as how far their authority availed with those magistrates who had to

summon according to their lists. Hence it is easy to understand

how this prerogative gradually rose in importance, and how with the

increasing consolidation of the nobility such erasures assumed

virtually the form of judicial decisions and were virtually respected

as such. As to the adjustment of the senatorial list undoubtedly the

enactment of the Ovinian -plebiscitum- exercised a material share of

influence--that the censors should admit to the senate "the best men

out of all classes."

23. II. III. The Burgess-Body. Its Composition

24. II. III. Complete Opening Up of Magistracies and Priesthoods

25. II. III. Restrictions as to the Accumulation and the Reoccupation

of Offices

26. II. III. Partition and Weakening of Consular Powers

CHAPTER IV

Fall of the Etruscan Power-the Celts

Etrusco-Carthaginian Maritime Supremacy

In the previous chapters we have presented an outline of the

development of the Roman constitution during the first two centuries

of the republic; we now recur to the commencement of that epoch for

the purpose of tracing the external history of Rome and of Italy.

About the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome the Etruscan

power had reached its height. The Tuscans, and the Carthaginians who

were in close alliance with them, possessed undisputed supremacy on

the Tyrrhene Sea. Although Massilia amidst continual and severe

struggles maintained her independence, the seaports of Campania and

of the Volscian land, and after the battle of Alalia Corsica also,(1)

were in the possession of the Etruscans. In Sardinia the sons of the

Carthaginian general Mago laid the foundation of the greatness both of

their house and of their city by the complete conquest of the island

(about 260); and in Sicily, while the Hellenic colonies were occupied

with their internal feuds, the Phoenicians retained possession of

the western half without material opposition. The vessels of the

Etruscans were no less dominant in the Adriatic; and their pirates

were dreaded even in the more eastern waters.

Subjugation of Latium by Etruria

By land also their power seemed to be on the increase. To acquire

possession of Latium was of the most decisive importance to Etruria,

which was separated by the Latins alone from the Volscian towns that

were dependent on it and from its possessions in Campania. Hitherto

the firm bulwark of the Roman power had sufficiently protected Latium,

and had successfully maintained against Etruria the frontier line of

the Tiber. But now, when the whole Tuscan league, taking advantage of

the confusion and the weakness of the Roman state after the expulsion

of the Tarquins, renewed its attack more energetically than before

under the king Lars Porsena of Clusium, it no longer encountered the

wonted resistance. Rome surrendered, and in the peace (assigned to

247) not only ceded all her possessions on the right bank of the Tiber

to the adjacent Tuscan communities and thus abandoned her exclusive

command of the river, but also delivered to the conqueror all her

weapons of war and promised to make use of iron thenceforth only for

the ploughshare. It seemed as if the union of Italy under Tuscan

supremacy was not far distant.

Etruscans Driven Back from Latium--

Fall of the Etrusco-Carthaginian Maritime Supremacy--

Victories of Salamis and Himera, and Their Effects

But the subjugation, with which the coalition of the Etruscan and

Carthaginian nations had threatened both Greeks and Italians, was

fortunately averted by the combination of peoples drawn towards each

other by family affinity as well as by common peril. The Etruscan

army, which after the fall of Rome had penetrated into Latium, had

its victorious career checked in the first instance before the walls

of Aricia by the well-timed intervention of the Cumaeans who had

hastened to the succour of the Aricines (248). We know not how the

war ended, nor, in particular, whether Rome even at that time tore up

the ruinous and disgraceful peace. This much only is certain, that

on this occasion also the Tuscans were unable to maintain their ground

permanently on the left bank of the Tiber.

Soon the Hellenic nation was forced to engage in a still more

comprehensive and still more decisive conflict with the barbarians

both of the west and of the east. It was about the time of the

Persian wars. The relation in which the Tyrians stood to the great

king led Carthage also to follow in the wake of Persian policy

--there exists a credible tradition even as to an alliance between

the Carthaginians and Xerxes--and, along with the Carthaginians, the

Etruscans. It was one of the grandest of political combinations which

simultaneously directed the Asiatic hosts against Greece, and the

Phoenician hosts against Sicily, to extirpate at a blow liberty and

civilization from the face of the earth. The victory remained with

the Hellenes. The battle of Salamis (274) saved and avenged Hellas

proper; and on the same day--so runs the story--the rulers of Syracuse

and Agrigentum, Gelon and Theron, vanquished the immense army of the

Carthaginian general Hamilcar, son of Mago, at Himera so completely,

that the war was thereby terminated, and the Phoenicians, who by no

means cherished at that time the project of subduing the whole of

Sicily on their own account, returned to their previous defensive

policy. Some of the large silver pieces are still preserved which

were coined for this campaign from the ornaments of Damareta, the

wife of Gelon, and other noble Syracusan dames: and the latest times

gratefully remembered the gentle and brave king of Syracuse and

the glorious victory whose praises Simonides sang.

The immediate effect of the humiliation of Carthage was the fall of

the maritime supremacy of her Etruscan allies. Anaxilas, ruler of

Rhegium and Zancle, had already closed the Sicilian straits against

their privateers by means of a standing fleet (about 272); soon

afterwards (280) the Cumaeans and Hiero of Syracuse achieved a

decisive victory near Cumae over the Tyrrhene fleet, to which the

Carthaginians vainly attempted to render aid. This is the victory

which Pindar celebrates in his first Pythian ode; and there is still

extant an Etruscan helmet, which Hiero sent to Olympia, with the

inscription: "Hiaron son of Deinomenes and the Syrakosians to Zeus,

Tyrrhane spoil from Kyma."(2)

Maritime Supremacy of the Tarentines and Syracusans--

Dionysius of Syracuse

While these extraordinary successes against the Carthaginians and

Etruscans placed Syracuse at the head of the Greek cities in Sicily,

the Doric Tarentum rose to undisputed pre-eminence among the Italian

Hellenes, after the Achaean Sybaris had fallen about the time of the

expulsion of the kings from Rome (243). The terrible defeat of the

Tarentines by the Iapygians (280), the most severe disaster which a

Greek army had hitherto sustained, served only, like the Persian

invasion of Hellas, to unshackle the whole might of the national

spirit in the development of an energetic democracy. Thenceforth

the Carthaginians and the Etruscans were no longer paramount in the

Italian waters; the Tarentines predominated in the Adriatic and Ionic,

the Massiliots and Syracusans in the Tyrrhene, seas. The latter in

particular restricted more and more the range of Etruscan piracy.

After the victory at Cumae, Hiero had occupied the island of Aenaria

(Ischia), and by that means interrupted the communication between the

Campanian and the northern Etruscans. About the year 302, with a

view thoroughly to check Tuscan piracy, Syracuse sent forth a special

expedition, which ravaged the island of Corsica and the Etruscan

coast and occupied the island of Aethalia (Elba). Although

Etrusco-Carthaginian piracy was not wholly repressed--Antium,

for example, having apparently continued a haunt of privateering down

to the beginning of the fifth century of Rome--the powerful Syracuse

formed a strong bulwark against the allied Tuscans and Phoenicians.

For a moment, indeed, it seemed as if the Syracusan power must be broken

by the attack of the Athenians, whose naval expedition against Syracuse

in the course of the Peloponnesian war (339-341) was supported by the

Etruscans, old commercial friends of Athens, with three fifty-oared

galleys. But the victory remained, as is well known, both in the west

and in the east with the Dorians. After the ignominious failure of

the Attic expedition, Syracuse became so indisputably the first Greek

maritime power that the men, who were there at the head of the state,

aspired to the sovereignty of Sicily and Lower Italy, and of both the

Italian seas; while on the other hand the Carthaginians, who saw their

dominion in Sicily now seriously in danger, were on their part also

obliged to make, and made, the subjugation of the Syracusans and the

reduction of the whole island the aim of their policy. We cannot

here narrate the decline of the intermediate Sicilian states, and

the increase of the Carthaginian power in the island, which were the

immediate results of these struggles; we notice their effect only so

far as Etruria is concerned. The new ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius

(who reigned 348-387), inflicted on Etruria blows which were severely

felt. The far-scheming king laid the foundation of his new colonial

power especially in the sea to the east of Italy, the more northern

waters of which now became, for the first time, subject to a Greek

maritime power. About the year 367, Dionysius occupied and colonized

the port of Lissus and island of Issa on the Illyrian coast, and the

ports of Ancona, Numana, and Atria, on the coast of Italy. The memory

of the Syracusan dominion in this remote region is preserved not only

by the "trenches of Philistus," a canal constructed at the mouth

of the Po beyond doubt by the well-known historian and friend of

Dionysius who spent the years of his exile (368 et seq.) at Atria,

but also by the alteration in the name of the Italian eastern sea

itself, which from this time forth, instead of its earlier designation

of the "Ionic Gulf",(3) received the appellation still current at the

present day, and probably referable to these events, of the sea

"of Hadria."(4) But not content with these attacks on the possessions

and commercial communications of the Etruscans in the eastern sea,

Dionysius assailed the very heart of the Etruscan power by storming

and plundering Pyrgi, the rich seaport of Caere (369). From this blow

it never recovered. When the internal disturbances that followed the

death of Dionysius in Syracuse gave the Carthaginians freer scope, and

their fleet resumed in the Tyrrhene sea that ascendency which with but

slight interruptions they thenceforth maintained, it proved a burden

no less grievous to Etruscans than to Greeks; so that, when Agathocles

of Syracuse in 444 was making preparations for war with Carthage, he

was even joined by eighteen Tuscan vessels of war. The Etruscans

perhaps had their fears in regard to Corsica, which they probably

still at that time retained. The old Etrusco-Phoenician symmachy,

which still existed in the time of Aristotle (370-432), was thus

broken up; but the Etruscans never recovered their maritime strength.

The Romans Opposed to the Etruscans in Veii

This rapid collapse of the Etruscan maritime power would be

inexplicable but for the circumstance that, at the very time when

the Sicilian Greeks were attacking them by sea, the Etruscans found

themselves assailed with the severest blows oil every side by land.

About the time of the battles of Salamis, Himera, and Cumae a furious

war raged for many years, according to the accounts of the Roman

annals, between Rome and Veii (271-280). The Romans suffered in its

course severe defeats. Tradition especially preserved the memory of

the catastrophe of the Fabii (277), who had in consequence of internal

commotions voluntarily banished themselves from the capital(4) and had

undertaken the defence of the frontier against Etruria, and who were

slain to the last man capable of bearing arms at the brook Cremera.

But the armistice for 400 months, which in room of a peace terminated

the war, was so far favourable to the Romans that it at least restored

the -status quo- of the regal period; the Etruscans gave up Fidenae

and the district won by them on the right bank of the Tiber. We

cannot ascertain how far this Romano-Etruscan war was connected

directly with the war between the Hellenes and the Persians, and with

that between the Sicilians and Carthaginians; but whether the Romans

were or were not allies of the victors of Salamis and of Himera, there

was at any rate a coincidence of interests as well as of results.

The Samnites Opposed to the Etruscans in Campania

The Samnites as well as the Latins threw themselves upon the

Etruscans; and hardly had their Campanian settlement been cut off

from the motherland in consequence of the battle of Cumae, when it

found itself no longer able to resist the assaults of the Sabellian

mountain tribes. Capua, the capital, fell in 330; and the Tuscan

population there was soon after the conquest extirpated or expelled by

the Samnites. It is true that the Campanian Greeks also, isolated and

weakened, suffered severely from the same invasion: Cumae itself was

conquered by the Sabellians in 334. But the Hellenes maintained their

ground at Neapolis especially, perhaps with the aid of the Syracusans,

while the Etruscan name in Campania disappeared from history

--excepting some detached Etruscan communities, which prolonged

a pitiful and forlorn existence there.

Events still more momentous, however, occurred about the same time in

Northern Italy. A new nation was knocking at the gates of the Alps:

it was the Celts; and their first pressure fell on the Etruscans.

The Celtic, Galatian, or Gallic nation received from the common mother

endowments different from those of its Italian, Germanic, and Hellenic

sisters. With various solid qualities and still more that were

brilliant, it was deficient in those deeper moral and political

qualifications which lie at the root of all that is good and great

in human development. It was reckoned disgraceful, Cicero tells us,

for the free Celts to till their fields with their own hands. They

preferred a pastoral life to agriculture; and even in the fertile

plains of the Po they chiefly practised the rearing of swine, feeding

on the flesh of their herds, and staying with them in the oak forests

day and night. Attachment to their native soil, such as characterized

the Italians and the Germans, was wanting in the Celts; while on the

other hand they delighted to congregate in towns and villages, which

accordingly acquired magnitude and importance among the Celts earlier

apparently than in Italy. Their political constitution was imperfect.

Not only was the national unity recognized but feebly as a bond of

connection--as is, in fact, the case with all nations at first--but

the individual communities were deficient in concord and firm

control, in earnest public spirit and consistency of aim. The only

organization for which they were fitted was a military one, where the

bonds of discipline relieved the individual from the troublesome task

of self-control. "The prominent qualities of the Celtic race," says

their historian Thierry, "were personal bravery, in which they

excelled all nations; an open impetuous temperament, accessible to

every impression; much intelligence, but at the same time extreme

mobility, want of perseverance, aversion to discipline and order,

ostentation and perpetual discord--the result of boundless vanity."

Cato the Elder more briefly describes them, nearly to the same effect;

"the Celts devote themselves mainly to two things--fighting and

-esprit-."(6) Such qualities--those of good soldiers but of bad

citizens--explain the historical fact, that the Celts have shaken all

states and have founded none. Everywhere we find them ready to rove

or, in other words, to march; preferring moveable property to landed

estate, and gold to everything else; following the profession of arms

as a system of organized pillage or even as a trade for hire, and

with such success at all events that even the Roman historian Sallust

acknowledges that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in

feats of arms. They were the true soldiers-of-fortune of antiquity,

as figures and descriptions represent them: with big but not sinewy

bodies, with shaggy hair and long mustaches--quite a contrast to the

Greeks and Romans, who shaved the head and upper lip; in variegated

embroidered dresses, which in combat were not unfrequently thrown off;

with a broad gold ring round the neck; wearing no helmets and without

missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense

shield, a long ill-tempered sword, a dagger and a lance--all

ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful at working in

metals. Everything was made subservient to ostentation, even wounds,

which were often subsequently enlarged for the purpose of boasting

a broader scar. Usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on

horseback, in which case every freeman was followed by two attendants

likewise mounted; war-chariots were early in use, as they were among

the Libyans and the Hellenes in the earliest times. Various traits

remind us of the chivalry of the Middle Ages; particularly the custom

of single combat, which was foreign to the Greeks and Romans. Not

only were they accustomed during war to challenge a single enemy to

fight, after having previously insulted him by words and gestures;

during peace also they fought with each other in splendid suits of

armour, as for life or death. After such feats carousals followed as

a matter of course. In this way they led, whether under their own or

a foreign banner, a restless soldier-life; they were dispersed from

Ireland and Spain to Asia Minor, constantly occupied in fighting and

so-called feats of heroism. But all their enterprises melted away

like snow in spring; and nowhere did they create a great state or

develop a distinctive culture of their own.

Celtic Migrations--

The Celts Assail the Etruscans in Northern Italy

Such is the description which the ancients give us of this nation.

Its origin can only be conjectured. Sprung from the same cradle from

which the Hellenic, Italian, and Germanic peoples issued,(7) the

Celts doubtless like these migrated from their eastern motherland into

Europe, where at a very early period they reached the western ocean

and established their headquarters in what is now France, crossing

to settle in the British isles on the north, and on the south passing

the Pyrenees and contending with the Iberian tribes for the possession

of the peninsula. This, their first great migration, flowed past the

Alps, and it was from the lands to the westward that they first began

those movements of smaller masses in the opposite direction--movements

which carried them over the Alps and the Haemus and even over the

Bosporus, and by means of which they became and for many centuries

continued to be the terror of the whole civilized nations of

antiquity, till the victories of Caesar and the frontier defence

organized by Augustus for ever broke their power.

The native legend of their migrations, which has been preserved to us

mainly by Livy, relates the story of these later retrograde movements

as follows.(8) The Gallic confederacy, which was headed then as in

the time of Caesar by the canton of the Bituriges (around Bourges),

sent forth in the days of king Ambiatus two great hosts led by the

two nephews of the king. One of these nephews, Sigovesus, crossed

the Rhine and advanced in the direction of the Black Forest, while the

second, Bellovesus, crossed the Graian Alps (the Little St. Bernard)

and descended into the valley of the Po. From the former proceeded

the Gallic settlement on the middle Danube; from the latter the oldest

Celtic settlement in the modern Lombardy, the canton of the Insubres

with Mediolanum (Milan) as its capital. Another host soon followed,

which founded the canton of the Cenomani with the towns of Brixia

(Brescia) and Verona. Ceaseless streams thenceforth poured over the

Alps into the beautiful plain; the Celtic tribes with the Ligurians

whom they dislodged and swept along with them wrested place after

place from the Etruscans, till the whole left bank of the Po was

in their hands. After the fall of the rich Etruscan town Melpum

(presumably in the district of Milan), for the subjugation of which

the Celts already settled in the basin of the Po had united with newly

arrived tribes (358?), these latter crossed to the right bank of the

river and began to press upon the Umbrians and Etruscans in their

original abodes. Those who did so were chiefly the Boii, who are

alleged to have penetrated into Italy by another route, over the

Poenine Alps (the Great St. Bernard): they settled in the modern

Romagna, where the old Etruscan town Felsina, with its name changed

by its new masters to Bononia, became their capital. Finally came

the Senones, the last of the larger Celtic tribes which made their

way over the Alps; they took up their abode along the coast of the

Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona. But isolated bands of Celtic settlers

must have advanced even far in the direction of Umbria, and up to

the border of Etruria proper; for stone-inscriptions in the Celtic

language have been found even at Todi on the upper Tiber. The limits

of Etruria on the north and east became more and more contracted,

and about the middle of the fourth century the Tuscan nation found

themselves substantially restricted to the territory which thenceforth

bore and still bears their name.

Attack on Etruria by the Romans

Subjected to these simultaneous and, as it were, concerted assaults on

the part of very different peoples--the Syracusans, Latins, Samnites,

and above all the Celts--the Etruscan nation, that had just acquired

so vast and sudden an ascendency in Latium and Campania and on both

the Italian seas, underwent a still more rapid and violent collapse.

The loss of their maritime supremacy and the subjugation of the

Campanian Etruscans belong to the same epoch as the settlement of

the Insubres and Cenomani on the Po; and about this same period the

Roman burgesses, who had not very many years before been humbled to

the utmost and almost reduced to bondage by Porsena, first assumed an

attitude of aggression towards Etruria. By the armistice with Veii in

280 Rome had recovered its ground, and the two nations were restored

in the main to the state in which they had stood in the time of the

kings. When it expired in the year 309, the warfare began afresh; but

it took the form of border frays and pillaging excursions which led to

no material result on either side. Etruria was still too powerful for

Rome to be able seriously to attack it. At length the revolt of the

Fidenates, who expelled the Roman garrison, murdered the Roman envoys,

and submitted to Lars Tolumnius, king of the Veientes, gave rise to

a more considerable war, which ended favourably for the Romans; the

king Tolumnius fell in combat by the hand of the Roman consul Aulus

Cornelius Cossus (326?), Fidenae was taken, and a new armistice for

200 months was concluded in 329. During this truce the troubles of

Etruria became more and more aggravated, and the Celtic arms were

already approaching the settlements that hitherto had been spared on

the right bank of the Po. When the armistice expired in the end of

346, the Romans on their part resolved to undertake a war of conquest

against Etruria; and on this occasion the war was carried on not

merely to vanquish Veii, but to crush it.

Conquest of Veii

The history of the war against the Veientes, Capenates, and Falisci,

and of the siege of Veii, which is said, like that of Troy, to have

lasted ten years, rests on evidence far from trustworthy. Legend and

poetry have taken possession of these events as their own, and with

reason; for the struggle in this case was waged, with unprecedented

exertions, for an unprecedented prize. It was the first occasion on

which a Roman army remained in the field summer and winter, year

after year, till its object was attained. It was the first occasion

on which the community paid the levy from the resources of the state.

But it was also the first occasion on which the Romans attempted

to subdue a nation of alien stock, and carried their arms beyond

the ancient northern boundary of the Latin land. The struggle was

vehement, but the issue was scarcely doubtful. The Romans were

supported by the Latins and Hernici, to whom the overthrow of their

dreaded neighbour was productive of scarcely less satisfaction and

advantage than to the Romans themselves; whereas Veii was abandoned

by its own nation, and only the adjacent towns of Capena and Falerii,

along with Tarquinii, furnished contingents to its help. The

contemporary attacks of the Celts would alone suffice to explain

the nonintervention of the northern communities; it is affirmed

however, and there is no reason to doubt, that this inaction of the

other Etruscans was primarily occasioned by internal factions in the

league of the Etruscan cities, and particularly by the opposition

which the regal form of government retained or restored by the

Veientes encountered from the aristocratic governments of the other

cities. Had the Etruscan nation been able or willing to take part

in the conflict, the Roman community would hardly have been able

--undeveloped as was the art of besieging at that time--to accomplish

the gigantic task of subduing a large and strong city. But isolated

and forsaken as Veii was, it succumbed (358) after a valiant

resistance to the persevering and heroic spirit of Marcus Furius

Camillus, who first opened up to his countrymen the brilliant and

perilous career of foreign conquest. The joy which this great success

excited in Rome had its echo in the Roman custom, continued down to a

late age, of concluding the festal games with a "sale of Veientes," at

which, among the mock spoils submitted to auction, the most wretched

old cripple who could be procured wound up the sport in a purple

mantle and ornaments of gold as "king of the Veientes." The city was

destroyed, and the soil was doomed to perpetual desolation. Falerii

and Capena hastened to make peace; the powerful Volsinii, which with

federal indecision had remained quiet during the agony of Veii and

took up arms after its capture, likewise after a few years (363)

consented to peace. The statement that the two bulwarks of the

Etruscan nation, Melpum and Veii, yielded on the same day, the former

to the Celts, the latter to the Romans, may be merely a melancholy

legend; but it at any rate involves a deep historical truth. The

double assault from the north and from the south, and the fall of

the two frontier strongholds, were the beginning of the end of the

great Etruscan nation.

The Celts Attack Rome--

Battle on the Allia--

Capture of Rome

For a moment, however, it seemed as if the two peoples, through whose

co-operation Etruria saw her very existence put in jeopardy, were

about to destroy each other, and the reviving power of Rome was to

be trodden under foot by foreign barbarians. This turn of things,

so contrary to what might naturally have been expected, the Romans

brought upon themselves by their own arrogance and shortsightedness.

The Celtic swarms, which had crossed the river after the fall of

Melpum, rapidly overflowed northern Italy--not merely the open country

on the right bank of the Po and along the shore of the Adriatic, but

also Etruria proper to the south of the Apennines. A few years

afterwards (363) Clusium situated in the heart of Etruria (Chiusi, on

the borders of Tuscany and the Papal State) was besieged by the Celtic

Senones; and so humbled were the Etruscans that the Tuscan city in

its straits invoked aid from the destroyers of Veii. Perhaps it would

have been wise to grant it and to reduce at once the Gauls by arms,

and the Etruscans by according to them protection, to a state of

dependence on Rome; but an intervention with aims so extensive, which

would have compelled the Romans to undertake a serious struggle on the

northern Tuscan frontier, lay beyond the horizon of the Roman policy

at that time. No course was therefore left but to refrain from all

interference. Foolishly, however, while declining to send auxiliary

troops, they despatched envoys. With still greater folly these sought

to impose upon the Celts by haughty language, and, when this failed,

they conceived that they might with impunity violate the law of

nations in dealing with barbarians; in the ranks of the Clusines they

took part in a skirmish, and in the course of it one of them stabbed

and dismounted a Gallic officer. The barbarians acted in this case

with moderation and prudence. They sent in the first instance to the

Roman community to demand the surrender of those who had outraged the

law of nations, and the senate was ready to comply with the reasonable

request. But with the multitude compassion for their countrymen

outweighed justice towards the foreigners; satisfaction was refused by

the burgesses; and according to some accounts they even nominated the

brave champions of their fatherland as consular tribunes for the

year 364,(9) which was to be so fatal in the Roman annals. Then the

Brennus or, in other words, the "king of the army" of the Gauls broke

up the siege of Clusium, and the whole Celtic host--the numbers of

which are stated at 70,000 men--turned against Rome. Such expeditions

into unknown land distant regions were not unusual for the Gauls, who

marched as bands of armed emigrants, troubling themselves little as

to the means of cover or of retreat; but it was evident that none in

Rome anticipated the dangers involved in so sudden and so mighty an

invasion. It was not till the Gauls were marching upon Rome that a

Roman military force crossed the Tiber and sought to bar their way.

Not twelve miles from the gates, opposite to the confluence of the

rivulet Allia with the Tiber, the armies met, and a battle took place

on the 18th July, 364. Even now they went into battle--not as against

an army, but as against freebooters--with arrogance and foolhardiness

and under inexperienced leaders, Camillus having in consequence of

the dissensions of the orders withdrawn from taking part in affairs.

Those against whom they were to fight were but barbarians; what need

was there of a camp, or of securing a retreat? These barbarians,

however, were men whose courage despised death, and their mode of

fighting was to the Italians as novel as it was terrible; sword in

hand the Celts precipitated themselves with furious onset on the Roman

phalanx, and shattered it at the first shock. The overthrow was

complete; of the Romans, who had fought with the river in their rear,

a large portion met their death in the attempt to cross it; such as

escaped threw themselves by a flank movement into the neighbouring

Veii. The victorious Celts stood between the remnant of the beaten

army and the capital. The latter was irretrievably abandoned to the

enemy; the small force that was left behind, or that had fled thither,

was not sufficient to garrison the walls, and three days after the

battle the victors marched through the open gates into Rome. Had they

done so at first, as they might have done, not only the city, but the

state also must have been lost; the brief interval gave opportunity

to carry away or to bury the sacred objects, and, what was more

important, to occupy the citadel and to furnish it with provisions for

the exigency. No one was admitted to the citadel who was incapable of

bearing arms--there was not food for all. The mass of the defenceless

dispersed among the neighbouring towns; but many, and in particular a

number of old men of high standing, would not survive the downfall

of the city and awaited death in their houses by the sword of the

barbarians. They came, murdered all they met with, plundered whatever

property they found, and at length set the city on fire on all sides

before the eyes of the Roman garrison in the Capitol. But they had

no knowledge of the art of besieging, and the blockade of the steep

citadel rock was tedious and difficult, because subsistence for the

great host could only be procured by armed foraging parties, and the

citizens of the neighbouring Latin cities, the Ardeates in particular,

frequently attacked the foragers with courage and success.

Nevertheless the Celts persevered, with an energy which in their

circumstances was unparalleled, for seven months beneath the rock,

and the garrison, which had escaped a surprise on a dark night only

in consequence of the cackling of the sacred geese in the Capitoline

temple and the accidental awaking of the brave Marcus Manlius, already

found its provisions beginning to fail, when the Celts received

information as to the Veneti having invaded the Senonian territory

recently acquired on the Po, and were thus induced to accept the

ransom money that was offered to procure their withdrawal. The

scornful throwing down of the Gallic sword, that it might be

outweighed by Roman gold, indicated very truly how matters stood.

The iron of the barbarians had conquered, but they sold their

victory and by selling lost it.

Fruitlessness of the Celtic Victory

The fearful catastrophe of the defeat and the conflagration, the

18th of July and the rivulet of the Allia, the spot where the sacred

objects were buried, and the spot where the surprise of the citadel

had been repulsed--all the details of this unparalleled event--were

transferred from the recollection of contemporaries to the imagination

of posterity; and we can scarcely realize the fact that two thousand

years have actually elapsed since those world-renowned geese showed

greater vigilance than the sentinels at their posts. And yet

--although there was an enactment in Rome that in future, on occasion

of a Celtic invasion no legal privilege should give exemption from

military service; although dates were reckoned by the years from

the conquest of the city; although the event resounded throughout

the whole of the then civilized world and found its way even into

the Grecian annals--the battle of the Allia and its results can

scarcely be numbered among those historical events that are fruitful

of consequences. It made no alteration at all in political relations.

When the Gauls had marched off again with their gold--which only a

legend of late and wretched invention represents the hero Camillus as

having recovered for Rome--and when the fugitives had again made their

way home, the foolish idea suggested by some faint-hearted prudential

politicians, that the citizens should migrate to Veii, was set aside

by a spirited speech of Camillus; houses arose out of the ruins

hastily and irregularly--the narrow and crooked streets of Rome owed

their origin to this epoch; and Rome again stood in her old commanding

position. Indeed it is not improbable that this occurrence

contributed materially, though not just at the moment, to diminish

the antagonism between Rome and Etruria, and above all to knit more

closely the ties of union between Latium and Rome. The conflict

between the Gauls and the Romans was not, like that between Rome and

Etruria or between Rome and Samnium, a collision of two political

powers which affect and modify each other; it may be compared to

those catastrophes of nature, after which the organism, if it is not

destroyed, immediately resumes its equilibrium. The Gauls often

returned to Latium: as in the year 387, when Camillus defeated them

at Alba--the last victory of the aged hero, who had been six times

military tribune with consular powers, and five times dictator, and

had four times marched in triumph to the Capitol; in the year 393,

when the dictator Titus Quinctius Pennus encamped opposite to them

not five miles from the city at the bridge of the Anio, but before any

encounter took place the Gallic host marched onward to Campania; in

the year 394, when the dictator Quintus Servilius Ahala fought in

front of the Colline gate with the hordes returning from Campania; in

the year 396, when the dictator Gaius Sulpicius Peticus inflicted on

them a signal defeat; in the year 404, when they even spent the winter

encamped upon the Alban mount and joined with the Greek pirates along

the coast for plunder, till Lucius Furius Camillus, the son of the

celebrated general, in the following year dislodged them--an incident

which came to the ears of Aristotle who was contemporary (370-432) in

Athens. But these predatory expeditions, formidable and troublesome

as they may have been, were rather incidental misfortunes than events

of political significance; and their most essential result was, that

the Romans were more and more regarded by themselves and by foreigners

as the bulwark of the civilized nations of Italy against the onset

of the dreaded barbarians--a view which tended more than is usually

supposed to further their subsequent claim to universal empire.

Further Conquests of Rome in Etruria--

South Etruria Roman

The Tuscans, who had taken advantage of the Celtic attack on Rome to

assail Veii, had accomplished nothing, because they had appeared in

insufficient force; the barbarians had scarcely departed, when the

heavy arm of Latium descended on the Tuscans with undiminished weight.

After the Etruscans had been repeatedly defeated, the whole of

southern Etruria as far as the Ciminian hills remained in the hands

of the Romans, who formed four new tribes in the territories of Veii,

Capena, and Falerii (367), and secured the northern boundary by

establishing the fortresses of Sutrium (371) and Nepete (381).

With rapid steps this fertile region, covered with Roman colonists,

became completely Romanized. About 396 the nearest Etruscan towns,

Tarquinii, Caere, and Falerii, attempted to revolt against the Roman

encroachments, and the deep exasperation which these had aroused in

Etruria was shown by the slaughter of the whole of the Roman prisoners

taken in the first campaign, three hundred and seven in number, in the

market-place of Tarquinii; but it was the exasperation of impotence.

In the peace (403) Caere, which as situated nearest to the Romans

suffered the heaviest retribution, was compelled to cede half its

territory to Rome, and with the diminished domain which was left

to it to withdraw from the Etruscan league, and to enter into the

relationship of subjects to Rome which had in the meanwhile been

constituted primarily for individual Latin communities. It seemed,

however, not advisable to leave to this more remote community alien in

race from the Roman such communal independence as was still retained

by the subject communities of Latium; the Caerite community received

the Roman franchise not merely without the privilege of electing or

of being elected at Rome, but also subject to the withholding of

self-administration, so that the place of magistrates of its own

was as regards justice and the census taken by those of Rome, and

a representative (-praefectus-) of the Roman praetor conducted

the administration on the spot--a form of subjection, which in

state-law first meets us here, whereby a state which had hitherto

been independent became converted into a community continuing to

subsist -de jure-, but deprived of all power of movement on its own part.

Not long afterwards (411) Falerii, which had preserved its original

Latin nationality even under Tuscan rule, abandoned the Etruscan league

and entered into perpetual alliance with Rome; and thereby the whole

of southern Etruria became in one form or other subject to Roman

supremacy. In the case of Tarquinii and perhaps of northern Etruria

generally, the Romans were content with restraining them for a

lengthened period by a treaty of peace for 400 months (403).

Pacification of Northern Italy

In northern Italy likewise the peoples that had come into collision

and conflict gradually settled on a permanent footing and within more

defined limits. The migrations over the Alps ceased, partly perhaps

in consequence of the desperate defence which the Etruscans made

in their more restricted home, and of the serious resistance of the

powerful Romans, partly perhaps also in consequence of changes unknown

to us on the north of the Alps. Between the Alps and the Apennines,

as far south as the Abruzzi, the Celts were now generally the ruling

nation, and they were masters more especially of the plains and rich

pastures; but from the lax and superficial nature of their settlement

their dominion took no deep root in the newly acquired land and by no

means assumed the shape of exclusive possession. How matters stood in

the Alps, and to what extent Celtic settlers became mingled there with

earlier Etruscan or other stocks, our unsatisfactory information as

to the nationality of the later Alpine peoples does not permit us

to ascertain; only the Raeti in the modern Grisons and Tyrol may be

described as a probably Etruscan stock. The Umbrians retained the

valleys of the Apennines, and the Veneti, speaking a different

language, kept possession of the north-eastern portion of the valley

of the Po. Ligurian tribes maintained their footing in the western

mountains, dwelling as far south as Pisa and Arezzo, and separating

the Celt-land proper from Etruria. The Celts dwelt only in the

intermediate flat country, the Insubres and Cenomani to the north

of the Po, the Boii to the south, and--not to mention smaller tribes

--the Senones on the coast of the Adriatic, from Ariminum to Ancona,

in the so-called "country of the Gauls" (-ager Gallicus-). But even

there Etruscan settlements must have continued partially at least to

subsist, somewhat as Ephesus and Miletus remained Greek under the

supremacy of the Persians. Mantua at any rate, which was protected

by its insular position, was a Tuscan city even in the time of the

empire, and Atria on the Po also, where numerous discoveries of vases

have been made, appears to have retained its Etruscan character; the

description of the coasts that goes under the name of Scylax, composed

about 418, calls the district of Atria and Spina Tuscan land. This

alone, moreover, explains how Etruscan corsairs could render the

Adriatic unsafe till far into the fifth century, and why not only

Dionysius of Syracuse covered its coasts with colonies, but even

Athens, as a remarkable document recently discovered informs us,

resolved about 429 to establish a colony in the Adriatic for

the protection of seafarers against the Tyrrhene pirates.

But while more or less of an Etruscan character continued to mark

these regions, it was confined to isolated remnants and fragments of

their earlier power; the Etruscan nation no longer reaped the benefit

of such gains as were still acquired there by individuals in peaceful

commerce or in maritime war. On the other hand it was probably

from these half-free Etruscans that the germs proceeded of such

civilization as we subsequently find among the Celts and Alpine

peoples in general.(10) The very fact that the Celtic hordes in

the plains of Lombardy, to use the language of the so-called Scylax,

abandoned their warrior-life and took to permanent settlement, must

in part be ascribed to this influence; the rudiments moreover of

handicrafts and arts and the alphabet came to the Celts in Lombardy,

and in fact to the Alpine peoples as far as the modern Styria,

through the medium of the Etruscans.

Etruria Proper at Peace and on the Decline

Thus the Etruscans, after the loss of their possessions in Campania

and of the whole district to the north of the Apennines and to the

south of the Ciminian Forest, remained restricted to very narrow

bounds; their season of power and of aspiration had for ever passed

away. The closest reciprocal relations subsisted between this

external decline and the internal decay of the nation, the seeds

of which indeed were doubtless already deposited at a far earlier

period. The Greek authors of this age are full of descriptions of

the unbounded luxury of Etruscan life: poets of Lower Italy in the

fifth century of the city celebrate the Tyrrhenian wine, and the

contemporary historians Timaeus and Theopompus delineate pictures of

Etruscan unchastity and of Etruscan banquets, such as fall nothing

short of the worst Byzantine or French demoralization. Unattested as

may be the details in these accounts, the statement at least appears

to be well founded, that the detestable amusement of gladiatorial

combats--the gangrene of the later Rome and of the last epoch of

antiquity generally--first came into vogue among the Etruscans. At

any rate on the whole they leave no doubt as to the deep degeneracy

of the nation. It pervaded even its political condition. As far

as our scanty information reaches, we find aristocratic tendencies

prevailing, in the same way as they did at the same period in Rome,

but more harshly and more perniciously. The abolition of royalty,

which appears to have been carried out in all the cities of Etruria

about the time of the siege of Veii, called into existence in the

several cities a patrician government, which experienced but slight

restraint from the laxity of the federal bond. That bond but seldom

succeeded in combining all the Etruscan cities even for the defence of

the land, and the nominal hegemony of Volsinii does not admit of the

most remote comparison with the energetic vigour which the leadership

of Rome communicated to the Latin nation. The struggle against the

exclusive claim put forward by the old burgesses to all public offices

and to all public usufructs, which must have destroyed even the Roman

state, had not its external successes enabled it in some measure to

satisfy the demands of the oppressed proletariate at the expense of

foreign nations and to open up other paths to ambition--that struggle

against the exclusive rule and (what was specially prominent in

Etruria) the priestly monopoly of the clan-nobility--must have ruined

Etruria politically, economically, and morally. Enormous wealth,

particularly in landed property, became concentrated in the hands of a

few nobles, while the masses were impoverished; the social revolutions

which thence arose increased the distress which they sought to remedy;

and, in consequence of the impotence of the central power, no course

at last remained to the distressed aristocrats-- e. g. in Arretium

in 453, and in Volsinii in 488--but to call in the aid of the Romans,

who accordingly put an end to the disorder but at the same time

extinguished the remnant of independence. The energies of the nation

were broken from the day of Veii and Melpum. Earnest attempts were

still once or twice made to escape from the Roman supremacy, but in

such instances the stimulus was communicated to the Etruscans from

without--from another Italian stock, the Samnites.

Notes for Book II Chapter IV

1. I. X. Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes

2. --Fiaron o Deinomeneos kai toi Surakosioi toi Di Turan

apo Kumas.--

3. I. X. Home of the Greek Immigrants

4. Hecataeus (after 257 u. c.) and Herodotus also (270-after 345)

only know Hatrias as the delta of the Po and the sea that washes

its shores (O. Muller, Etrusker, i. p. 140; Geogr. Graeci min. ed.

C. Muller, i. p. 23). The appellation of Adriatic sea, in its more

extended sense, first occurs in the so-called Scylax about 418 U. C.

5. II. II. Coriolanus

6. -Pleraque Gallia duas res industriosissime persequitur: rem

militarem et argute loqui- (Cato, Orig, l. ii. fr. 2. Jordan).

7. It has recently been maintained by expert philologists that there

is a closer affinity between the Celts and Italians than there is even

between the latter and the Hellenes. In other words they hold that

the branch of the great tree, from which the peoples of Indo-Germanic

extraction in the west and south of Europe have sprung, divided itself

in the first instance into Greeks and Italo-Celts, and that the latter

at a considerably later period became subdivided into Italians and

Celts. This hypothesis commends itself much to acceptance in a

geographical point of view, and the facts which history presents may

perhaps be likewise brought into harmony with it, because what has

hitherto been regarded as Graeco-Italian civilization may very

well have been Graeco-Celto-Italian--in fact we know nothing of the

earliest stage of Celtic culture. Linguistic investigation, however,

seems not to have made as yet such progress as to warrant the

insertion of its results in the primitive history of the peoples.

8. The legend is related by Livy, v. 34, and Justin, xxiv. 4, and

Caesar also has had it in view (B. G. vi. 24). But the association

of the migration of Bellovesus with the founding of Massilia, by which

the former is chronologically fixed down to the middle of the second

century of Rome, undoubtedly belongs not to the native legend, which

of course did not specify dates, but to later chronologizing research;

and it deserves no credit. Isolated incursions and immigrations may

have taken place at a very early period; but the great overflowing of

northern Italy by the Celts cannot be placed before the age of the

decay of the Etruscan power, that is, not before the second half

of the third century of the city.

In like manner, after the judicious investigations of Wickham and

Cramer, we cannot doubt that the line of march of Bellovesus, like

that of Hannibal, lay not over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genevre) and

through the territory of the Taurini, but over the Graian Alps (the

Little St. Bernard) and through the territory of the Salassi. The

name of the mountain is given by Livy doubtless not on the authority

of the legend, but on his own conjecture.

Whether the representation that the Italian Boii came through the more

easterly pass of the Poenine Alps rested on the ground of a genuine

legendary reminiscence, or only on the ground of an assumed connection

with the Boii dwelling to the north of the Danube, is a question that

must remain undecided.

9. This is according to the current computation 390 B. C.; but, in

fact, the capture of Rome occurred in Ol. 98, 1 = 388 B. C., and has

been thrown out of its proper place merely by the confusion of the

Roman calendar.

10. I. XIV. Development of Alphabets in Italy

CHAPTER V

Subjugation of the Latins and Campanians by Rome

The Hegemony of Rome over Latium Shaken and Re-established

The great achievement of the regal period was the establishment of the

sovereignty of Rome over Latium under the form of hegemony. It is in

the nature of the case evident that the change in the constitution of

Rome could not but powerfully affect both the relations of the Roman

state towards Latium and the internal organization of the Latin

communities themselves; and that it did so, is obvious from tradition.

The fluctuations which the revolution in Rome occasioned in the

Romano-Latin confederacy are attested by the legend, unusually vivid

and various in its hues, of the victory at the lake Regillus, which

the dictator or consul Aulus Postumius (255? 258?) is said to have

gained over the Latins with the help of the Dioscuri, and still more

definitely by the renewal of the perpetual league between Rome and

Latium by Spurius Cassius in his second consulate (261). These

narratives, however, give us no information as to the main matter,

the legal relation between the new Roman republic and the Latin

confederacy; and what from other sources we learn regarding that

relation comes to us without date, and can only be inserted here

with an approximation to probability.

Original Equality of Rights between Rome and Latium

The nature of a hegemony implies that it becomes gradually converted

into sovereignty by the mere inward force of circumstances; and the

Roman hegemony over Latium formed no exception to the rule. It was

based upon the essential equality of rights between the Roman state

on the one side and the Latin confederacy on the other;(1) but at

least in matters of war and in the treatment of the acquisitions

thereby made this relation between the single state on the one hand

and the league of states on the other virtually involved a hegemony.

According to the original constitution of the league not only was the

right of making wars and treaties with foreign states--in other words,

the full right of political self-determination--reserved in all

probability both to Rome and to the individual towns of the Latin

league; and when a joint war took place, Rome and Latium probably

furnished the like contingent, each, as a rule, an "army" of 8400

men;(2) but the chief command was held by the Roman general, who then

nominated the officers of the staff, and so the leaders-of-division

(-tribuni militum-), according to his own choice. In case of victory

the moveable part of the spoil, as well as the conquered territory,

was shared between Rome and the confederacy; when the establishment of

fortresses in the conquered territory was resolved on, their garrisons

and population were composed partly of Roman, partly of confederate

colonists; and not only so, but the newly-founded community was

received as a sovereign federal state into the Latin confederacy

and furnished with a seat and vote in the Latin diet.

Encroachments on That Equality of Rights--

As to Wars and Treaties--

As to the Officering of the Army--

As to Acquisitions in War

These stipulations must probably even in the regal period, certainly

in the republican epoch, have undergone alteration more and more to

the disadvantage of the confederacy and to the further development of

the hegemony of Rome. The earliest that fell into abeyance was beyond

doubt the right of the confederacy to make wars and treaties with

foreigners;(3) the decision of war and treaty passed once for all to

Rome. The staff officers for the Latin troops must doubtless in

earlier times have been likewise Latins; afterwards for that

purpose Roman citizens were taken, if not exclusively, at any rate

predominantly.(4) On the other hand, afterwards as formerly, no

stronger contingent could be demanded from the Latin confederacy

as a whole than was furnished by the Roman community; and the Roman

commander-in-chief was likewise bound not to break up the Latin

contingents, but to keep the contingent sent by each community as a

separate division of the army under the leader whom that community had

appointed.(5) The right of the Latin confederacy to an equal share in

the moveable spoil and in the conquered land continued to subsist in

form; in reality, however, the substantial fruits of war beyond doubt

went, even at an early period, to the leading state. Even in the

founding of the federal fortresses or the so-called Latin colonies

as a rule presumably most, and not unfrequently all, of the colonists

were Romans; and although by the transference they were converted from

Roman burgesses into members of an allied community, the newly planted

township in all probability frequently retained a preponderant--and

for the confederacy dangerous--attachment to the real mother-city.

Private Rights

The rights, on the contrary, which were secured by the federal

treaties to the individual burgess of one of the allied communities

in every city belonging to the league, underwent no restriction.

These included, in particular, full equality of rights as to the

acquisition of landed property and moveable estate, as to traffic

and exchange, marriage and testament, and an unlimited liberty of

migration; so that not only was a man who had burgess-rights in a

town of the league legally entitled to settle in any other, but

whereever he settled, he as a right-sharer (-municeps-) participated

in all private and political rights and duties with the exception of

eligibility to office, and was even--although in a limited fashion

--entitled to vote at least in the -comitia tributa-.(6)

Of some such nature, in all probability, was the relation between

the Roman community and the Latin confederacy in the first period

of the republic. We cannot, however ascertain what elements are

to be referred to earlier stipulations, and what to the revision

of the alliance in 261.

With somewhat greater certainty the remodelling of the arrangements of

the several communities belonging to the Latin confederacy, after the

pattern of the consular constitution in Rome, may be characterized as

an innovation and introduced in this connection. For, although the

different communities may very well have arrived at the abolition

of royalty in itself independently of each other,(7) the identity

in the appellation of the new annual kings in the Roman and other

commonwealths of Latium, and the comprehensive application of the

peculiar principle of collegiateness,(8) evidently point to some

external connection. At some time or other after the expulsion of

the Tarquins from Rome the arrangements of the Latin communities must

have been throughout revised in accordance with the scheme of the

consular constitution. This adjustment of the Latin constitutions in

conformity with that of the leading city may possibly belong only to a

later period; but internal probability rather favours the supposition

that the Roman nobility, after having effected the abolition of

royalty for life at home, suggested a similar change of constitution

to the communities of the Latin confederacy, and at length introduced

aristocratic government everywhere in Latium-- notwithstanding the

serious resistance, imperilling the stability of the Romano-Latin

league itself, which seems to have been offered on the one hand by

the expelled Tarquins, and on the other by the royal clans and by

partisans well affected to monarchy in the other communities of

Latium. The mighty development of the power of Etruria that occurred

at this very time, the constant assaults of the Veientes, and the

expedition of Porsena, may have materially contributed to secure the

adherence of the Latin nation to the once-established form of union,

or, in other words, to the continued recognition of the supremacy

of Rome, and disposed them for its sake to acquiesce in a change

of constitution for which, beyond doubt, the way had been in many

respects prepared even in the bosom of the Latin communities, nay

perhaps to submit even to an enlargement of the rights of hegemony.

Extension of Rome and Latium to the East and South

The permanently united nation was able not only to maintain, but

also to extend on all sides its power. We have already(9) mentioned

that the Etruscans remained only for a short time in possession of

supremacy over Latium, and that the relations there soon returned to

the position in which they stood during the regal period; but it was

not till more than a century after the expulsion of the kings from

Rome that any real extension of the Roman boundaries took place

in this direction.

With the Sabines who occupied the middle mountain range from the

borders of the Umbrians down to the region between the Tiber and

the Anio, and who, at the epoch when the history of Rome begins,

penetrated fighting and conquering as far as Latium itself, the

Romans notwithstanding their immediate neighbourhood subsequently came

comparatively little into contact. The feeble sympathy of the Sabines

with the desperate resistance offered by the neighbouring peoples in

the east and south, is evident even from the accounts of the annals;

and--what is of more importance--we find here no fortresses to keep

the land in subjection, such as were so numerously established

especially in the Volscian plain. Perhaps this lack of opposition

was connected with the fact that the Sabine hordes probably about

this very time poured themselves over Lower Italy. Allured by the

pleasantness of the settlements on the Tifernus and Volturnus, they

appear to have interfered but little in the conflicts of which the

region to the south of the Tiber was the arena.

At the Expense of the Aequi and Volsci--

League with the Hernici

Far more vehement and lasting was the resistance of the Aequi, who,

having their settlements to the eastward of Rome as far as the valleys

of the Turano and Salto and on the northern verge of the Fucine lake,

bordered with the Sabines and Marsi,(10) and of the Volsci, who to the

south of the Rutuli settled around Ardea, and of the Latins extending

southward as far as Cora, possessed the coast almost as far as the

river Liris along with the adjacent islands and in the interior the

whole region drained by the Liris. We do not intend to narrate the

feuds annually renewed with these two peoples--feuds which are related

in the Roman chronicles in such a way that the most insignificant

foray is scarcely distinguishable from a momentous war, and historical

connection is totally disregarded; it is sufficient to indicate the

permanent results. We plainly perceive that it was the especial aim

of the Romans and Latins to separate the Aequi from the Volsci, and

to become masters of the communications between them; in the region

between the southern slope of the Alban range, the Volscian mountains

and the Pomptine marshes, moreover, the Latins and the Volscians

appear to have come first into contact and to have even had their

settlements intermingled.(11) In this region the Latins took

the first steps beyond the bounds of their own land, and federal

fortresses on foreign soil--Latin colonies, as they were called--were

first established, namely: in the plain Velitrae (as is alleged, about

260) beneath the Alban range itself, and Suessa in the Pomptine low

lands, in the mountains Norba (as is alleged, in 262) and Signia

(alleged to have been strengthened in 259), both of which lie at

the points of connection between the Aequian and Volscian territories.

The object was attained still more fully by the accession of the

Hernici to the league of the Romans and Latins (268), an accession

which isolated the Volscians completely, and provided the league with

a bulwark against the Sabellian tribes dwelling on the south and east;

it is easy therefore to perceive why this little people obtained the

concession of full equality with the two others in counsel and in

distribution of the spoil. The feebler Aequi were thenceforth but

little formidable; it was sufficient to undertake from time to time

a plundering expedition against them. The Rutuli also, who bordered

with Latium on the south in the plain along the coast, early

succumbed; their town Ardea was converted into a Latin colony as

early as 312.(12) The Volscians opposed a more serious resistance.

The first notable success, after those mentioned above, achieved over

them by the Romans was, remarkably enough, the foundation of Circeii

in 361, which, as long as Antium and Tarracina continued free, can

only have held communication with Latium by sea. Attempts were often

made to occupy Antium, and one was temporarily successful in 287; but

in 295 the town recovered its freedom, and it was not till after the

Gallic conflagration that, in consequence of a violent war of thirteen

years (365-377), the Romans gained a decided superiority in the

Antiate and Pomptine territory. Satricum, not far from Antium, was

occupied with a Latin colony in 369, and not long afterwards probably

Antium itself as well as Tarracina.(13) The Pomptine territory was

secured by the founding of the fortress Setia (372, strengthened in

375), and was distributed into farm-allotments and burgess-districts

in the year 371 and following years. After this date the Volscians

still perhaps rose in revolt, but they waged no further wars

against Rome.

Crises within the Romano-Latin League

But the more decided the successes that the league of Romans, Latins,

and Hernici achieved against the Etruscans, Aequi, Volsci, and Rutuli,

the more that league became liable to disunion. The reason lay

partly in the increase of the hegemonic power of Rome, of which

we have already spoken as necessarily springing out of the existing

circumstances, but which nevertheless was felt as a heavy burden in

Latium; partly in particular acts of odious injustice perpetrated by

the leading community. Of this nature was especially the infamous

sentence of arbitration between the Aricini and the Rutuli in Ardea

in 308, in which the Romans, called in to be arbiters regarding a

border territory in dispute between the two communities, took it to

themselves; and when this decision occasioned in Ardea internal

dissensions in which the people wished to join the Volsci, while

the nobility adhered to Rome, these dissensions were still more

disgracefully employed as a pretext for the--already mentioned

--sending of Roman colonists into the wealthy city, amongst whom the

lands of the adherents of the party opposed to Rome were distributed

(312). The main cause however of the internal breaking up of the

league was the very subjugation of the common foe; forbearance ceased

on one side, devotedness ceased on the other, from the time when they

thought that they had no longer need of each other. The open breach

between the Latins and Hernici on the one hand and the Romans on the

other was more immediately occasioned partly by the capture of Rome

by the Celts and the momentary weakness which it produced, partly by

the definitive occupation and distribution of the Pomptine territory.

The former allies soon stood opposed in the field. Already Latin

volunteers in great numbers had taken part in the last despairing

struggle of the Antiates: now the most famous of the Latin cities,

Lanuvium (371), Praeneste (372-374, 400), Tusculum (373), Tibur (394,

400), and even several of the fortresses established in the Volscian

land by the Romano-Latin league, such as Velitrae and Circeii, had to

be subdued by force of arms, and the Tiburtines were not afraid even

to make common cause against Rome with the once more advancing hordes

of the Gauls. No concerted revolt however took place, and Rome

mastered the individual towns without much trouble.

Tusculum was even compelled (in 373) to give up its political

independence, and to enter into the burgess-union of Rome as a

subject community (-civitas sine suffragio-) so that the town

retained its walls and an--although limited--self-administration,

including magistrates and a burgess-assembly of its own, whereas

its burgesses as Romans lacked the right of electing or being elected

--the first instance of a whole burgess-body being incorporated as

a dependent community with the Roman commonwealth.

Renewal of the Treaties of Alliance

The struggle with the Hernici was more severe (392-396); the first

consular commander-in-chief belonging to the plebs, Lucius Genucius,

fell in it; but here too the Romans were victorious. The crisis

terminated with the renewal of the treaties between Rome and the Latin

and Hernican confederacies in 396. The precise contents of these

treaties are not known, but it is evident that both confederacies

submitted once more, and probably on harder terms, to the Roman

hegemony. The institution which took place in the same year of two

new tribes in the Pomptine territory shows clearly the mighty

advances made by the Roman power.

Closing of the Latin Confederation

In manifest connection with this crisis in the relations between Rome

and Latium stands the closing of the Latin confederation,(14) which

took place about the year 370, although we cannot precisely determine

whether it was the effect or, as is more probable, the cause of the

revolt of Latium against Rome which we have just described. As the

law had hitherto stood, every sovereign city founded by Rome and

Latium took its place among the communes entitled to participate

in the federal festival and federal diet, whereas every community

incorporated with another city and thereby politically annihilated

was erased from the ranks of the members of the league. At the same

time, however, according to Latin use and wont the number once fixed

of thirty confederate communities was so adhered to, that of the

participating cities never more and never less than thirty were

entitled to vote, and a number of the communities that were of later

admission, or were disqualified for their slight importance or for the

crimes they had committed, were without the right of voting. In this

way the confederacy was constituted about 370 as follows. Of old

Latin townships there were--besides some which have now fallen into

oblivion, or whose sites are unknown--still autonomous and entitled to

vote, Nomentum, between the Tiber and the Anio; Tibur, Gabii, Scaptia,

Labici,(15) Pedum, and Praeneste, between the Anio and the Alban

range; Corbio, Tusculum, Bovillae, Aricia, Corioli, and Lanuvium on

the Alban range; Cora in the Volscian mountains, and lastly, Laurentum

in the plain along the coast. To these fell to be added the colonies

instituted by Rome and the Latin league; Ardea in the former territory

of the Rutuli, and Satricum, Velitrae, Norba, Signia, Setia and

Circeii in that of the Volsci. Besides, seventeen other townships,

whose names are not known with certainty, had the privilege of

participating in the Latin festival without the right of voting.

On this footing--of forty-seven townships entitled to participate and

thirty entitled to vote--the Latin confederacy continued henceforward

unalterably fixed. The Latin communities founded subsequently, such

as Sutrium, Nepete,(16) Antium, Tarracina,(17) and Gales, were not

admitted into the confederacy, nor were the Latin communities

subsequently divested of their autonomy, such as Tusculum and

Lanuvium, erased from the list.

Fixing of the Limits of Latium

With this closing of the confederacy was connected the geographical

settlement of the limits of Latium. So long as the Latin confederacy

continued open, the bounds of Latium had advanced with the

establishment of new federal cities: but as the later Latin

colonies had no share in the Alban festival, they were not regarded

geographically as part of Latium. For this reason doubtless Ardea

and Circeii were reckoned as belonging to Latium, but not Sutrium

or Tarracina.

Isolation of the Later Latin Cities as Respected Private Rights

But not only were the places on which Latin privileges were bestowed

after 370 kept aloof from the federal association; they were isolated

also from one another as respected private rights. While each of

them was allowed to have reciprocity of commercial dealings and

probably also of marriage (-commercium et conubium-) with Rome,

no such reciprocity was permitted with the other Latin communities.

The burgess of Satrium, for example, might possess in full property

a piece of ground in Rome, but not in Praeneste; and might have

legitimate children with a Roman, but not with a Tiburtine, wife.(18)

Prevention of Special Leagues

If hitherto considerable freedom of movement had been allowed within

the confederacy, and for example the six old Latin communities,

Aricia, Tusculum, Tibur, Lanuvium, Cora, and Laurentum, and the two

new Latin, Ardea and Suessa Pometia, had been permitted to found in

common a shrine for the Aricine Diana; it is doubtless not the mere

result of accident that we find no further instance in later times

of similar separate confederations fraught with danger to the hegemony

of Rome.

Revision of the Municipal Constitutions. Police Judges

We may likewise assign to this epoch the further remodelling which

the Latin municipal constitutions underwent, and their complete

assimilation to the constitution of Rome. If in after times two

aediles, intrusted with the police-supervision of markets and highways

and the administration of justice in connection therewith, make their

appearance side by side with the two praetors as necessary elements

of the Latin magistracy, the institution of these urban police

functionaries, which evidently took place at the same time and at

the instigation of the leading power in all the federal communities,

certainly cannot have preceded the establishment of the curule

aedileship in Rome, which occurred in 387; probably it took place

about that very time. Beyond doubt this arrangement was only one

of a series of measures curtailing the liberties and modifying

the organization of the federal communities in the interest of

aristocratic policy.

Domination of the Romans; Exasperation of the Latins--

Collision between the Romans and the Samnites

After the fall of Veii and the conquest of the Pomptine territory,

Rome evidently felt herself powerful enough to tighten the reins of

her hegemony and to reduce the whole of the Latin cities to a position

so dependent that they became in fact completely subject. At this

period (406) the Carthaginians, in a commercial treaty concluded with

Rome, bound themselves to inflict no injury on the Latins who were

subject to Rome, viz. the maritime towns of Ardea, Antium, Circeii,

and Tarracina; if, however, any one of the Latin towns should fall

away from the Roman alliance, the Phoenicians were to be allowed to

attack it, but in the event of conquering it they were bound not to

raze it, but to hand it over to the Romans. This plainly shows by

what chains the Roman community bound to itself the towns protected

by it and how much a town, which dared to withdraw from the native

protectorate, sacrificed or risked by such a course.

It is true that even now the Latin confederacy at least--if not also

the Hernican--retained its formal title to a third of the gains of

war, and doubtless some other remnants of the former equality of

rights; but what was palpably lost was important enough to explain the

exasperation which at this period prevailed among the Latins against

Rome. Not only did numerous Latin volunteers fight under foreign

standards against the community at their head, wherever they found

armies in the field against Rome; but in 405 even the Latin federal

assembly resolved to refuse to the Romans its contingent. To all

appearance a renewed rising of the whole Latin confederacy might be

anticipated at no distant date; and at that very moment a collision

was imminent with another Italian nation, which was able to encounter

on equal terms the united strength of the Latin stock. After the

overthrow of the northern Volscians no considerable people in

the first instance opposed the Romans in the south; their legions

unchecked approached the Liris. As early as 397 they had contended;

successfully with the Privernates; and in 409 occupied Sora on the

upper Liris. Thus the Roman armies had reached the Samnite frontier;

and the friendly alliance, which the two bravest and most powerful

of the Italian nations concluded with each other in 400, was the

sure token of an approaching struggle for the supremacy of Italy--a

struggle which threatened to become interwoven with the crisis within

the Latin nation.

Conquests of the Samnites in the South of Italy

The Samnite nation, which, at the time of the expulsion of the

Tarquins from Rome, had doubtless already been for a considerable

period in possession of the hill-country which rises between the

Apulian and Campanian plains and commands them both, had hitherto

found its further advance impeded on the one side by the Daunians

--the power and prosperity of Arpi fall within this period--on the

other by the Greeks and Etruscans. But the fall of the Etruscan power

towards the end of the third, and the decline of the Greek colonies in

the course of the fourth century, made room for them towards the west

and south; and now one Samnite host after another marched down to,

and even moved across, the south Italian seas. They first made their

appearance in the plain adjoining the bay, with which the name of

the Campanians has been associated from the beginning of the fourth

century; the Etruscans there were suppressed, and the Greeks were

confined within narrower bounds; Capua was wrested from the former

(330), Cumae from the latter (334). About the same time, perhaps even

earlier, the Lucanians appeared in Magna Graecia: at the beginning

of the fourth century they were involved in conflict with the people

of Terina and Thurii; and a considerable time before 364 they had

established themselves in the Greek Laus. About this period their

levy amounted to 30,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry. Towards the end of

the fourth century mention first occurs of the separate confederacy of

the Bruttii,(19) who had detached themselves from the Lucanians--not,

like the other Sabellian stocks, as a colony, but through a quarrel

--and had become mixed up with many foreign elements. The Greeks of

Lower Italy tried to resist the pressure of the barbarians; the league

of the Achaean cities was reconstructed in 361; and it was determined

that, if any of the allied towns should be assailed by the Lucanians,

all should furnish contingents, and that the leaders of contingents

which failed to appear should suffer the punishment of death. But

even the union of Magna Graecia no longer availed; for the ruler of

Syracuse, Dionysius the Elder, made common cause with the Italians

against his countrymen. While Dionysius wrested from the fleets of

Magna Graecia the mastery of the Italian seas, one Greek city after

another was occupied or annihilated by the Italians. In an incredibly

short time the circle of flourishing cities was destroyed or laid

desolate. Only a few Greek settlements, such as Neapolis, succeeded

with difficulty, and more by means of treaties than by force of

arms, in preserving at least their existence and their nationality.

Tarentum alone remained thoroughly independent and powerful,

maintaining its ground in consequence of its more remote position

and its preparation for war--the result of its constant conflicts

with the Messapians. Even that city, however, had constantly to

fight for its existence with the Lucanians, and was compelled to

seek for alliances and mercenaries in the mother-country of Greece.

About the period when Veii and the Pomptine plain came into the hands

of Rome, the Samnite hordes were already in possession of all Lower

Italy, with the exception of a few unconnected Greek colonies, and

of the Apulo-Messapian coast. The Greek Periplus, composed about 418,

sets down the Samnites proper with their "five tongues" as reaching

from the one sea to the other; and specifies the Campanians as

adjoining them on the Tyrrhene sea to the north, and the Lucanians

to the south, amongst whom in this instance, as often, the Bruttii

are included, and who already had the whole coast apportioned among

them from Paestum on the Tyrrhene, to Thurii on the Ionic sea. In

fact to one who compares the achievements of the two great nations

of Italy, the Latins and the Samnites, before they came into contact,

the career of conquest on the part of the latter appears far wider

and more splendid than that of the former. But the character of their

conquests was essentially different. From the fixed urban centre

which Latium possessed in Rome the dominion of the Latin stock spread

slowly on all sides, and lay within limits comparatively narrow; but

it planted its foot firmly at every step, partly by founding fortified

towns of the Roman type with the rights of dependent allies, partly

by Romanizing the territory which it conquered. It was otherwise

with Samnium. There was in its case no single leading community and

therefore no policy of conquest. While the conquest of the Veientine

and Pomptine territories was for Rome a real enlargement of power,

Samnium was weakened rather than strengthened by the rise of the

Campanian cities and of the Lucanian and Bruttian confederacies; for

every swarm, which had sought and found new settlements, thenceforward

pursued a path of its own.

Relations between the Samnites and the Greeks

The Samnite tribes filled a disproportionately large space, while

yet they showed no disposition to make it thoroughly their own.

The larger Greek cities, Tarentum, Thurii, Croton, Metapontum,

Heraclea, Rhegium, and Neapolis, although weakened and often

dependent, continued to exist; and the Hellenes were tolerated

even in the open country and in the smaller towns, so that Cumae

for instance, Posidonia, Laus, and Hipponium, still remained--as

the Periplus already mentioned and coins show--Greek cities even

under Samnite rule. Mixed populations thus arose; the bi-lingual

Bruttii, in particular, included Hellenic as well as Samnite elements

and even perhaps remains of the ancient autochthones; in Lucania

and Campania also similar mixtures must to a lesser extent have

taken place.

Campanian Hellenism

The Samnite nation, moreover, could not resist the dangerous charm

of Hellenic culture; least of all in Campania, where Neapolis early

entered into friendly intercourse with the immigrants, and where

the sky itself humanized the barbarians. Nola, Nuceria, and Teanum,

although having a purely Samnite population, adopted Greek manners

and a Greek civic constitution; in fact the indigenous cantonal form

of constitution could not possibly subsist under these altered

circumstances. The Samnite cities of Campania began to coin money,

in part with Greek inscriptions; Capua became by its commerce and

agriculture the second city in Italy in point of size--the first in

point of wealth and luxury. The deep demoralization, in which,

according to the accounts of the ancients, that city surpassed all

others in Italy, is especially reflected in the mercenary recruiting

and in the gladiatorial sports, both of which pre-eminently flourished

in Capua. Nowhere did recruiting officers find so numerous a

concourse as in this metropolis of demoralized civilization; while

Capua knew not how to save itself from the attacks of the aggressive

Samnites, the warlike Campanian youth flocked forth in crowds under

self-elected -condottteri-, especially to Sicily. How deeply these

soldiers of fortune influenced by their enterprises the destinies of

Italy, we shall have afterwards to show; they form as characteristic

a feature of Campanian life as the gladiatorial sports which likewise,

if they did not originate, were at any rate carried to perfection in

Capua. There sets of gladiators made their appearance even during

banquets; and their number was proportioned to the rank of the guests

invited. This degeneracy of the most important Samnite city--a

degeneracy which beyond doubt was closely connected with the Etruscan

habits that lingered there--must have been fatal for the nation at

large; although the Campanian nobility knew how to combine chivalrous

valour and high mental culture with the deepest moral corruption, it

could never become to its nation what the Roman nobility was to the

Latin. Hellenic influence had a similar, though less powerful, effect

on the Lucanians and Bruttians as on the Campanians. The objects

discovered in the tombs throughout all these regions show how Greek

art was cherished there in barbaric luxuriance; the rich ornaments

of gold and amber and the magnificent painted pottery, which are now

disinterred from the abodes of the dead, enable us to conjecture how

extensive had been their departure from the ancient manners of their

fathers. Other indications are preserved in their writing. The old

national writing which they had brought with them from the north was

abandoned by the Lucanians and Bruttians, and exchanged for Greek;

while in Campania the national alphabet, and perhaps also the

language, developed itself under the influence of the Greek model

into greater clearness and delicacy. We meet even with isolated

traces of the influence of Greek philosophy.

The Samnite Confederacy

The Samnite land, properly so called, alone remained unaffected by

these innovations, which, beautiful and natural as they may to some

extent have been, powerfully contributed to relax still more the bond

of national unity which even from the first was loose. Through the

influence of Hellenic habits a deep schism took place in the Samnite

stock. The civilized "Philhellenes" of Campania were accustomed to

tremble like the Hellenes themselves before the ruder tribes of

the mountains, who were continually penetrating into Campania and

disturbing the degenerate earlier settlers. Rome was a compact state,

having the strength of all Latium at its disposal; its subjects might

murmur, but they obeyed. The Samnite stock was dispersed and divided;

and, while the confederacy in Samnium proper had preserved unimpaired

the manners and valour of their ancestors, they were on that very

account completely at variance with the other Samnite tribes

and towns.

Submission of Capua to Rome--

Rome and Samnium Come to Terms--

Revolt of the Latins and Campanians against Rome--

Victory of the Romans--

Dissolution of the Latin League--

Colonization of the Land of the Volsci

In fact, it was this variance between the Samnites of the plain and

the Samnites of the mountains that led the Romans over the Liris.

The Sidicini in Teanum, and the Campanians in Capua, sought aid

from the Romans (411) against their own countrymen, who in swarms ever

renewed ravaged their territory and threatened to establish themselves

there. When the desired alliance was refused, the Campanian envoys

made offer of the submission of their country to the supremacy of

Rome: and the Romans were unable to resist the bait. Roman envoys

were sent to the Samnites to inform them of the new acquisition,

and to summon them to respect the territory of the friendly power.

The further course of events can no longer be ascertained in

detail;(20) we discover only that--whether after a campaign,

or without the intervention of a war--Rome and Samnium came to

an agreement, by which Capua was left at the disposal of the Romans,

Teanum in the hands of the Samnites, and the upper Liris in those

of the Volscians.