Provided with such instructions, the Thessalian Cineas, the

confidential minister of Pyrrhus, went to Rome. That dexterous

negotiator, whom his contemporaries compared to Demosthenes so far as

a rhetorician might be compared to a statesman and the minister of a

sovereign to a popular leader, had orders to display by every means

the respect which the victor of Heraclea really felt for his

vanquished opponents, to make known the wish of the king to come to

Rome in person, to influence men's minds in the king's favour by

panegyrics which sound so well in the mouth of an enemy, by earnest

flatteries, and, as opportunity offered, also by well-timed gifts--in

short to try upon the Romans all the arts of cabinet policy, as they

had been tested at the courts of Alexandria and Antioch. The senate

hesitated; to many it seemed a prudent course to draw back a step and

to wait till their dangerous antagonist should have further entangled

himself or should be no more. But the grey-haired and blind consular

Appius Claudius (censor 442, consul 447, 458), who had long withdrawn

from state affairs but had himself conducted at this decisive moment

to the senate, breathed the unbroken energy of his own vehement nature

with words of fire into the souls of the younger generation. They

gave to the message of the king the proud reply, which was first heard

on this occasion and became thenceforth a maxim of the state, that

Rome never negotiated so long as there were foreign troops on Italian

ground; and to make good their words they dismissed the ambassador at

once from the city. The object of the mission had failed, and

the dexterous diplomatist, instead of producing an effect by his

oratorical art, had on the contrary been himself impressed by such

manly earnestness after so severe a defeat--he declared at home that

every burgess in that city had seemed to him a king; in truth, the

courtier had gained a sight of a free people.

Pyrrhus Marches against Rome

Pyrrhus, who during these negotiations had advanced into Campania,

immediately on the news of their being broken off marched against

Rome, to co-operate with the Etruscans, to shake the allies of Rome,

and to threaten the city itself. But the Romans as little allowed

themselves to be terrified as cajoled. At the summons of the herald

"to enrol in the room of the fallen," the young men immediately after

the battle of Heraclea had pressed forward in crowds to enlist; with

the two newly-formed legions and the corps withdrawn from Lucania,

Laevinus, stronger than before, followed the march of the king. He

protected Capua against him, and frustrated his endeavours to enter

into communications with Neapolis. So firm was the attitude of the

Romans that, excepting the Greeks of Lower Italy, no allied state of

any note dared to break off from the Roman alliance. Then Pyrrhus

turned against Rome itself. Through a rich country, whose flourishing

condition he beheld with astonishment, he marched against Fregellae

which he surprised, forced the passage of the Liris, and reached

Anagnia, which is not more than forty miles from Rome. No army

crossed his path; but everywhere the towns of Latium closed their

gates against him, and with measured step Laevinus followed him

from Campania, while the consul Tiberius Coruncanius, who had just

concluded a seasonable peace with the Etruscans, brought up a

second Roman army from the north, and in Rome itself the reserve was

preparing for battle under the dictator Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus.

In these circumstances Pyrrhus could accomplish nothing; no course was

left to him but to retire. For a time he still remained inactive in

Campania in presence of the united armies of the two consuls; but no

opportunity occurred of striking an effective blow. When winter came

on, the king evacuated the enemy's territory, and distributed his

troops among the friendly towns, taking up his own winter quarters in

Tarentum. Thereupon the Romans also desisted from their operations.

The army occupied standing quarters near Firmum in Picenum, where by

command of the senate the legions defeated on the Siris spent the

winter by way of punishment under tents.

Second Year of the War

Thus ended the campaign of 474. The separate peace which at the

decisive moment Etruria had concluded with Rome, and the king's

unexpected retreat which entirely disappointed the high-strung hopes

of the Italian confederates, counterbalanced in great measure the

impression of the victory of Heraclea. The Italians complained of the

burdens of the war, particularly of the bad discipline of the

mercenaries quartered among them, and the king, weary of the petty

quarrelling and of the impolitic as well as unmilitary conduct of his

allies, began to have a presentiment that the problem which had fallen

to him might be, despite all tactical successes, politically

insoluble. The arrival of a Roman embassy of three consulars,

including Gaius Fabricius the conqueror of Thurii, again revived in

him for a moment the hopes of peace; but it soon appeared that they

had only power to treat for the ransom or exchange of prisoners.

Pyrrhus rejected their demand, but at the festival of the Saturnalia

he released all the prisoners on their word of honour. Their keeping

of that word, and the repulse by the Roman ambassador of an attempt at

bribery, were celebrated by posterity in a manner most unbecoming and

betokening rather the dishonourable character of the later, than the

honourable feeling of that earlier, epoch.

Battle of Ausculum

In the spring of 475 Pyrrhus resumed the offensive, and advanced into

Apulia, whither the Roman army marched to meet him. In the hope of

shaking the Roman symmachy in these regions by a decisive victory, the

king offered battle a second time, and the Romans did not refuse it.

The two armies encountered each other near Ausculum (Ascoli di

Puglia). Under the banners of Pyrrhus there fought, besides

his Epirot and Macedonian troops, the Italian mercenaries, the

burgess-force--the white shields as they were called--of Tarentum,

and the allied Lucanians, Bruttians, and Samnites--altogether 70,000

infantry, of whom 16,000 were Greeks and Epirots, more than 8000

cavalry, and nineteen elephants. The Romans were supported on

that day by the Latins, Campanians, Volscians, Sabines, Umbrians,

Marrucinians, Paelignians, Frentanians, and Arpanians. They too

numbered above 70,000 infantry, of whom 20,000 were Roman citizens,

and 8000 cavalry. Both parties had made alterations in their military

system. Pyrrhus, perceiving with the sharp eye of a soldier the

advantages of the Roman manipular organization, had on the wings

substituted for the long front of his phalanxes an arrangement by

companies with intervals between them in imitation of the cohorts,

and-- perhaps for political no less than for military reasons--had

placed the Tarentine and Samnite cohorts between the subdivisions of

his own men. In the centre alone the Epirot phalanx stood in close

order. For the purpose of keeping off the elephants the Romans

produced a species of war-chariot, from which projected iron poles

furnished with chafing-dishes, and on which were fastened moveable

masts adjusted with a view to being lowered, and ending in an iron

spike--in some degree the model of the boarding-bridges which were

to play so great a part in the first Punic war.

According to the Greek account of the battle, which seems less

one-sided than the Roman account also extant, the Greeks had the

disadvantage on the first day, as they did not succeed in deploying

their line along the steep and marshy banks of the river where they

were compelled to accept battle, or in bringing their cavalry and

elephants into action. On the second day, however, Pyrrhus

anticipated the Romans in occupying the intersected ground, and thus

gained without loss the plain where he could without disturbance draw

up his phalanx. Vainly did the Romans with desperate courage fall

sword in hand on the -sarissae-; the phalanx preserved an unshaken

front under every assault, but in its turn was unable to make any

impression on the Roman legions. It was not till the numerous escort

of the elephants had, with arrows and stones hurled from slings,

dislodged the combatants stationed in the Roman war-chariots and had

cut the traces of the horses, and the elephants pressed upon the Roman

line, that it began to waver. The giving way of the guard attached

to the Roman chariots formed the signal for universal flight, which,

however, did not involve the sacrifice of many lives, as the adjoining

camp received the fugitives. The Roman account of the battle alone

mentions the circumstance, that during the principal engagement an

Arpanian corps detached from the Roman main force had attacked and

set on fire the weakly-guarded Epirot camp; but, even if this were

correct, the Romans are not at all justified in their assertion that

the battle remained undecided. Both accounts, on the contrary, agree

in stating that the Roman army retreated across the river, and that

Pyrrhus remained in possession of the field of battle. The number of

the fallen was, according to the Greek account, 6000 on the side of

the Romans, 3505 on that of the Greeks.(4) Amongst the wounded was

the king himself, whose arm had been pierced with a javelin, while he

was fighting, as was his wont, in the thickest of the fray. Pyrrhus

had achieved a victory, but his were unfruitful laurels; the victory

was creditable to the king as a general and as a soldier, but it

did not promote his political designs. What Pyrrhus needed was a

brilliant success which should break up the Roman army and give an

opportunity and impulse to the wavering allies to change sides; but

the Roman army and the Roman confederacy still remained unbroken, and

the Greek army, which was nothing without its leader, was fettered for

a considerable time in consequence of his wound. He was obliged to

renounce the campaign and to go into winter quarters; which the king

took up in Tarentum, the Romans on this occasion in Apulia. It was

becoming daily more evident that in a military point of view the

resources of the king were inferior to those of the Romans, just as,

politically, the loose and refractory coalition could not stand a

comparison with the firmly-established Roman symmachy. The sudden and

vehement style of the Greek warfare and the genius of the general

might perhaps achieve another such victory as those of Heraclea and

Ausculum, but every new victory was wearing out his resources for

further enterprise, and it was clear that the Romans already felt

themselves the stronger, and awaited with a courageous patience final

victory. Such a war as this was not the delicate game of art that

was practised and understood by the Greek princes. All strategical

combinations were shattered against the full and mighty energy of the

national levy. Pyrrhus felt how matters stood: weary of his victories

and despising his allies, he only persevered because military honour

required him not to leave Italy till he should have secured his

clients from barbarian assault. With his impatient temperament it

might be presumed that he would embrace the first pretext to get rid

of the burdensome duty; and an opportunity of withdrawing from Italy

was soon presented to him by the affairs of Sicily.

Relations of Sicily, Syracuse, and Carthage--

Pyrrhus Invited to Syracuse

After the death of Agathocles (465) the Greeks of Sicily were without

any leading power. While in the several Hellenic cities incapable

demagogues and incapable tyrants were replacing each other, the

Carthaginians, the old rulers of the western point, were extending

their dominion unmolested. After Agrigentum had surrendered to them,

they believed that the time had come for taking final steps towards

the end which they had kept in view for centuries, and for reducing

the whole island under their authority; they set themselves to attack

Syracuse. That city, which formerly by its armies and fleets had

disputed the possession of the island with Carthage, had through

internal dissension and the weakness of its government fallen so low

that it was obliged to seek for safety in the protection of its walls

and in foreign aid; and none could afford that aid but king Pyrrhus.

Pyrrhus was the husband of Agathocles's daughter, and his son

Alexander, then sixteen years of age, was Agathocles's grandson.

Both were in every respect natural heirs of the ambitious schemes

of the ruler of Syracuse; and if her freedom was at an end, Syracuse

might find compensation in becoming the capital of a Hellenic empire

of the West. So the Syracusans, like the Tarentines, and under

similar conditions, voluntarily offered their sovereignty to king

Pyrrhus (about 475); and by a singular conjuncture of affairs

everything seemed to concur towards the success of the magnificent

plans of the Epirot king, based as they primarily were on the

possession of Tarentum and Syracuse.

League between Rome and Carthage--

Third Year of the War

The immediate effect, indeed, of this union of the Italian and

Sicilian Greeks under one control was a closer concert also on the

part of their antagonists. Carthage and Rome now converted their old

commercial treaties into an offensive and defensive league against

Pyrrhus (475), the tenor of which was that, if Pyrrhus invaded Roman

or Carthaginian territory, the party which was not attacked should

furnish that which was assailed with a contingent on its own territory

and should itself defray the expense of the auxiliary troops; that in

such an event Carthage should be bound to furnish transports and to

assist the Romans also with a war fleet, but the crews of that fleet

should not be obliged to fight for the Romans by land; that lastly,

both states should pledge themselves not to conclude a separate peace

with Pyrrhus. The object of the Romans in entering into the treaty

was to render possible an attack on Tarentum and to cut off Pyrrhus

from his own country, neither of which ends could be attained without

the co-operation of the Punic fleet; the object of the Carthaginians

was to detain the king in Italy, so that they might be able without

molestation to carry into effect their designs on Syracuse.(5) It was

accordingly the interest of both powers in the first instance to

secure the sea between Italy and Sicily. A powerful Carthaginian

fleet of 120 sail under the admiral Mago proceeded from Ostia, whither

Mago seems to have gone to conclude the treaty, to the Sicilian

straits. The Mamertines, who anticipated righteous punishment for

their outrage upon the Greek population of Messana in the event of

Pyrrhus becoming ruler of Sicily and Italy, attached themselves

closely to the Romans and Carthaginians, and secured for them the

Sicilian side of the straits. The allies would willingly have brought

Rhegium also on the opposite coast under their power; but Rome could

not possibly pardon the Campanian garrison, and an attempt of the

combined Romans and Carthaginians to gain the city by force of arms

miscarried. The Carthaginian fleet sailed thence for Syracuse and

blockaded the city by sea, while at the same time a strong Phoenician

army began the siege by land (476). It was high time that Pyrrhus

should appear at Syracuse: but, in fact, matters in Italy were by no

means in such a condition that he and his troops could be dispensed

with there. The two consuls of 476, Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, and

Quintus Aemilius Papus, both experienced generals, had begun the new

campaign with vigour, and although the Romans had hitherto sustained

nothing but defeat in this war, it was not they but the victors that

were weary of it and longed for peace. Pyrrhus made another attempt

to obtain accommodation on tolerable terms. The consul Fabricius had

handed over to the king a wretch, who had proposed to poison him on

condition of being well paid for it. Not only did the king in token

of gratitude release all his Roman prisoners without ransom, but he

felt himself so moved by the generosity of his brave opponents that

he offered, by way of personal recompense, a singularly fair and

favourable peace. Cineas appears to have gone once more to Rome, and

Carthage seems to have been seriously apprehensive that Rome might

come to terms. But the senate remained firm, and repeated its former

answer. Unless the king was willing to allow Syracuse to fall into

the hands of the Carthaginians and to have his grand scheme thereby

disconcerted, no other course remained than to abandon his Italian

allies and to confine himself for the time being to the occupation of

the most important seaports, particularly Tarentum and Locri. In vain

the Lucanians and Samnites conjured him not to desert them; in vain

the Tarentines summoned him either to comply with his duty as their

general or to give them back their city. The king met their

complaints and reproaches with the consolatory assurance that better

times were coming, or with abrupt dismissal. Milo remained behind in

Tarentum; Alexander, the king's son, in Locri; and Pyrrhus, with his

main force, embarked in the spring of 476 at Tarentum for Syracuse.

Embarkation of Pyrrhus for Sicily--

The War in Italy Flags

By the departure of Pyrrhus the hands of the Romans were set free

in Italy; none ventured to oppose them in the open field, and their

antagonists everywhere confined themselves to their fastnesses or

their forests. The struggle however was not terminated so rapidly as

might have been expected; partly in consequence of its nature as a

warfare of mountain skirmishes and sieges, partly also, doubtless,

from the exhaustion of the Romans, whose fearful losses are indicated

by a decrease of 17,000 in the burgess-roll from 473 to 479. In 476

the consul Gaius Fabricius succeeded in inducing the considerable

Tarentine settlement of Heraclea to enter into a separate peace, which

was granted to it on the most favourable terms. In the campaign of

477 a desultory warfare was carried on in Samnium, where an attack

thoughtlessly made on some entrenched heights cost the Romans many

lives, and thereafter in southern Italy, where the Lucanians and

Bruttians were defeated. On the other hand Milo, issuing from

Tarentum, anticipated the Romans in their attempt to surprise Croton:

whereupon the Epirot garrison made even a successful sortie against

the besieging army. At length, however, the consul succeeded by a

stratagem in inducing it to march forth, and in possessing himself

of the undefended town (477). An incident of more moment was the

slaughter of the Epirot garrison by the Locrians, who had formerly

surrendered the Roman garrison to the king, and now atoned for one act

of treachery by another. By that step the whole south coast came into

the hands of the Romans, with the exception of Rhegium and Tarentum.

These successes, however, advanced the main object but little. Lower

Italy itself had long been defenceless; but Pyrrhus was not subdued so

long as Tarentum remained in his hands and thus rendered it possible

for him to renew the war at his pleasure, and the Romans could not

think of undertaking the siege of that city. Even apart from the fact

that in siege-warfare, which had been revolutionized by Philip of

Macedonia and Demetrius Poliorcetes, the Romans were at a very decided

disadvantage when matched against an experienced and resolute Greek

commandant, a strong fleet was needed for such an enterprise, and,

although the Carthaginian treaty promised to the Romans support by

sea, the affairs of Carthage herself in Sicily were by no means in

such a condition as to enable her to grant that support.

Pyrrhus Master of Sicily

The landing of Pyrrhus on the island, which, in spite of the

Carthaginian fleet, had taken place without interruption, had changed

at once the aspect of matters there. He had immediately relieved

Syracuse, had in a short time united under his sway all the free Greek

cities, and at the head of the Sicilian confederation had wrested

from the Carthaginians nearly their whole possessions. It was with

difficulty that the Carthaginians could, by the help of their fleet

which at that time ruled the Mediterranean without a rival, maintain

themselves in Lilybaeum; it was with difficulty, and amidst constant

assaults, that the Mamertines held their ground in Messana. Under

such circumstances, agreeably to the treaty of 475, it would have been

the duty of Rome to lend her aid to the Carthaginians in Sicily, far

rather than that of Carthage to help the Romans with her fleet to

conquer Tarentum; but on the side of neither ally was there much

inclination to secure or to extend the power of the other. Carthage

had only offered help to the Romans when the real danger was past;

they in their turn had done nothing to prevent the departure of the

king from Italy and the fall of the Carthaginian power in Sicily.

Indeed, in open violation of the treaties Carthage had even proposed

to the king a separate peace, offering, in return for the undisturbed

possession of Lilybaeum, to give up all claim to her other Sicilian

possessions and even to place at the disposal of the king money and

ships of war, of course with a view to his crossing to Italy and

renewing the war against Rome. It was evident, however, that with

the possession of Lilybaeum and the departure of the king the position

of the Carthaginians in the island would be nearly the same as it had

been before the landing of Pyrrhus; the Greek cities if left to

themselves were powerless, and the lost territory would be easily

regained. So Pyrrhus rejected the doubly perfidious proposal, and

proceeded to build for himself a war fleet. Mere ignorance and

shortsightedness in after times censured this step; but it was really

as necessary as it was, with the resources of the island, easy of

accomplishment. Apart from the consideration that the master of

Ambracia, Tarentum, and Syracuse could not dispense with a naval

force, he needed a fleet to conquer Lilybaeum, to protect Tarentum,

and to attack Carthage at home as Agathocles, Regulus, and Scipio

did before or afterwards so successfully. Pyrrhus never was so near

to the attainment of his aim as in the summer of 478, when he saw

Carthage humbled before him, commanded Sicily, and retained a

firm footing in Italy by the possession of Tarentum, and when the

newly-created fleet, which was to connect, to secure, and to augment

these successes, lay ready for sea in the harbour of Syracuse.

The Sicilian Government of Pyrrhus

The real weakness of the position of Pyrrhus lay in his faulty

internal policy. He governed Sicily as he had seen Ptolemy rule in

Egypt: he showed no respect to the local constitutions; he placed

his confidants as magistrates over the cities whenever, and for as

long as, he pleased; he made his courtiers judges instead of the

native jurymen; he pronounced arbitrary sentences of confiscation,

banishment, or death, even against those who had been most active

in promoting his coming thither; he placed garrisons in the towns,

and ruled over Sicily not as the leader of a national league, but

as a king. In so doing he probably reckoned himself according to

oriental-Hellenistic ideas a good and wise ruler, and perhaps he

really was so; but the Greeks bore this transplantation of the system

of the Diadochi to Syracuse with all the impatience of a nation that

in its long struggle for freedom had lost all habits of discipline;

the Carthaginian yoke very soon appeared to the foolish people more

tolerable than their new military government. The most important

cities entered into communications with the Carthaginians, and even

with the Mamertines; a strong Carthaginian army ventured again to

appear on the island; and everywhere supported by the Greeks, it made

rapid progress. In the battle which Pyrrhus fought with it fortune

was, as always, with the "Eagle"; but the circumstances served to show

what the state of feeling was in the island, and what might and must

ensue, if the king should depart.

Departure of Pyrrhus to Italy

To this first and most essential error Pyrrhus added a second; he

proceeded with his fleet, not to Lilybaeum, but to Tarentum. It was

evident, looking to the very ferment in the minds of the Sicilians,

that he ought first of all to have dislodged the Carthaginians wholly

from the island, and thereby to have cut off the discontented from

their last support, before he turned his attention to Italy; in that

quarter there was nothing to be lost, for Tarentum was safe enough for

him, and the other allies were of little moment now that they had been

abandoned. It is conceivable that his soldierly spirit impelled him

to wipe off the stain of his not very honourable departure in the year

476 by a brilliant return, and that his heart bled when he heard the

complaints of the Lucanians and Samnites. But problems, such as

Pyrrhus had proposed to himself, can only be solved by men of iron

nature, who are able to control their feelings of compassion and even

their sense of honour; and Pyrrhus was not one of these.

Fall of the Sicilian Kingdom--

Recommencement of the Italian War

The fatal embarkation took place towards the end of 478. On the

voyage the new Syracusan fleet had to sustain a sharp engagement with

that of Carthage, in which it lost a considerable number of vessels.

The departure of the king and the accounts of this first misfortune

sufficed for the fall of the Sicilian kingdom. On the arrival of the

news all the cities refused to the absent king money and troops; and

the brilliant state collapsed even more rapidly than it had arisen,

partly because the king had himself undermined in the hearts of

his subjects the loyalty and affection on which every commonwealth

depends, partly because the people lacked the devotedness to

renounce freedom for perhaps but a short term in order to save

their nationality. Thus the enterprise of Pyrrhus was wrecked, and

the plan of his life was ruined irretrievably; he was thenceforth an

adventurer, who felt that he had been great and was so no longer, and

who now waged war no longer as a means to an end, but in order to

drown thought amidst the reckless excitement of the game and to find,

if possible, in the tumult of battle a soldier's death. Arrived on

the Italian coast, the king began by an attempt to get possession of

Rhegium; but the Campanians repulsed the attack with the aid of the

Mamertines, and in the heat of the conflict before the town the king

himself was wounded in the act of striking down an officer of the

enemy. On the other hand he surprised Locri, whose inhabitants

suffered severely for their slaughter of the Epirot garrison, and he

plundered the rich treasury of the temple of Persephone there, to

replenish his empty exchequer. Thus he arrived at Tarentum, it is

said with 20,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry. But these were no longer

the experienced veterans of former days, and the Italians no longer

hailed them as deliverers; the confidence and hope with which they

had received the king five years before were gone; the allies were

destitute of money and of men.

Battle near Beneventum--

Pyrrhus Leaves Italy--

Death of Pyrrhus

The king took the field in the spring of 479 with the view of aiding

the hard-pressed Samnites, in whose territory the Romans had passed

the previous winter; and he forced the consul Manius Curius to give

battle near Beneventum on the -campus Arusinus-, before he could

form a junction with his colleague advancing from Lucania. But the

division of the army, which was intended to take the Romans in flank,

lost its way during its night march in the woods, and failed to appear

at the decisive moment; and after a hot conflict the elephants again

decided the battle, but decided it this time in favour of the Romans,

for, thrown into confusion by the archers who were stationed to

protect the camp, they attacked their own people. The victors

occupied the camp; there fell into their hands 1300 prisoners and four

elephants--the first that were seen in Rome--besides an immense spoil,

from the proceeds of which the aqueduct, which conveyed the water of

the Anio from Tibur to Rome, was subsequently built. Without troops

to keep the field and without money, Pyrrhus applied to his allies who

had contributed to his equipment for Italy, the kings of Macedonia

and Asia; but even in his native land he was no longer feared, and

his request was refused. Despairing of success against Rome and

exasperated by these refusals, Pyrrhus left a garrison in Tarentum,

and went home himself in the same year (479) to Greece, where some

prospect of gain might open up to the desperate player sooner than

amidst the steady and measured course of Italian affairs. In fact,

he not only rapidly recovered the portion of his kingdom that had

been taken away, but once more grasped, and not without success, at

the Macedonian throne. But his last plans also were thwarted by the

calm and cautious policy of Antigonus Gonatas, and still more by his

own vehemence and inability to tame his proud spirit; he still gained

battles, but he no longer gained any lasting success, and met his

death in a miserable street combat in Peloponnesian Argos (482).

Last Struggles in Italy--

Capture of Tarentum

In Italy the war came to an end with the battle of Beneventum; the

last convulsive struggles of the national party died slowly away.

So long indeed as the warrior prince, whose mighty arm had ventured

to seize the reins of destiny in Italy, was still among the living,

he held, even when absent, the stronghold of Tarentum against Rome.

Although after the departure of the king the peace party recovered

ascendency in the city, Milo, who commanded there on behalf of

Pyrrhus, rejected their suggestions and allowed the citizens

favourable to Rome, who had erected a separate fort for themselves

in the territory of Tarentum, to conclude peace with Rome as they

pleased, without on that account opening his gates. But when after

the death of Pyrrhus a Carthaginian fleet entered the harbour, and

Milo saw that the citizens were on the point of delivering up the city

to the Carthaginians, he preferred to hand over the citadel to the

Roman consul Lucius Papirius (482), and by that means to secure a free

departure for himself and his troops. For the Romans this was an

immense piece of good fortune. After the experiences of Philip before

Perinthus and Byzantium, of Demetrius before Rhodes, and of Pyrrhus

before Lilybaeum, it may be doubted whether the strategy of that

period was at all able to compel the surrender of a town well

fortified, well defended, and freely accessible by sea; and how

different a turn matters might have taken, had Tarentum become to the

Phoenicians in Italy what Lilybaeum was to them in Sicily! What was

done, however, could not be undone. The Carthaginian admiral, when he

saw the citadel in the hands of the Romans, declared that he had only

appeared before Tarentum conformably to the treaty to lend assistance

to his allies in the siege of the town, and set sail for Africa; and

the Roman embassy, which was sent to Carthage to demand explanations

and make complaints regarding the attempted occupation of Tarentum,

brought back nothing but a solemn confirmation on oath of that

allegation as to its ally's friendly design, with which accordingly

the Romans had for the time to rest content. The Tarentines obtained

from Rome, presumably on the intercession of their emigrants, the

restoration of autonomy; but their arms and ships had to be given up

and their walls had to be pulled down.

Submission of Lower Italy

In the same year, in which Tarentum became Roman, the Samnites,

Lucanians, and Bruttians finally submitted. The latter were obliged

to cede the half of the lucrative, and for ship-building important,

forest of Sila.

At length also the band that for ten years had sheltered themselves in

Rhegium were duly chastised for the breach of their military oath, as

well as for the murder of the citizens of Rhegium and of the garrison

of Croton. In this instance Rome, while vindicating her own rights

vindicated the general cause of the Hellenes against the barbarians.

Hiero, the new ruler of Syracuse, accordingly supported the Romans

before Rhegium by sending supplies and a contingent, and in

combination with the Roman expedition against the garrison of Rhegium

he made an attack upon their fellow-countrymen and fellow-criminals,

the Mamertines of Messana. The siege of the latter town was long

protracted. On the other hand Rhegium, although the mutineers

resisted long and obstinately, was stormed by the Romans in 484; the

survivors of the garrison were scourged and beheaded in the public

market at Rome, while the old inhabitants were recalled and, as far as

possible, reinstated in their possessions. Thus all Italy was, in

484, reduced to subjection. The Samnites alone, the most obstinate

antagonists of Rome, still in spite of the official conclusion of

peace continued the struggle as "robbers," so that in 485 both

consuls had to be once more despatched against them. But even the

most high-spirited national courage--the bravery of despair--comes

to an end; the sword and the gibbet at length carried quiet even

into the mountains of Samnium.

Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

For the securing of these immense acquisitions a new series of

colonies was instituted: Paestum and Cosa in Lucania (481); Beneventum

(486), and Aesernia (about 491) to hold Samnium in check; and, as

outposts against the Gauls, Ariminum (486), Firmum in Picenum (about

490), and the burgess colony of Castrum Novum. Preparations were made

for the continuation of the great southern highway--which acquired in

the fortress of Beneventum a new station intermediate between Capua

and Venusia--as far as the seaports of Tarentum and Brundisium, and

for the colonization of the latter seaport, which Roman policy had

selected as the rival and successor of the Tarentine emporium. The

construction of the new fortresses and roads gave rise to some further

wars with the small tribes, whose territory was thereby curtailed:

with the Picentes (485, 486), a number of whom were transplanted to

the district of Salernum; with the Sallentines about Brundisium (487,

488); and with the Umbrian Sassinates (487, 488), who seem to have

occupied the territory of Ariminum after the expulsion of the Senones.

By these establishments the dominion of Rome was extended over the

interior of Lower Italy, and over the whole Italian east coast from

the Ionian sea to the Celtic frontier.

Maritime Relations

Before we describe the political organization under which the Italy

which was thus united was governed on the part of Rome, it remains

that we should glance at the maritime relations that subsisted in the

fourth and fifth centuries. At this period Syracuse and Carthage were

the main competitors for the dominion of the western waters. On the

whole, notwithstanding the great temporary successes which Dionysius

(348-389), Agathocles (437-465), and Pyrrhus (476-478) obtained at

sea, Carthage had the preponderance and Syracuse sank more and more

into a naval power of the second rank. The maritime importance of

Etruria was wholly gone;(6) the hitherto Etruscan island of Corsica,

if it did not quite pass into the possession, fell under the maritime

supremacy, of the Carthaginians. Tarentum, which for a time had

played a considerable part, had its power broken by the Roman

occupation. The brave Massiliots maintained their ground in their

own waters; but they exercised no material influence over the course

of events in those of Italy. The other maritime cities hardly came

as yet into serious account.

Decline of the Roman Naval Power

Rome itself was not exempt from a similar fate; its own waters were

likewise commanded by foreign fleets. It was indeed from the first

a maritime city, and in the period of its vigour never was so untrue

to its ancient traditions as wholly to neglect its war marine or so

foolish as to desire to be a mere continental power. Latium furnished

the finest timber for ship-building, far surpassing the famed growths

of Lower Italy; and the very docks constantly maintained in Rome are

enough to show that the Romans never abandoned the idea of possessing

a fleet of their own. During the perilous crises, however, which the

expulsion of the kings, the internal disturbances in the Romano-Latin

confederacy, and the unhappy wars with the Etruscans and Celts brought

upon Rome, the Romans could take but little interest in the state of

matters in the Mediterranean; and, in consequence of the policy of

Rome directing itself more and more decidedly to the subjugation of

the Italian continent, the growth of its naval power was arrested.

There is hardly any mention of Latin vessels of war up to the end of

the fourth century, except that the votive offering from the Veientine

spoil was sent to Delphi in a Roman vessel (360). The Antiates indeed

continued to prosecute their commerce with armed vessels and thus,

as occasion offered, to practise the trade of piracy also, and the

"Tyrrhene corsair" Postumius, whom Timoleon captured about 415, may

certainly have been an Antiate; but the Antiates were scarcely to be

reckoned among the naval powers of that period, and, had they been so,

the fact must from the attitude of Antium towards Rome have been

anything but an advantage to the latter. The extent to which the

Roman naval power had declined about the year 400 is shown by the

plundering of the Latin coasts by a Greek, presumably a Sicilian, war

fleet in 405, while at the same time Celtic hordes were traversing and

devastating the Latin land.(7) In the following year (406), and

beyond doubt under the immediate impression produced by these serious

events, the Roman community and the Phoenicians of Carthage, acting

respectively for themselves and for their dependent allies, concluded

a treaty of commerce and navigation-- the oldest Roman document of

which the text has reached us, although only in a Greek

translation.(8) In that treaty the Romans had to come under

obligation not to navigate the Libyan coast to the west of the Fair

Promontory (Cape Bon) excepting in cases of necessity. On the other

hand they obtained the privilege of freely trading, like the natives,

in Sicily, so far as it was Carthaginian; and in Africa and Sardinia

they obtained at least the right to dispose of their merchandise at a

price fixed with the concurrence of the Carthaginian officials and

guaranteed by the Carthaginian community. The privilege of free

trading seems to have been granted to the Carthaginians at least in

Rome, perhaps in all Latium; only they bound themselves neither to do

violence to the subject Latin communities,(9) nor, if they should set

foot as enemies on Latin soil, to take up their quarters for a night

on shore--in other words, not to extend their piratical inroads into

the interior--nor to construct any fortresses in the Latin land.

We may probably assign to the same period the already mentioned(10)

treaty between Rome and Tarentum, respecting the date of which we are

only told that it was concluded a considerable time before 472. By it

the Romans bound themselves--for what concessions on the part of

Tarentum is not stated--not to navigate the waters to the east of

the Lacinian promontory; a stipulation by which they were thus wholly

excluded from the eastern basin of the Mediterranean.

Roman Fortification of the Coast

These were disasters no less than the defeat on the Allia, and the

Roman senate seems to have felt them as such and to have made use of

the favourable turn, which the Italian relations assumed soon after

the conclusion of the humiliating treaties with Carthage and Tarentum,

with all energy to improve its depressed maritime position. The most

important of the coast towns were furnished with Roman colonies: Pyrgi

the seaport of Caere, the colonization of which probably falls within

this period; along the west coast, Antium in 415,(11) Tarracina in

425,(12) the island of Pontia in 441,(13) so that, as Ardea and

Circeii had previously received colonists, all the Latin seaports of

consequence in the territory of the Rutuli and Volsci had now become

Latin or burgess colonies; further, in the territory of the Aurunci,

Minturnae and Sinuessa in 459;(14) in that of the Lucanians, Paestum

and Cosa in 481;(15) and, on the coast of the Adriatic, Sena Gallica

and Castrum Novum about 471,(16) and Ariminum in 486;(17) to which

falls to be added the occupation of Brundisium, which took place

immediately after the close of the Pyrrhic war. In the greater part

of these places--the burgess or maritime colonies(18)--the young men

were exempted from serving in the legions and destined solely for the

watching of the coasts. The well judged preference given at the same

time to the Greeks of Lower Italy over their Sabellian neighbours,

particularly to the considerable communities of Neapolis, Rhegium,

Locri, Thurii, and Heraclea, and their similar exemption under the

like conditions from furnishing contingents to the land army,

completed the network drawn by Rome around the coasts of Italy.

But with a statesmanlike sagacity, from which the succeeding

generations might have drawn a lesson, the leading men of the Roman

commonwealth perceived that all these coast fortifications and coast

garrisons could not but prove inadequate, unless the war marine of

the state were again placed on a footing that should command respect.

Some sort of nucleus for this purpose was already furnished on the

subjugation of Antium (416) by the serviceable war-galleys which were

carried off to the Roman docks; but the enactment at the same time,

that the Antiates should abstain from all maritime traffic,(19) is a

very clear and distinct indication how weak the Romans then felt

themselves at sea, and how completely their maritime policy was still

summed up in the occupation of places on the coast. Thereafter, when

the Greek cities of southern Italy, Neapolis leading the way in 428,

were admitted to the clientship of Rome, the war-vessels, which each

of these cities bound itself to furnish as a war contribution under

the alliance to the Romans, formed at least a renewed nucleus for a

Roman fleet. In 443, moreover, two fleet-masters (-duoviri navales-)

were nominated in consequence of a resolution of the burgesses

specially passed to that effect, and this Roman naval force

co-operated in the Samnite war at the siege of Nuceria.(20) Perhaps

even the remarkable mission of a Roman fleet of twenty-five sail to

found a colony in Corsica, which Theophrastus mentions in his "History

of Plants" written about 446, belongs to this period. But how little

was immediately accomplished with all this preparation, is shown by

the renewed treaty with Carthage in 448. While the stipulations of

the treaty of 406 relating to Italy and Sicily(21) remained unchanged,

the Romans were now prohibited not only from the navigation of the

eastern waters, but also from that of the Atlantic Ocean which was

previously permitted, as well as debarred from holding commercial

intercourse with the subjects of Carthage in Sardinia and Africa, and

also, in all probability, from effecting a settlement in Corsica;(22)

so that only Carthaginian Sicily and Carthage itself remained open

to their traffic. We recognize here the jealousy of the dominant

maritime power, gradually increasing with the extension of the Roman

dominion along the coasts. Carthage compelled the Romans to acquiesce

in her prohibitive system, to submit to be excluded from the seats of

production in the west and east (connected with which exclusion is the

story of a public reward bestowed on the Phoenician mariner who at the

sacrifice of his own ship decoyed a Roman vessel, steering after him

into the Atlantic Ocean, to perish on a sand-bank), and to restrict

their navigation under the treaty to the narrow space of the western

Mediterranean--and all this for the mere purpose of averting pillage

from their coasts and of securing their ancient and important trading

connection with Sicily. The Romans were obliged to yield to these

terms; but they did not desist from their efforts to rescue their

marine from its condition of impotence.

Quaestors of the Fleet--

Variance between Rome and Carthage

A comprehensive measure with that view was the institution of four

quaestors of the fleet (-quaestores classici-) in 487: of whom the

first was stationed at Ostia the port of Rome; the second, stationed

at Cales then the capital of Roman Campania, had to superintend the

ports of Campania and Magna Graecia; the third, stationed at Ariminum,

superintended the ports on the other side of the Apennines; the

district assigned to the fourth is not known. These new standing

officials were intended to exercise not the sole, but a conjoint,

guardianship of the coasts, and to form a war marine for their

protection. The objects of the Roman senate--to recover their

independence by sea, to cut off the maritime communications of

Tarentum, to close the Adriatic against fleets coming from Epirus,

and to emancipate themselves from Carthaginian supremacy--were very

obvious. Their already explained relations with Carthage during the

last Italian war discover traces of such views. King Pyrrhus indeed

compelled the two great cities once more--it was for the last time

--to conclude an offensive alliance; but the lukewarmness and

faithlessness of that alliance, the attempts of the Carthaginians

to establish themselves in Rhegium and Tarentum, and the immediate

occupation of Brundisium by the Romans after the termination of the

war, show clearly how much their respective interests already came

into collision.

Rome and the Greek Naval Powers

Rome very naturally sought to find support against Carthage from the

Hellenic maritime states. Her old and close relations of amity with

Massilia continued uninterrupted. The votive offering sent by Rome

to Delphi, after the conquest of Veii, was preserved there in the

treasury of the Massiliots. After the capture of Rome by the Celts

there was a collection in Massilia for the sufferers by the fire,

in which the city chest took the lead; in return the Roman senate

granted commercial advantages to the Massiliot merchants, and, at the

celebration of the games in the Forum assigned a position of honour

(-Graecostasis-) to the Massiliots by the side of the platform for the

senators. To the same category belong the treaties of commerce and

amity concluded by the Romans about 448 with Rhodes and not long after

with Apollonia, a considerable mercantile town on the Epirot coast,

and especially the closer relation, so fraught with danger for

Carthage, which immediately after the end of the Pyrrhic war

sprang up between Rome and Syracuse.(23)

While the Roman power by sea was thus very far from keeping pace with

the immense development of their power by land, and the war marine

belonging to the Romans in particular was by no means such as from the

geographical and commercial position of the city it ought to have

been, yet it began gradually to emerge out of the complete nullity to

which it had been reduced about the year 400; and, considering the

great resources of Italy, the Phoenicians might well follow its

efforts with anxious eyes.

The crisis in reference to the supremacy of the Italian waters was

approaching; by land the contest was decided. For the first time

Italy was united into one state under the sovereignty of the Roman

community. What political prerogatives the Roman community on this

occasion withdrew from all the other Italian communities and took into

its own sole keeping, or in other words, what conception in state-law

is to be associated with this sovereignty of Rome, we are nowhere

expressly informed, and--a significant circumstance, indicating

prudent calculation--there does not even exist any generally current

expression for that conception.(24) The only privileges that

demonstrably belonged to it were the rights of making war, of

concluding treaties, and of coining money. No Italian community could

declare war against any foreign state, or even negotiate with it, or

coin money for circulation. On the other hand every declaration of

war made by the Roman people and every state-treaty resolved upon by

it were binding in law on all the other Italian communities, and the

silver money of Rome was legally current throughout all Italy. It is

probable that the formulated prerogatives of the leading community

extended no further. But to these there were necessarily attached

rights of sovereignty that practically went far beyond them.

The Full Roman Franchise

The relations, which the Italians sustained to the leading community,

exhibited in detail great inequalities. In this point of view, in

addition to the full burgesses of Rome, there were three different

classes of subjects to be distinguished. The full franchise itself,

in the first place, was extended as far as was possible, without

wholly abandoning the idea of an urban commonwealth as applied to the

Roman commune. The old burgess-domain had hitherto been enlarged

chiefly by individual assignation in such a way that southern Etruria

as far as towards Caere and Falerii,(25) the districts taken from the

Hernici on the Sacco and on the Anio(26) the largest part of the

Sabine country(27) and large tracts of the territory formerly

Volscian, especially the Pomptine plain(28) were converted into land

for Roman farmers, and new burgess-districts were instituted mostly

for their inhabitants. The same course had even already been taken

with the Falernian district on the Volturnus ceded by Capua.(29) All

these burgesses domiciled outside of Rome were without a commonwealth

and an administration of their own; on the assigned territory there

arose at the most market-villages (-fora et conciliabula-). In a

position not greatly different were placed the burgesses sent out

to the so-called maritime colonies mentioned above, who were likewise

left in possession of the full burgess-rights of Rome, and whose

self-administration was of little moment. Towards the close of

this period the Roman community appears to have begun to grant full

burgess-rights to the adjoining communities of passive burgesses who

were of like or closely kindred nationality; this was probably done

first for Tusculum,(30) and so, presumably, also for the other

communities of passive burgesses in Latium proper, then at the end

of this period (486) was extended to the Sabine towns, which doubtless

were even then essentially Latinized and had given sufficient proof

of their fidelity in the last severe war. These towns retained the

restricted self-administration, which under their earlier legal

position belonged to them, even after their admission into the Roman

burgess-union; it was they more than the maritime colonies that

furnished the model for the special commonwealths subsisting within

the body of Roman full burgesses and so, in the course of time, for

the Roman municipal organization. Accordingly the range of the full

Roman burgesses must at the end of this epoch have extended northward

as far as the vicinity of Caere, eastward as far as the Apennines, and

southward as far as Tarracina; although in this case indeed we cannot

speak of boundary in a strict sense, partly because a number of

federal towns with Latin rights, such as Tibur, Praeneste, Signia,

Norba, Circeii, were found within these bounds, partly because beyond

them the inhabitants of Minturnae, Sinuessa, of the Falernian

territory, of the town Sena Gallica and some other townships,

likewise possessed the full franchise, and families of Roman

farmers were presumably to be even now found scattered throughout

Italy, either isolated or united in villages.

Subject Communities

Among the subject communities the passive burgesses (-cives sine

suffragio-) apart from the privilege of electing and being elected,

stood on an equality of rights and duties with the full burgesses.

Their legal position was regulated by the decrees of the Roman comitia

and the rules issued for them by the Roman praetor, which, however,

were doubtless based essentially on the previous arrangements.

Justice was administered for them by the Roman praetor or his deputies

(-praefecti-) annually sent to the individual communities. Those of

them in a better position, such as the city of Capua,(31) retained

self-administration and along with it the continued use of the native

language, and had officials of their own who took charge of the levy

and the census. The communities of inferior rights such as Caere(32)

were deprived even of self-administration, and this was doubtless the

most oppressive among the different forms of subjection. However, as

was above remarked, there is already apparent at the close of this

period an effort to incorporate these communities, at least so far

as they were -de facto- Latinized, among the full burgesses.

Latins

Among the subject communities the most privileged and most important

class was that of the Latin towns, which obtained accessions equally

numerous and important in the autonomous communities founded by Rome

within and even beyond Italy--the Latin colonies, as they were called

--and was always increasing in consequence of new settlements of the

same nature. These new urban communities of Roman origin, but with

Latin rights, became more and more the real buttresses of the Roman

rule over Italy. These Latins, however, were by no means those with

whom the battles of the lake Regillus and Trifanum had been fought.

They were not those old members of the Alban league, who reckoned

themselves originally equal to, if not better than, the community of

Rome, and who felt the dominion of Rome to be an oppressive yoke, as

the fearfully rigorous measures of security taken against Praeneste

at the beginning of the war with Pyrrhus, and the collisions that

evidently long continued to occur with the Praenestines in particular,

show. This old Latium had essentially either perished or become

merged in Rome, and it now numbered but few communities politically

self-subsisting, and these, with the exception of Tibur and Praeneste,

throughout insignificant. The Latium of the later times of

the republic, on the contrary, consisted almost exclusively of

communities, which from the beginning had honoured Rome as their

capital and parent city; which, settled amidst regions of alien

language and of alien habits, were attached to Rome by community of

language, of law, and of manners; which, as the petty tyrants of the

surrounding districts, were obliged doubtless to lean on Rome for

their very existence, like advanced posts leaning upon the main army;

and which, in fine, in consequence of the increasing material

advantages of Roman citizenship, were ever deriving very considerable

benefit from their equality of rights with the Romans, limited though

it was. A portion of the Roman domain, for instance, was usually

assigned to them for their separate use, and participation in the

state leases and contracts was open to them as to the Roman burgess.

Certainly in their case also the consequences of the self-subsistence

granted to them did not wholly fail to appear. Venusian inscriptions

of the time of the Roman republic, and Beneventane inscriptions

recently brought to light,(33) show that Venusia as well as Rome

had its plebs and its tribunes of the people, and that the chief

magistrates of Beneventum bore the title of consul at least about

the time of the Hannibalic war. Both communities are among the most

recent of the Latin colonies with older rights: we perceive what

pretensions were stirring in them about the middle of the fifth

century. These so-called Latins, issuing from the Roman burgess-body

and feeling themselves in every respect on a level with it, already

began to view with displeasure their subordinate federal rights and to

strive after full equalization. Accordingly the senate had exerted

itself to curtail these Latin communities--however important they were

for Rome--as far as possible, in their rights and privileges, and to

convert their position from that of allies to that of subjects, so far

as this could be done without removing the wall of partition between

them and the non-Latin communities of Italy. We have already

described the abolition of the league of the Latin communities

itself as well as of their former complete equality of rights,

and the loss of the most important political privileges belonging to

them. On the complete subjugation of Italy a further step was taken,

and a beginning was made towards the restriction of the personal

rights--that had not hitherto been touched--of the individual Latin,

especially the important right of freedom of settlement. In the case

of Ariminum founded in 486 and of all the autonomous communities

constituted afterwards, the advantage enjoyed by them, as compared

with other subjects, was restricted to their equalization with

burgesses of the Roman community so far as regarded private rights

--those of traffic and barter as well as those of inheritance.(34)

Presumably about the same time the full right of free migration

allowed to the Latin communities hitherto established--the title of

every one of their burgesses to gain by transmigration to Rome full

burgess-rights there--was, for the Latin colonies of later erection,

restricted to those persons who had attained to the highest office of

the community in their native home; these alone were allowed to

exchange their colonial burgess-rights for the Roman. This clearly

shows the complete revolution in the position of Rome. So long as

Rome was still but one among the many urban communities of Italy,

although that one might be the first, admission even to the

unrestricted Roman franchise was universally regarded as a gain for

the admitting community, and the acquisition of that franchise by

non-burgesses was facilitated in every way, and was in fact often

imposed on them as a punishment. But after the Roman community became

sole sovereign and all the others were its servants, the state of

matters changed. The Roman community began jealously to guard its

franchise, and accordingly put an end in the first instance to the old

full liberty of migration; although the statesmen of that period were

wise enough still to keep admission to the Roman franchise legally

open at least to the men of eminence and of capacity in the highest

class of subject communities. The Latins were thus made to feel that

Rome, after having subjugated Italy mainly by their aid, had now no

longer need of them as before.

Non-Latin Allied Communities

Lastly, the relations of the non-Latin allied communities were

subject, as a matter of course, to very various rules, just as each

particular treaty of alliance had defined them. Several of these

perpetual alliances, such as that with the Hernican communities,(35)

passed over to a footing of complete equalization with the Latin.

Others, in which this was not the case, such as those with

Neapolis(36), Nola(37), and Heraclea(38), granted rights

comparatively comprehensive; while others, such as the Tarentine

and Samnite treaties, may have approximated to despotism.

Dissolution of National Leagues--

Furnishing of Contingents

As a general rule, it may be taken for granted that not only the

Latin and Hernican national confederations--as to which the fact is

expressly stated--but all such confederations subsisting in Italy, and

the Samnite and Lucanian leagues in particular, were legally dissolved

or at any rate reduced to insignificance, and that in general no

Italian community was allowed the right of acquiring property or of

intermarriage, or even the right of joint consultation and resolution,

with any other. Further, provision must have been made, under

different forms, for placing the military and financial resources of

all the Italian communities at the disposal of the leading community.

Although the burgess militia on the one hand, and the contingents of

the "Latin name" on the other, were still regarded as the main and

integral constituents of the Roman army, and in that way its national

character was on the whole preserved, the Roman -cives sine suffragio-

were called forth to join its ranks, and not only so, but beyond doubt

the non-Latin federate communities also were either bound to furnish

ships of war, as was the case with the Greek cities, or were placed on

the roll of contingent-furnishing Italians (-formula togatorum-),

as must have been ordained at once or gradually in the case of the

Apulians, Sabellians, and Etruscans. In general this contingent,

like that of the Latin communities, appears to have had its numbers

definitely fixed, although, in case of necessity, the leading

community was not precluded from making a larger requisition.

This at the same time involved an indirect taxation, as every

community was bound itself to equip and to pay its own contingent.

Accordingly it was not without design that the supply of the most

costly requisites for war devolved chiefly on the Latin, or non-Latin

federate communities; that the war marine was for the most part kept

up by the Greek cities; and that in the cavalry service the allies,

at least subsequently, were called upon to furnish a proportion thrice

as numerous as the Roman burgesses, while in the infantry the old

principle, that the contingent of the allies should not be more

numerous than the burgess army, still remained in force for a long

time at least as the rule.

System of Government--

Division and Classification of the Subjects

The system, on which this fabric was constructed and kept together,

can no longer be ascertained in detail from the few notices that have

reached us. Even the numerical proportions of the three classes of

subjects relatively to each other and to the full burgesses, can no

longer be determined even approximately;(39) and in like manner the

geographical distribution of the several categories over Italy is but

imperfectly known. The leading ideas on which the structure was

based, on the other hand, are so obvious that it is scarcely necessary

specially to set them forth. First of all, as we have already said,

the immediate circle of the ruling community was extended--partly

by the settlement of full burgesses, partly by the conferring of

passive burgess-rights--as far as was possible without completely

decentralizing the Roman community, which was an urban one and was

intended to remain so. When the system of incorporation was extended

up to and perhaps even beyond its natural limits, the communities that

were subsequently added had to submit to a position of subjection; for

a pure hegemony as a permanent relation was intrinsically impossible.

Thus not through any arbitrary monopolizing of sovereignty, but

through the inevitable force of circumstances, by the side of the

class of ruling burgesses a second class of subjects took its place.

It was one of the primary expedients of Roman rule to subdivide the

governed by breaking up the Italian confederacies and instituting as

large a number as possible of comparatively small communities, and

to graduate the pressure of that rule according to the different

categories of subjects. As Cato in the government of his household

took care that the slaves should not be on too good terms with one

another, and designedly fomented variances and factions among them,

so the Roman community acted on a great scale. The expedient was not

generous, but it was effectual.

Aristocratic Remodelling of the Constitutions of the Italian

Communities

It was but a wider application of the same expedient, when in each

dependent community the constitution was remodelled after the Roman

pattern and a government of the wealthy and respectable families was

installed, which was naturally more or less keenly opposed to the

multitude and was induced by its material interests and by its wish

for local power to lean on Roman support. The most remarkable

instance of this sort is furnished by the treatment of Capua, which

appears to have been from the first treated with suspicious precaution

as the only Italian city that could come into possible rivalry with

Rome. The Campanian nobility received a privileged jurisdiction,

separate places of assembly, and in every respect a distinctive

position; indeed they even obtained not inconsiderable pensions

--sixteen hundred of them at 450 -stateres- (about 30 pounds)

annually--charged on the Campanian exchequer. It was these Campanian

equites, whose refusal to take part in the great Latino-Campanian

insurrection of 414 mainly contributed to its failure, and whose brave

swords decided the day in favour of the Romans at Sentinum in 459;(40)

whereas the Campanian infantry at Rhegium was the first body of

troops that in the war with Pyrrhus revolted from Rome.(41) Another

remarkable instance of the Roman practice of turning to account for

their own interest the variances between the orders in the dependent

communities by favouring the aristocracy, is furnished by the

treatment which Volsinii met with in 489. There, just as in Rome,

the old and new burgesses must have stood opposed to one another,

and the latter must have attained by legal means equality of political

rights. In consequence of this the old burgesses of Volsinii resorted

to the Roman senate with a request for the restoration of their old

constitution--a step which the ruling party in the city naturally

viewed as high treason, and inflicted legal punishment accordingly on

the petitioners. The Roman senate, however, took part with the old

burgesses, and, when the city showed no disposition to submit, not

only destroyed by military violence the communal constitution of

Volsinii which was In recognized operation, but also, by razing the

old capital of Etruria, exhibited to the Italians a fearfully palpable

proof of the mastery of Rome.

Moderation of the Government

But the Roman senate had the wisdom not to overlook the fact, that the

only means of giving permanence to despotism is moderation on the part

of the despots. On that account there was left with, or conferred on,

the dependent communities an autonomy, which included a shadow of

independence, a special share in the military and political successes

of Rome, and above all a free communal constitution--so far as

the Italian confederacy extended, there existed no community of

Helots. On that account also Rome from the very first, with a

clear-sightedness and magnanimity perhaps unparalleled in history,

waived the most dangerous of all the rights of government, the right

of taxing her subjects. At the most tribute was perhaps imposed

on the dependent Celtic cantons: so far as the Italian confederacy

extended, there was no tributary community. On that account, lastly,

while the duty of bearing arms was partially devolved on the subjects,

the ruling burgesses were by no means exempt from it; it is probable

that the latter were proportionally far more numerous than the body

of the allies; and in that body, again, probably the Latins as a whole

were liable to far greater demands upon them than the non-Latin

allied communities. There was thus a certain reasonableness in the

appropriation by which Rome ranked first, and the Latins next to her,

in the distribution of the spoil acquired in war.

Intermediate Functionaries--

Valuation of the Empire

The central administration at Rome solved the difficult problem of

preserving its supervision and control over the mass of the Italian

communities liable to furnish contingents, partly by means of the four

Italian quaestorships, partly by the extension of the Roman censorship

over the whole of the dependent communities. The quaestors of the

fleet,(42) along with their more immediate duty, had to raise

the revenues from the newly acquired domains and to control the

contingents of the new allies; they were the first Roman functionaries

to whom a residence and district out of Rome were assigned by law, and

they formed the necessary intermediate authority between the Roman

senate and the Italian communities. Moreover, as is shown by the

later municipal constitution, the chief functionaries in every Italian

community,(43) whatever might be their title, had to undertake a

valuation every fourth or fifth year--an institution, the suggestion

of which must necessarily have emanated from Rome, and which can

only have been intended to furnish the senate with a view of the

resources in men and money of the whole of Italy, corresponding

to the census in Rome.

Italy and the Italians

Lastly, with this military administrative union of the whole peoples

dwelling to the south of the Apennines, as far as the Iapygian

promontory and the straits of Rhegium, was connected the rise of a

new name common to them all--that of "the men of the toga" (-togati-),

which was their oldest designation in Roman state law, or that of the

"Italians," which was the appellation originally in use among the

Greeks and thence became universally current. The various nations

inhabiting those lands were probably first led to feel and own their

unity, partly through their common contrast to the Greeks, partly and

mainly through their common resistance to the Celts; for, although

an Italian community may now and then have made common cause with

the Celts against Rome and employed the opportunity to recover

independence, yet in the long run sound national feeling necessarily

prevailed. As the "Gallic field" down to a late period stood

contrasted in law with the Italian, so the "men of the toga" were thus

named in contrast to the Celtic "men of the hose" (-braccati-); and it

is probable that the repelling of the Celtic invasions played an

important diplomatic part as a reason or pretext for centralizing

the military resources of Italy in the hands of the Romans. Inasmuch

as the Romans on the one hand took the lead in the great national

struggle and on the other hand compelled the Etruscans, Latins,

Sabellians, Apulians, and Hellenes (within the bounds to be

immediately described) alike to fight under their standards, that

unity, which hitherto had been undefined and latent rather than

expressed, obtained firm consolidation and recognition in state law;

and the name -Italia-, which originally and even in the Greek authors

of the fifth century--in Aristotle for instance--pertained only to the

modern Calabria, was transferred to the whole land of these wearers of

the toga.

Earliest Boundaries of the Italian Confederacy

The earliest boundaries of this great armed confederacy led by Rome,

or of the new Italy, reached on the western coast as far as the

district of Leghorn south of the Arnus,(44) on the east as far as

the Aesis north of Ancona. The townships colonized by Italians,

lying beyond these limits, such as Sena Gallica and Ariminum beyond

the Apennines, and Messana in Sicily, were reckoned geographically as

situated out of Italy--even when, like Ariminum, they were members of

the confederacy or even, like Sena, were Roman burgess communities.

Still less could the Celtic cantons beyond the Apennines be reckoned

among the -togati-, although perhaps some of them were already among

the clients of Rome.

First Steps towards the Latininzing of Italy--

New Position of Rome as a Great Power

The new Italy had thus become a political unity; it was also in

the course of becoming a national unity. Already the ruling Latin

nationality had assimilated to itself the Sabines and Volscians and

had scattered isolated Latin communities over all Italy; these germs

were merely developed, when subsequently the Latin language became

the mother-tongue of every one entitled to wear the Latin toga.

That the Romans already clearly recognized this as their aim,

is shown by the familiar extension of the Latin name to the whole body

of contingent-furnishing Italian allies.(45) Whatever can still be

recognized of this grand political structure testifies to the great

political sagacity of its nameless architects; and the singular

cohesion, which that confederation composed of so many and so

diversified ingredients subsequently exhibited under the severest

shocks, stamped their great work with the seal of success. From the

time when the threads of this net drawn as skilfully as firmly around

Italy were concentrated in the hands of the Roman community, it was a

great power, and took its place in the system of the Mediterranean

states in the room of Tarentum, Lucania, and other intermediate

and minor states erased by the last wars from the list of political

powers. Rome received, as it were, an official recognition of its new

position by means of the two solemn embassies, which in 481 were sent

from Alexandria to Rome and from Rome to Alexandria, and which, though

primarily they regulated only commercial relations, beyond doubt

prepared the way for a political alliance. As Carthage was contending

with the Egyptian government regarding Cyrene and was soon to contend

with that of Rome regarding Sicily, so Macedonia was contending with

the former for the predominant influence in Greece, with the latter

proximately for the dominion of the Adriatic coasts. The new

struggles, which were preparing on all sides, could not but influence

each other, and Rome, as mistress of Italy, could not fail to be drawn

into the wide arena which the victories and projects of Alexander the

Great had marked out as the field of conflict for his successors.

Notes for Book II Chapter VII

1. The story that the Romans also sent envoys to Alexander at Babylon

on the testimony of Clitarchus (Plin. Hist. Nat. iii. 5, 57), from

whom the other authorities who mention this fact (Aristus and

Asclepiades, ap. Arrian, vii. 15, 5; Memnon, c. 25) doubtless derived

it. Clitarchus certainly was contemporary with these events;

nevertheless, his Life of Alexander was decidedly a historical romance

rather than a history; and, looking to the silence of the trustworthy

biographers (Arrian, l. c.; Liv. ix. 18) and the utterly romantic

details of the account--which represents the Romans, for instance,

as delivering to Alexander a chaplet of gold, and the latter as

prophesying the future greatness of Rome--we cannot but set down this

story as one of the many embellishments which Clitarchus introduced

into the history.

2. II. VI. Last Struggles of Samnium

3. Near the modern Anglona; not to be confounded with the better

known town of the same name in the district of Cosenza.

4. These numbers appear credible. The Roman account assigns,

probably in dead and wounded, 15,000 to each side; a later one even

specifies 5000 as dead on the Roman, and 20,000 on the Greek side.

These accounts may be mentioned here for the purpose of exhibiting,

in one of the few instances where it is possible to check the

statement, the untrustworthiness--almost without exception--of the

reports of numbers, which are swelled by the unscrupulous invention

of the annalists with avalanche-like rapidity.

5. The later Romans, and the moderns following them, give a version

of the league, as if the Romans had designedly avoided accepting the

Carthaginian help in Italy. This would have been irrational, and the

facts pronounce against it. The circumstance that Mago did not land

at Ostia is to be explained not by any such foresight, but simply by

the fact that Latium was not at all threatened by Pyrrhus and so did

not need Carthaginian aid; and the Carthaginians certainly fought for

Rome in front of Rhegium.

6. II. IV. Victories of Salamis and Himera, and Their Effects

7. II. IV. Fruitlessness of the Celtic Victory

8. The grounds for assigning the document given in Polybius (iii. 22)

not to 245, but to 406, are set forth in my Rom. Chronologie, p. 320

f. [translated in the Appendix to this volume].

9. II. V. Domination of the Romans; Exasperation of the Latins

10. II. VII. Breach between Rome and Tarentum

11. II. V. Colonization of the Volsci

12. II. V. Colonization of the Volsci

13. II. VI. New Fortresses in Apulia and Campania

14. II. VI. Last Struggles of Samnium

15. II. VII. Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

16. II. VII. The Boii

17. II. VII. Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

18. These were Pyrgi, Ostia, Antium, Tarracina, Minturnae, Sinuessa

Sena Gallica, and Castrum Novum.

19. This statement is quite as distinct (Liv. viii. 14; -interdictum

mari Antiati populo est-) as it is intrinsically credible; for Antium

was inhabited not merely by colonists, but also by its former citizens

who had been nursed in enmity to Rome (II. V. Colonizations in The

Land Of The Volsci). This view is, no doubt, inconsistent with the

Greek accounts, which assert that Alexander the Great (431) and

Demetrius Poliorcetes (471) lodged complaints at Rome regarding

Antiate pirates. The former statement is of the same stamp, and

perhaps from the same source, with that regarding the Roman embassy to

Babylon (II. VII. Relations Between The East and West). It seems more

likely that Demetrius Poliorcetes may have tried by edict to put down

piracy in the Tyrrhene sea which he had never set eyes upon, and it is

not at all inconceivable that the Antiates may have even as Roman

citizens, in defiance of the prohibition, continued for a time their

old trade in an underhand fashion: much dependence must not however,

be placed even on the second story.

20. II. VI. Last Campaigns in Samnium

21. II. VII. Decline of the Roman Naval Power

22. According to Servius (in Aen. iv. 628) it was stipulated in the

Romano-Carthaginian treaties, that no Roman should set foot on (or

rather occupy) Carthaginian, and no Carthaginian on Roman, soil, but

Corsica was to remain in a neutral position between them (-ut neque

Romani ad litora Carthaginiensium accederent neque Carthaginienses

ad litora Romanorum.....Corsica esset media inter Romanos et

Carthaginienses-). This appears to refer to our present period,

and the colonization of Corsica seems to have been prevented by

this very treaty.

23. II. VII. Submission of Lower Italy

24. The clause, by which a dependent people binds itself "to uphold

in a friendly manner the sovereignty of that of Rome" (-maiestatem

populi Romani comiter conservare-), is certainly the technical

appellation of that mildest form of subjection, but it probably did

not come into use till a considerably later period (Cic. pro Balbo,

16, 35). The appellation of clientship derived from private law,

aptly as in its very indefiniteness it denotes the relation (Dig.

xlix. 15, 7, i), was scarcely applied to it officially in earlier

times.

25. II. IV. South Etruria Roman

26. II. VI. Consolidation of the Roman Rule in Central Italy

27. II. VI. Last Struggles of Samnium

28. II. V. Complete Submission of the Volscian and Campanian

Provinces

29. II. V. Complete Submission of the Volscian and Campanian

Provinces

30. That Tusculum as it was the first to obtain passive

burgess-rights (II. V. Crises within the Romano-Latin League)

was also the first to exchange these for the rights of full burgesses,

is probable in itself and presumably it is in the latter and not in

the former respect that the town is named by Cicero (pro Mur. 8, 19)

-municipium antiquissimum-.

31. II. V. Complete Submission of the Volscian and Campanian

Provinces

32. II. IV. South Etruria Roman

33. -V. Cervio A. f. cosol dedicavit- and -lunonei Quiritri sacra. C.

Falcilius L. f. consol dedicavit-.

34. According to the testimony of Cicero (pro Caec. 35) Sulla gave to

the Volaterrans the former -ius- of Ariminum, that is--adds the

orator--the -ius- of the "twelve colonies" which had not the Roman

-civitas- but had full -commercium- with the Romans. Few things have

been so much discussed as the question to what places this -ius- of

the twelve towns refers; and yet the answer is not far to seek. There

were in Italy and Cisalpine Gaul--laying aside some places that soon

disappeared again--thirty-four Latin colonies established in all.

The twelve most recent of these--Ariminum, Beneventum, Firmum,

Aesernia, Brundisium, Spoletium, Cremona, Placentia, Copia, Valentia,

Bononia, and Aquileia--are those here referred to; and because

Ariminum was the oldest of these and the town for which this new

organization was primarily established, partly perhaps also because it

was the first Roman colony founded beyond Italy, the -ius- of these

colonies rightly took its name from Ariminum. This at the same time

demonstrates the truth of the view--which already had on other grounds

very high probability--that all the colonies established in Italy (in

the wider sense of the term) after the founding of Aquileia belonged

to the class of burgess-colonies.

We cannot fully determine the extent to which the curtailment of the

rights of the more recent Latin towns was carried, as compared with

the earlier. If intermarriage, as is not improbable but is in fact

anything but definitely established (i. 132; Diodor. p. 590, 62, fr.

Vat. p. 130, Dind.), formed a constituent element of the original

federal equality of rights, it was, at any rate, no longer conceded

to the Latin colonies of more recent origin.

35. II. V. League with the Hernici

36. II. VI. Pacification of Campania

37. II. VI. Victory of the Romans

38. II. VII. The War in Italy Flags

39. It is to be regretted that we are unable to give satisfactory

information as to the proportional numbers. We may estimate the

number of Roman burgesses capable of bearing arms in the later regal

period as about 20,000. (I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform) Now

from the fall of Alba to the conquest of Veii the immediate territory

of Rome received no material extension; in perfect accordance with

which we find that from the first institution of the twenty-one tribes

about 259, (II. II. Coriolanus) which involved no, or at any rate no

considerable, extension of the Roman bounds, no new tribes were

instituted till 367. However abundant allowance we make for increase

by the excess of births over deaths, by immigration, and by

manumissions, it is absolutely impossible to reconcile with the narrow

limits of a territory of hardly 650 square miles the traditional

numbers of the census, according to which the number of Roman

burgesses capable of bearing arms in the second half of the third

century varied between 104,000 and 150,000, and in 362, regarding

which a special statement is extant, amounted to 152,573. These

numbers must rather stand on a parallel with the 84,700 burgesses of

the Servian census; and in general the whole earlier census-lists,

carried back to the four lustres of Servius Tullius and furnished with

copious numbers, must belong to the class of those apparently

documentary traditions which delight in, and betray themselves

by the very fact of, such numerical details.

It was only with the second half of the fourth century that the large

extensions of territory, which must have suddenly and considerably

augmented the burgess roll, began. It is reported on trustworthy

authority and is intrinsically credible, that about 416 the Roman

burgesses numbered 165,000; which very well agrees with the statement

that ten years previously, when the whole militia was called out

against Latium and the Gauls, the first levy amounted to ten legions,

that is, to 50,000 men. Subsequently to the great extensions of

territory in Etruria, Latium, and Campania, in the fifth century the

effective burgesses numbered, on an average, 250,000; immediately

before the first Punic war, 280,000 to 290,000. These numbers are

certain enough, but they are not quite available historically for

another reason, namely, that in them probably the Roman full burgesses

and the "burgesses without vote" not serving, like the Campanians, in

legions of their own, --such, e. g., as the Caerites, --are included

together in the reckoning, while the latter must at any rate -de

facto- be counted among the subjects (Rom. Forsch. ii. 396).

40. II. VI. Battle of Sentinum

41. II. VII. Commencement of the Conflict in Lower Italy

42. II. VII. Quaestors of the Fleet

43. Not merely in every Latin one; for the censorship or so-called

-quinquennalitas- occurs, as is well known, also among communities

whose constitution was not formed according to the Latin scheme.

44. This earliest boundary is probably indicated by the two small

townships -Ad fines-, of which one lay north of Arezzo on the road

to Florence, the second on the coast not far from Leghorn. Somewhat

further to the south of the latter, the brook and valley of Vada are

still called -Fiume della fine-, -Valle della fine- (Targioni

Tozzetti, Viaggj, iv. 430).

45. In strict official language, indeed, this was not the case.

The fullest designation of the Italians occurs in the agrarian law of

643, line 21; -[ceivis] Romanus sociumve nominisve Latini, quibus ex

formula togatorum [milites in terra Italia imperare solent]-; in like

manner at the 29th line of the same -peregrinus- is distinguished from

the -Latinus-, and in the decree of the senate as to the Bacchanalia

in 568 the expression is used: -ne quis ceivis Romanus neve nominis

Latini neve socium quisquam-. But in common use very frequently the

second or third of these three subdivisions is omitted, and along

with the Romans sometimes only those Latini nominis are mentioned,

sometimes only the -socii- (Weissenborn on Liv. xxii. 50, 6), while

there is no difference in the meaning. The designation -homines

nominis Latini ac socii Italici- (Sallust. Jug. 40), correct as it is

in itself, is foreign to the official -usus loquendi, which knows

-Italia-, but not -Italici-.

CHAPTER VIII

Law, Religion, Military System, Economic Condition, Nationality

Development of Law

In the development which law underwent during this period within the

Roman community, probably the most important material innovation was

that peculiar control which the community itself, and in a subordinate

degree its office-bearers, began to exercise over the manners and

habits of the individual burgesses. The germ of it is to be sought in

the right of the magistrate to inflict property-fines (-multae-) for

offences against order.(1) In the case of all fines of more than two

sheep and thirty oxen or, after the cattle-fines had been by the

decree of the people in 324 commuted into money, of more than 3020

libral -asses- (30 pounds), the decision soon after the expulsion of

the kings passed by way of appeal into the hands of the community;(2)

and thus procedure by fine acquired an importance which it was far

from originally possessing. Under the vague category of offences

against order men might include any accusations they pleased, and by

the higher grades in the scale of fines they might accomplish whatever

they desired. The dangerous character of such arbitrary procedure was

brought to light rather than obviated by the mitigating proviso, that

these property-fines, where they were not fixed by law at a definite

sum, should not amount to half the estate belonging to the person

fined. To this class belonged the police-laws, which from the earliest

times were especially abundant in the Roman community. Such were those

enactments of the Twelve Tables, which prohibited the anointing of a

dead body by persons hired for the purpose, the dressing it out with

more than one cushion or more than three purple-edged coverings, the

decorating it with gold or gaudy chaplets, the use of dressed wood for

the funeral pile, and the perfuming or sprinkling of the pyre with

frankincense or myrrh-wine; which limited the number of flute-players

in the funeral procession to ten at most; and which forbade wailing

women and funeral banquets--in a certain measure the earliest Roman

legislation against luxury. Such also were the laws--originating

in the conflicts of the orders--directed against usury as well as

against an undue use of the common pasture and a disproportionate

appropriation of the occupiable domain-land. But far more fraught

with danger than these and similar fining-laws, which at any rate

formulated once for all the trespass and often also the measure of

punishment, was the general prerogative of every magistrate who

exercised jurisdiction to inflict a fine for an offence against order,

and, if the fine reached the amount necessary to found an appeal and

the person fined did not submit to the penalty, to bring the case

before the community. Already in the course of the fifth century

quasi-criminal proceedings had been in this way instituted against

immorality of life both in men and women, against the forestalling of

grain, witchcraft, and similar matters. Closely akin to this was the

quasi-jurisdiction of the censors, which likewise sprang up at this

period. They were invested with authority to adjust the Roman budget

and the burgess-roll, and they availed themselves of it, partly to

impose of their own accord taxes on luxury which differed only in form

from penalties on it, partly to abridge or withdraw the political

privileges of the burgess who was reported to have been guilty of any

infamous action.(3) The extent to which this surveillance was already

carried is shown by the fact that penalties of this nature were

inflicted for the negligent cultivation of a man's own land, and that

such a man as Publius Cornelius Rufinus (consul in 464, 477) was

struck off the list of senators by the censors of 479, because he

possessed silver plate to the value of 3360 sesterces (34 pounds).

No doubt, according to the rule generally applicable to the edicts of

magistrates,(4) the sentences of the censors had legal force only

during their censorship, that is on an average for the next five

years, and might be renewed or not by the next censors at pleasure.

Nevertheless this censorial prerogative was of so immense importance,

that in virtue of it the censorship, originally a subordinate

magistracy, became in rank and consideration the first of all.(5)

The government of the senate rested essentially on this twofold

police control supreme and subordinate, vested in the community and

its officials, and furnished with powers as extensive as they were

arbitrary. Like every such arbitrary government, it was productive

of much good and much evil, and we do not mean to combat the view of

those who hold that the evil preponderated. But we must not forget

that--amidst the morality external certainly but stern and energetic,

and the powerful enkindling of public spirit, that were the genuine

characteristics of this period--these institutions remained exempt

as yet from any really base misuse; and if they were the chief

instruments in repressing individual freedom, they were also the means

by which the public spirit and the good old manners and order of the

Roman community were with might and main upheld.

Modifications in the Laws

Along with these changes a humanizing and modernizing tendency showed

itself slowly, but yet clearly enough, in the development of Roman

law. Most of the enactmerits of the Twelve Tables, which coincide with

the laws of Solon and therefore may with reason be considered as in

substance innovations, bear this character; such as the securing the

right of free association and the autonomy of the societies that

originated under it; the enactment that forbade the ploughing up of

boundary-balks; and the mitigation of the punishment of theft, so that

a thief not caught in the act might henceforth release himself from

the plaintiff's suit by payment of double compensation. The law of

debt was modified in a similar sense, but not till upwards of a

century afterwards, by the Poetelian law.(6) The right freely to

dispose of property, which according to the earliest Roman law was

accorded to the owner in his lifetime but in the case of death had

hitherto been conditional on the consent of the community, was

liberated from this restriction, inasmuch as the law of the Twelve

Tables or its interpretation assigned to the private testament the

same force as pertained to that confirmed in the curies. This was

an important step towards the breaking up of the clanships, and

towards the full carrying out of individual liberty in the disposal

of property. The fearfully absolute paternal power was restricted by

the enactment, that a son thrice sold by his father should not relapse

into his power, but should thenceforth be free; to which--by a legal

inference that, strictly viewed, was no doubt absurd--was soon

attached the possibility that a father might voluntarily divest

himself of dominion over his son by emancipation. In the law of

marriage civil marriage was permitted;(7) and although the full

marital power was associated as necessarily with a true civil as with

a true religious marriage, yet the permission of a connection instead

of marriage,(8) formed without that power, constituted a first step

towards relaxation of the full power of the husband. The first step

towards a legal enforcement of married life was the tax on old

bachelors (-aes uxorium-) with the introduction of which Camillus

began his public career as censor in 351.

Administration of Justice--

Code of Common Law--

New Judicial Functionaries

Changes more comprehensive than those effected in the law itself were

introduced into--what was more important in a political point of view,

and more easily admitted of alteration--the system of judicial

administration. First of all came the important limitation of the

supreme judicial power by the embodiment of the common law in a

written code, and the obligation of the magistrate thenceforth to

decide no longer according to varying usage, but according to the

written letter, in civil as well as in criminal procedure (303, 304).

The appointment of a supreme magistrate in Rome exclusively for the

administration of justice in 387,(9) and the establishment of

separate police functionaries which took place contemporaneously

in Rome, and was imitated under Roman influence in all the Latin

communities,(10) secured greater speed and precision of justice.

These police-magistrates or aediles had, of course, a certain

jurisdiction at the same time assigned to them. On the one hand,

they were the ordinary civil judges for sales concluded in open

market, for the cattle and slave markets in particular; and on

the other hand, they ordinarily acted in processes of fines and

amercements as judges of first instance or--which was in Roman

law the same thing--as public prosecutors. In consequence of this the

administration of the laws imposing fines, and the equally indefinite

and politically important right of fining in general, were vested

mainly in them. Similar but subordinate functions, having especial

reference to the poorer classes, pertained to the three night--or

blood-masters (-tres viri nocturni- or -capitales-), first nominated

in 465; they were entrusted with the duties of nocturnal police as

regards fire and the public safety and with the superintendence of

executions, with which a certain summary jurisdiction was very soon,

perhaps even from the outset, associated.(11) Lastly from the

increasing extent of the Roman community it became necessary, out of

regard to the convenience of litigants, to station in the more remote

townships special judges competent to deal at least with minor civil

causes. This arrangement was the rule for the communities of burgesses

-sine suffragio-,(12) and was perhaps even extended to the more

remote communities of full burgesses,(13)--the first germs of a

Romano-municipal jurisdiction developing itself by the side of that

which was strictly Roman.

Changes in Procedure

In civil procedure (which, however, according to the ideas of that

period included most of the crimes committed against fellow-citizens)

the division of a process into the settlement of the question of law

before the magistrate (-ius-), and the decision of the question of

fact by a private person nominated by the magistrate (-iudicium-)

--a division doubtless customary even in earlier times--was on

the abolition of the monarchy prescribed by law;(14) and to that

separation the private law of Rome was mainly indebted for its logical

clearness and practical precision.(15) In actions regarding property,

the decision as to what constituted possession, which hitherto had

been left to the arbitrary caprice of the magistrate, was subjected

gradually to legal rules; and, alongside of the law of property, a law

of possession was developed--another step, by which the magisterial

authority lost an important part of its powers. In criminal processes,

the tribunal of the people, which hitherto had exercised the

prerogative of mercy, became a court of legally secured appeal. If the

accused after hearing (-quaestio-) was condemned by the magistrate and

appealed to the burgesses, the magistrate proceeded in presence of

these to the further hearing (-anquisitio-) and, when he after three

times discussing the matter before the community had repeated his

decision, in the fourth diet the sentence was confirmed or rejected

by the burgesses. Modification was not allowed. A similar republican

spirit breathed in the principles, that the house protected the

burgess, and that an arrest could only take place out of doors; that

imprisonment during investigation was to be avoided; and that it

was allowable for every accused and not yet condemned burgess by

renouncing his citizenship to withdraw from the consequences of

condemnation, so far as they affected not his property but his

person-principles, which certainly were not embodied in formal laws

and accordingly did not legally bind the prosecuting magistrate, but

yet were by their moral weight of the greatest influence, particularly

in limiting capital punishment. But, if the Roman criminal law

furnishes a remarkable testimony to the strong public spirit and to

the increasing humanity of this epoch, it on the other hand suffered

in its practical working from the struggles between the orders, which

in this respect were specially baneful. The co-ordinate primary

jurisdiction of all the public magistrates in criminal cases, that

arose out of these conflicts,(16) led to the result, that there was

no longer any fixed authority for giving instructions, or any serious

preliminary investigation, in Roman criminal procedure. And, as the

ultimate criminal jurisdiction was exercised in the forms and by

the organs of legislation, and never disowned its origin from the

prerogative of mercy; as, moreover, the treatment of police fines had

an injurious reaction on the criminal procedure which was externally

very similar; the decision in criminal causes was pronounced--and that

not so much by way of abuse, as in some degree by virtue of the

constitution--not according to fixed law, but according to the

arbitrary pleasure of the judges. In this way the Roman criminal

procedure was completely void of principle, and was degraded into

the sport and instrument of political parties; which can the less be

excused, seeing that this procedure, while especially applied to

political crimes proper, was applicable also to others, such as murder

and arson. The evil was aggravated by the clumsiness of that

procedure, which, in concert with the haughty republican contempt for

non-burgesses, gave rise to a growing custom of tolerating, side by

side with the more formal process, a summary criminal, or rather

police, procedure against slaves and common people. Here too the

passionate strife regarding political processes overstepped natural

limits, and introduced institutions which materially contributed to

estrange the Romans step by step from the idea of a fixed moral order

in the administration of justice.

Religion--

New Gods

We are less able to trace the progress of the religious conceptions of

the Romans during this epoch. In general they adhered with simplicity

to the simple piety of their ancestors, and kept equally aloof from

superstition and from unbelief. How vividly the idea of spiritualizing

all earthly objects, on which the Roman religion was based, still

prevailed at the close of this epoch, is shown by the new "God of

silver" (-Argentinus-), who presumably came into existence only in

consequence of the introduction of the silver currency in 485, and who

naturally was the son of the older "God of copper" (-Aesculanus-).

The relations to foreign lands were the same as heretofore; but here,

and here especially, Hellenic influences were on the increase. It was

only now that temples began to rise in Rome itself in honour of the

Hellenic gods. The oldest was the temple of Castor and Pollux, which

had been vowed in the battle at lake Regillus(17) and was consecrated

on 15th July 269. The legend associated with it, that two youths of

superhuman size and beauty had been seen fighting on the battle-field

in the ranks of the Romans and immediately after the battle watering

their foaming steeds in the Roman Forum at the fountain of luturna,

and announcing the great victory, bears a stamp thoroughly un-Roman,

and was beyond doubt at a very early period modelled on the appearance

of the Dioscuri--similar down to its very details--in the famous

battle fought about a century before between the Crotoniates and

Locrians at the river Sagras. The Delphic Apollo too was not only

consulted--as was usual with all peoples that felt the influence of

Grecian culture--and presented moreover after special successes, such

as the capture of Veii, with a tenth of the spoil (360), but also had

a temple built for him in the city (323, renewed 401). The same honour

was towards the close of this period accorded to Aphrodite (459), who

was in some enigmatical way identified with the old Roman garden

goddess, Venus;(18) and to Asklapios or Aesculapius, who was obtained

by special request from Epidaurus in the Peloponnesus and solemnly

conducted to Rome (463). Isolated complaints were heard in serious

emergencies as to the intrusion of foreign superstition, presumably

the art of the Etruscan -haruspices- (as in 326); but in such cases

the police did not fail to take proper cognisance of the matter.

In Etruria on the other hand, while the nation stagnated and decayed

in political nullity and indolent opulence, the theological monopoly

of the nobility, stupid fatalism, wild and meaningless mysticism, the

system of soothsaying and of mendicant prophecy gradually developed

themselves, till they reached the height at which we afterwards find

them.

Sacerdotal System

In the sacerdotal system no comprehensive changes, so far as we know,

took place. The more stringent enactments, that were made about 465

regarding the collection of the process-fines destined to defray the

cost of public worship, point to an increase in the ritual budget of

the state--a necessary result of the increase in the number of its

gods and its temples. It has already been mentioned as one of the evil

effects of the dissensions between the orders that an illegitimate

influence began to be conceded to the colleges of men of lore, and

that they were employed for the annulling of political acts(19)--a

course by which on the one hand the faith of the people was shaken,

and on the other hand the priests were permitted to exercise a very

injurious influence on public affairs.

Military System--

Manipular Legion--

Entrenchment of Camp--

Cavalry--

Officers--

Military Discipline--

Training and Classes of Soldiers--

Military Value of the Manipular Legion

A complete revolution occurred during this epoch in the military

system. The primitive Graeco-Italian military organization, which was

probably based, like the Homeric, on the selection of the most

distinguished and effective warriors--who ordinarily fought on

horseback--to form a special vanguard, had in the later regal period

been superseded by the -legio--the old Dorian phalanx of hoplites,

probably eight file deep.(20) This phalanx thenceforth undertook the

chief burden of the battle, while the cavalry were stationed on the

flanks, and, mounted or dismounted according to circumstances, were

chiefly employed as a reserve. From this arrangement there were

developed nearly at the same time the phalanx of -sarrissae-in

Macedonia and the manipular arrangement in Italy, the former formed by

closing and deepening, the latter by breaking up and multiplying, the

ranks, in the first instance by the division of the old -legio- of

8400 into two -legiones- of 4200 men each. The old Doric phalanx had

been wholly adapted to close combat with the sword and especially with

the spear, and only an accessory and subordinate position in the order

of battle was assigned to missile weapons. In the manipular legion the

thrusting-lance was confined to the third division, and instead of it

the first two were furnished with a new and peculiar Italian missile

weapon, the -pilum- a square or round piece of wood, four and a half

feet long, with a triangular or quadrangular iron point--which had

been originally perhaps invented for the defence of the ramparts of

the camp, but was soon transferred from the rear to the front ranks,

and was hurled by the advancing line into the ranks of the enemy at a

distance of from ten to twenty paces. At the same time the sword

acquired far greater importance than the short knife of the phalangite

could ever have had; for the volley of javelins was intended in the

first instance merely to prepare the way for an attack sword in hand.

While, moreover, the phalanx had, as if it were a single mighty lance,

to be hurled at once upon the enemy, in the new Italian legion the

smaller units, which existed also in the phalanx system but were in

the order of battle firmly and indissolubly united, were tactically

separated from each other. Not merely was the close square divided, as

we have said, into two equally strong halves, but each of these was

separated in the direction of its depth into the three divisions of

the -hastati-, - principes-, and -triarii-, each of a moderate depth

probably amounting in ordinary cases to only four files; and was

broken up along the front into ten bands (-manipuli-), in such a way

that between every two divisions and every two maniples there was left

a perceptible interval. It was a mere continuation of the same process

of individualizing, by which the collective mode of fighting was

discouraged even in the diminished tactical unit and the single combat

became prominent, as is evident from the (already mentioned) decisive

part played by hand-to-hand encounters and combats with the sword. The

system of entrenching the camp underwent also a peculiar development.

The place where the army encamped, even were it only for a single

night, was invariably provided with a regular circumvallation and as

it were converted into a fortress. Little change took place on the

other hand in the cavalry, which in the manipular legion retained the

secondary part which it had occupied by the side of the phalanx. The

system of officering the army also continued in the main unchanged;

only now over each of the two legions of the regular army there were

set just as many war-tribunes as had hitherto commanded the whole

army, and the number of staff-officers was thus doubled. It was at

this period probably that the clear line of demarcation became

established between the subaltern officers, who as common soldiers had

to gain their place at the head of the maniples by the sword and

passed by regular promotion from the lower to the higher maniples, and

the military tribunes placed at the head of whole legions--six to

each--in whose case there was no regular promotion, and for whom men

of the better class were usually taken. In this respect it must have

become a matter of importance that, while previously the subaltern

as well as the staff-officers had been uniformly nominated by the

general, after 392 some of the latter posts were filled up through

election by the burgesses.(21) Lastly, the old, fearfully strict,

military discipline remained unaltered. Still, as formerly, the

general was at liberty to behead any man serving in his camp, and to

scourge with rods the staff-officer as well as the common soldier;

nor were such punishments inflicted merely on account of common

crimes, but also when an officer had allowed himself to deviate from

the orders which he had received, or when a division had allowed

itself to be surprised or had fled from the field of battle. On the

other hand, the new military organization necessitated a far more

serious and prolonged military training than the previous phalanx

system, in which the solidity of the mass kept even the inexperienced

in their ranks. If nevertheless no special soldier-class sprang up,

but on the contrary the army still remained, as before, a burgess

army, this object was chiefly attained by abandoning the former mode

of ranking the soldiers according to property(22) and arranging them

according to length of service. The Roman recruit now entered among

the light-armed "skirmishers" (-rorarii-), who fought outside of the

line and especially with stone slings, and he advanced from this step

by step to the first and then to the second division, till at length

the soldiers of long service and experience were associated together

in the corps of the -triarii-, which was numerically the weakest but

imparted its tone and spirit to the whole army.

The excellence of this military organization, which became the primary

cause of the superior political position of the Roman community,

chiefly depended on the three great military principles of maintaining

a reserve, of combining the close and distant modes of fighting, and

of combining the offensive and the defensive. The system of a reserve

was already foreshadowed in the earlier employment of the cavalry,

but it was now completely developed by the partition of the army into

three divisions and the reservation of the flower of the veterans for

the last and decisive shock. While the Hellenic phalanx had developed

the close, and the Oriental squadrons of horse armed with bows and

light missile spears the distant, modes of fighting respectively, the

Roman combination of the heavy javelin with the sword produced results

similar, as has justly been remarked, to those attained in modern

warfare by the introduction of bayonet-muskets; the volley of javelins

prepared the way for the sword encounter, exactly in the same way as a

volley of musketry now precedes a charge with the bayonet. Lastly,

the elaborate system of encampment allowed the Romans to combine the

advantages of defensive and offensive war and to decline or give

battle according to circumstances, and in the latter case to fight

under the ramparts of their camp just as under the walls of a

fortress--the Roman, says a Roman proverb, conquers by sitting still.

Origin of the Manipular Legion

That this new military organization was in the main a Roman, or at any

rate Italian, remodelling and improvement of the old Hellenic tactics

of the phalanx, is plain. If some germs of the system of reserve and

of the individualizing of the smaller subdivisions of the army are

found to occur among the later Greek strategists, especially Xenophon,

this only shows that they felt the defectiveness of the old system,

but were not well able to obviate it. The manipular legion appears

fully developed in the war with Pyrrhus; when and under what

circumstances it arose, whether at once or gradually, can no

longer be ascertained. The first tactical system which the Romans

encountered, fundamentally different from the earlier Italo-Hellenic

system, was the Celtic sword-phalanx. It is not impossible that the

subdivision of the army and the intervals between the maniples in

front were arranged with a view to resist, as they did resist, its

first and only dangerous charge; and it accords with this hypothesis

that Marcus Furius Camillus, the most celebrated Roman general of the

Gallic epoch, is presented in various detached notices as the reformer

of the Roman military system. The further traditions associated with

the Samnite and Pyrrhic wars are neither sufficiently accredited, nor

can they with certainty be duly arranged;(23) although it is in itself

probable that the prolonged Samnite mountain warfare exercised a

lasting influence on the individual development of the Roman soldier,

and that the struggle with one of the first masters of the art of war,

belonging to the school of the great Alexander, effected an

improvement in the technical features of the Roman military system.

National Economy--

The Farmers--

Farming of Estates

In the national economy agriculture was, and continued to be, the

social and political basis both of the Roman community and of the new

Italian state. The common assembly and the army consisted of Roman

farmers; what as soldiers they had acquired by the sword, they secured

as colonists by the plough. The insolvency of the middle class of

landholders gave rise to the formidable internal crises of the third

and fourth centuries, amidst which it seemed as if the young republic

could not but be destroyed. The revival of the Latin farmer-class,

which was produced during the fifth century partly by the large

assignations of land and incorporations, partly by the fall in the

rate of interest and the increase of the Roman population, was at once

the effect and the cause of the mighty development of Roman power.

The acute soldier's eye of Pyrrhus justly discerned the cause of the

political and military ascendency of the Romans in the flourishing

condition of the Roman farms. But the rise also of husbandry on a

large scale among the Romans appears to fall within this period.

In earlier times indeed there existed landed estates of--at least

comparatively--large size; but their management was not farming on a

large scale, it was simply a husbandry of numerous small parcels.(24)

On the other hand the enactment in the law of 387, not incompatible

indeed with the earlier mode of management but yet far more

appropriate to the later, viz. that the landholder should be bound

to employ along with his slaves a proportional number of free

persons,(25) may well be regarded as the oldest trace of the later

centralized farming of estates;(26) and it deserves notice that even

here at its first emergence it essentially rests on slave-holding. How

it arose, must remain an undecided point; possibly the Carthaginian

plantations in Sicily served as models to the oldest Roman

landholders, and perhaps even the appearance of wheat in husbandry

by the side of spelt,(27) which Varro places about the period of the

decemvirs, was connected with that altered style of management. Still

less can we ascertain how far this method of husbandry had already

during this period spread; but the history of the wars with Hannibal

leaves no doubt that it cannot yet have become the rule, nor can it

have yet absorbed the Italian farmer class. Where it did come into

vogue, however, it annihilated the older clientship based on the

-precarium-; just as the modern system of large farms has been formed

in great part by the suppression of petty holdings and the conversion

of hides into farm-fields. It admits of no doubt that the restriction

of this agricultural clientship very materially contributed towards

the distress of the class of small cultivators.

Inland Intercourse in Italy

Respecting the internal intercourse of the Italians with each other

our written authorities are silent; coins alone furnish some

information. We have already mentioned(28) that in Italy, with the

exception of the Greek cities and of the Etruscan Populonia, there was

no coinage during the first three centuries of Rome, and that cattle

in the first instance, and subsequently copper by weight, served as

the medium of exchange. Within the present epoch occurred the

transition on the part of the Italians from the system of barter to

that of money; and in their money they were naturally led at first to

Greek models. The circumstances of central Italy led however to the

adoption of copper instead of silver as the metal for their coinage,

and the unit of coinage was primarily based on the previous unit of

value, the copper pound; hence they cast their coins instead of

stamping them, for no die would have sufficed for pieces so large and

heavy. Yet there seems from the first to have been a fixed ratio for

the relative value of copper and silver (250:1), and with reference to

that ratio the copper coinage seems to have been issued; so that, for

example, in Rome the large copper piece, the -as-, was equal in value

to a scruple (1/288 of a pound) of silver. It is a circumstance

historically more remarkable, that coining in Italy most probably

originated in Rome, and in fact with the decemvirs, who found in the

Solonian legislation a pattern for the regulation of their coinage;

and that from Rome it spread over a number of Latin, Etruscan,

Umbrian, and east-Italian communities, --a clear proof of the superior

position which Rome from the beginning of the fourth century held in

Italy. As all these communities subsisted side by side in formal

independence, legally the monetary standard was entirely local, and

the territory of every city had its own monetary system. Nevertheless

the standards of copper coinage in central and northern Italy may be

comprehended in three groups, within which the coins in common

intercourse seem to have been treated as homogeneous. These groups

are, first, the coins of the cities of Etruria lying north of the

Ciminian Forest and those of Umbria; secondly, the coins of Rome and

Latium; and lastly, those of the eastern seaboard. We have already

observed that the Roman coins held a certain ratio to silver by

weight; on the other hand we find those of the east coast of Italy

placed in a definite proportional relation to the silver coins which

were current from an early period in southern Italy, and the standard

of which was adopted by the Italian immigrants, such as the Bruttians,

Lucanians, and Nolans, by the Latin colonies in that quarter, such as

Cales and Suessa, and even by the Romans themselves for their

possessions in Lower Italy. Accordingly the inland traffic of Italy

must have been divided into corresponding provinces, which dealt with

one another like foreign nations.