WARS WITH THE VOLSCIANS AND ÆQUIANS. LEAGUE WITH THE HERNICANS.

Immediately after this gleam of light, the same darkness comes upon

us as before, for some time only the Fasti remain to us. In Livy here

follows the story of Coriolanus.

If in a book a sheet is misplaced, it ought to be set right unless

we would have the writer talk nonsense. The case is the same when an

historical fact is placed in a wrong time. I see no reason why I should

not believe that a Siceliote king in a famine had sent corn to Rome;

yet the tyrants of Sicily first make their appearance some Olympiads

later than the period assigned for the story of Coriolanus. I believe

that Coriolanus was first of all brought to trial by the _Plebes_; yet

the latter would not indeed have ventured upon such a thing before the

Publilian law. The Romans also could not have quarrelled under Sp.

Cassius about the distribution of the _ager publicus_, if the Volscians

had advanced as far as Lavinium. I believe moreover, that a L. Junius

Brutus established the heavy penalties against the interruption of the

tribunes when they addressed the people; but he who placed this history

in the year 262, could not have believed any thing of all this. For

this reason I maintain that it does not belong to this epoch, but that

it can only have happened after the passing of the Publilian law. Cn.

or C. Marcius may perhaps have stood his ground in the war against the

Antiates; but he cannot have conquered Corioli, as it takes part that

very same year in the league of the Latin towns. We must either reject

the whole story as a romance, or date it from quite a different period.

A further combination was attempted with regard to it. The temple of

_Fortuna muliebris_ in the Via Latina, between the fourth and the fifth

milestones, happened to be on the same spot where Coriolanus encamped

as an exile, and the reconciliation took place. Now the supplication

of the mother and the matrons, which may be historical, was connected

with the name of the _Fortuna muliebris_; and it was believed that this

temple, the time of the building of which was known, had been erected

in consequence of that event. Yet _Fortuna muliebris_ corresponds with

_Fortuna virilis_, who had a temple in Rome, a male and a female deity,

as _Tellus_ and _Tellumo_. The same contraposition is also exhibited in

_animus_ and _anima_.[93]

Livy says that he would not be astonished if his readers felt tired of

the wars of the Volscians and Æquians. And indeed every one has this

feeling from the time when he first became acquainted with Livy. The

narrative spoils the elegance of the first decade. What has made these

wars so peculiarly troublesome to him, is the circumstance that he

does not distinguish between them, nor divide them into periods. With

the exception of what remains in Dionysius on the subject, he is the

only source we have, and so it is difficult for us to get a general

view of the events. The first period reaches down to the last years

of the decennium from 280 to 290. Its beginning is shrouded in great

darkness; the conquests of Tarquin the Proud are very vague. Afterwards

we find the Volscians under the name of Auruncians invading the Latin

territory; then follow a number of petty wars to about 290; in the last

years we see the Volscians in possession of Antium, though they soon

lose it again. In the second period the tables are turned: the Æquians

take an energetic part in the war of the Volscians; Latium is entirely

crushed; the war takes a very unfortunate turn for the Romans, Latins

and Hernicans. This lasts to about 296, when the Romans make peace

with the Volscians properly so called, and the danger is warded off.

In the third period, the Romans carry on the war singlehanded against

the Æquians: it has lost its dangerous character, and is on both sides

carried on very languidly. Then follows another Volscian war against

the Ecetrans, leagued with the Æquians. This fourth period is ushered

in by the great victory of A. Postumius Tubertus (324); from which time

the Romans keep advancing until the war with the Gauls, conquering

many Volscian towns, and weakening the Æquians. In the Gallic war the

Æquians also may have suffered much. Afterwards,--and this is the fifth

period,--the wars begin anew, but their character is quite different.

The Æquians are insignificant foes, and the Volscians amalgamated with

the Latins, fighting like them for their own independence.

I will not go through these wars. No memory is capable of retaining

them; and they are also deficient in authenticity, and that because

the historian, weary of them, has read and written them in too great

a hurry. After the Latin league, the enemy make a fierce onslaught,

without, however, conquering much. Circeii in the time of Sp. Cassius

is still a Latin town.

An event of relatively great importance for the Romans was the league

with the Hernicans (267). Isopolity must already have existed early,

if it be true, that under Tarquin the Proud these had a share in the

festival of Jupiter Latiaris. A Roman tradition even mentions them

as allies of Tullus Hostilius. After the humiliation of Rome by the

Etruscans, they must, like the Latins, and the Tyrrhenian towns on the

sea coast, have set themselves free. The league restored the relations

in a manner very advantageous for them. Romans, Latins, and Hernicans

were to be quite on the same footing; the booty, as well in money

as in land, was divided in equal shares; if a colony were sent out,

the colonists were taken from all the three. Whether the annalists

have rightly understood the matter,--Livy and Dionysius differ very

much from each other,--or whether they merely took it for granted

that whenever a peace is concluded, it must have been preceded by a

war, cannot be decided. Yet I am inclined to believe that the league

was brought about by mutual necessity, as both were hemmed in by the

Volscians and Æquians, and the fortified towns of the Hernicans were

of great consequence to the Romans: a war would at least have been

very absurd. The Hernicans dwelt in five towns, Anagnia, Alatrum,

Ferentina, Frusino, and Verulæ, remarkable for their Cyclopian

fortifications, and extending from the West to the East. According to

the statements in Servius and the Veronese scholiast on Virgil, whom

Mai has incorrectly edited, the Hernicans were a people sprung from the

Marsians and Sabines; their name is said to be derived from _hernæ_,

which in the Sabine language meant a rock, (Arndt compares to it the

German _Firn_[94]), so that they were mountaineers. But it is strange

that a people should in its own language have borne a mere epithet as

its name, especially as the Marsians, Marrucinians, and Pelignians

dwelt on much higher mountains. The Sabine descent of the Hernicans is

therefore somewhat suspicious; it might, however, be maintained, even

if the derivation of the name were a mere subtlety. Another difficulty

is this: if they have come forth from the Marsians, they must have

broken through the Æquians, which is altogether unlikely; and besides,

in the sequel they have no connexion whatever with the Marsians. Julius

Hyginus declares them to have been Pelasgians.

The Hernicans are remarkable in history. They kept off the Romans with

brilliant courage; the alliance with them is historically certain.

It was a joint league with the Romans and Latins, and therefore they

received the third part of the booty. Nevertheless Roman antiquaries

would have it, and Dionysius has allowed himself to be deceived by

them, that the Romans had exclusively the supremacy; that therefore

they had had two-thirds, and the Latins one-third of the booty; and

that of those two-thirds the Romans had generously given half to the

Hernicans. Yet when Romans and Latins conclude together an alliance

with that brave people, it is no more than reasonable that each of

them should have given up a sixth. Rome, according to Dionysius’ own

version, had by no means the supremacy over the Latins. These relations

must afterwards have been dissolved by some compromise. At a later

period, by insisting upon their privileges the Hernicans brought on

their own ruin.

Spurius Cassius is by far the most distinguished man of that age.

In the times which are now quite dark, the most remarkable events

are connected with his name; first the alliance with the Sabines

(252),--without doubt accompanied by isopolity, to judge from the

rolls of the census,--then this league with the Hernicans. In this

alliance, Rome is placed in quite a different position from what it

had been in the former one; just as the relations of Athens to its

allies are changed about Ol. 100, after the battle at Naxos. When

Athens established its second naval supremacy, the towns were far from

being as dependent as formerly; and Demosthenes, when he founded his

great league, with all the wisdom of an enlightened statesman no more

demands that Athens should have the rule, but merely that it should be

the life and the soul of the confederacy. For this, traitors to their

country like Æschines, taxed him with having degraded it, inasmuch as

the messenger of Athens was of no more weight than that of an Eubœan

town. They wanted, so they falsely said, to see the sovereignty of

Athens. Yet the question at that time was merely this, to preserve

their freedom against Philip; and therefore Demosthenes readily

concluded peace with any town that wished for it, and took the lead

only by the power of his intellect. The same position is gained for

Rome by Cassius; and this very fact shows him to have been a great man,

with a clear head and a sound judgment. The Etruscan war had crushed

the dominion of Rome on the right bank of the Tiber; the Volscians and

Æquians were both of them advancing; the towns on the coasts were lost;

it was necessary to arrange matters, not as one wished, but as one

could. This the so-called historians of later days wanted to disguise

from themselves, owing to their blinded partiality for their own native

country. Livy--and the writers in whose wake Dionysius followed, were

full of senseless veneration for the greatness of their forefathers.

Rome, they thought, could never have been small. Indeed at that time

also, there may have been people like Æschines, and fools, who thought

Cassius a traitor, because he accommodated himself to circumstances.

Cassius in his third consulship, after the league with the Hernicans,

wished to be just to the _Plebes_ also. This leads us to the important

agrarian law.

THE AGRARIAN LAW. SP. CASSIUS. EMIGRATION OF THE FABII. THE PUBLILIAN

ROGATIONS.

The ancient nations, when they waged war, held on the whole a different

principle of right from what we do. We look upon war as a duel between

the genii of two states,--between two ideal states: the individual is

not affected by it as to his person, his liberty, and his property;

the law of war intends him to be injured as little as possible, he

is never to be the immediate object of hostility, he is only to be

placed in jeopardy when it cannot be helped. But among the ancients,

the hostilities were common to every one that belonged to the state;

and whilst with us the conquered state indeed loses its right to the

land, but every individual remains as he was, just as if there had

been no war, these had quite different views on the subject. It was not

only in wars of extermination that they took away the whole property

of the vanquished, and made them slaves; in the common wars also the

goods and chattels of the inhabitants were forfeited. Even when a place

surrendered voluntarily, these with their wives and children fell into

the hands of the conquerors, as we see from the forms of dedition.

The conqueror in the latter case did not make them slaves; yet they

were bondmen, and the whole of their landed property became the prize

of the victor. If such a place had suffered but little, and it still

seemed worth while to preserve it, there were sent thither from Rome

three hundred colonists, one from each _Gens_, and these were a φρουρά,

a φυλακή. They got each of them a garden of two _jugera_; without

doubt they had the whole, or at least the greater part of the public

demesne, and a third of the district as arable land, two-thirds being

left to the old inhabitants. These are the original colonies. In other

instances no colonies were sent, it not being deemed requisite to take

occupation of the place. Sometimes the inhabitants were cast out, at

other times they were allowed to remain, and a tax was laid upon them,

generally the tithe; yet they then held their tenures as it were on

sufferance, being always removable at pleasure. In countries which

had been devastated by war, or from which the inhabitants had been

driven out, the Romans used to act according to a law quite peculiar

to themselves, for which there is no parallel whatever in the Greek

institutions.

This _jus agrarium_ is of so much the greater importance for me as it

first led me to critical researches on Roman history, whilst before

that I had occupied myself more with Greek antiquities. When as a

youth I read Plutarch’s parallels and Appian, the system of the _lex

agraria_ was quite a riddle to me. It was thought to have really been

a violation of property, which it was to limit to a certain standard,

so that he who had more than five hundred _jugera_ was deprived of

the surplus, by which means an increase of the plebeian holdings was

created at the expense of the patrician proprietors. This exposition

of the law in such an extreme sense met with much applause. From

Machiavell, as he lived in a revolutionary age, and in his opinion the

end sanctified the means; and not less from Montesquieu on the other

hand, who looked upon the repetition of the past as a thing which

was out of the question, since in his time a revolution was still as

far off as possible. His example shows how bold speculative minds

may become in relations which are unknown to them, and which seem

impossible. At that time, revolutionary ideas, in an apparently quite

innocent manner, were generally current, even among men who in the

revolution itself went over to the extreme opposite side.

As Plutarch and Appian expressly state that the law applied to the γῆ

δημοσία only, it was evident that something else must have been meant

by it. The first who thought here of the _ager publicus_ was Heyne, in

a programme the occasion for which was taken from the revolutionary

confiscations; yet the question, What then was the _ager publicus_?

was not cleared up, as Heyne so often had a general notion of the

truth which he but rarely worked out. Afterwards also, the historical

writers who treated of the Gracchi were still completely in the dark

with regard to it. Once upon a time, when I did not yet see my way

into these riddles, I asked the great F. A. Wolf his opinion on it.

Yet he, with all the distinguished qualities of his mind, had this

fault, that he sought to have the credit of knowing every thing, and

then gave himself the air of not wishing to commit himself. He too did

not know how to get over this difficulty. I was brought to the subject

by chance. In Holstein at that time bondage was abolished. Instead of

the peasants, serfs as well as freemen, having hereditary abodes on

the estates as formerly, their possessions were taken from them, and

changed into tenant farms, whilst they themselves were arbitrarily

transferred to small and worse farms. This was quite abominable. Even

where there were no serfs, the same measures were now to be enforced.

I called to Heaven against this injustice, and came to raise the

question,--“What right have they to do this?” On this occasion I was

led to inquire into the nature of tenure at will, and traced it among

various nations; and this gave me the key to the Roman _jus agrarium_.

The general notion of the Italian nations was this, that there is an

indissoluble relation between the land and the right of citizenship;

that every kind of ownership in the soil is derived from the state

alone. The soil is merely the substratum on which the preconceived

idea of the civil organization rests. There is a great similarity in

this to the feudal system. According to strict feudal law, there is

no land whatever but what has a liege-lord. All fiefs derive from the

prince as the lord paramount, and then follow the mesne tenures. In

point of fact, this idea has never indeed been carried out in its full

meaning. Another analogous case is in the East, especially in the East

Indies, where we find the sovereign the real owner of the soil, and the

peasant’s tenure to be only at will (_precario_). Thus also among the

Italian nations, all right of property in the soil is from the soil.

We read in Appian a statement, of which it is evident that it has not

sprung from his own intellectual resources, but that it is an extract

from the history of the Gracchi by Posidonius, who was not inferior to

Polybius, and whom he uses as his chief authority for that period, as

he did Dionysius before, and then Polybius, Fabius, and at last, in

all probability, Rutilius. Now, if we see it mentioned by him, that

the _ager publicus_ was partly turned into colonies and demesnes, and

partly sold or let on lease (the latter notice is found in Plutarch

only), we may ask ourselves, How was it possible that difficulties

should have arisen on this subject? The Roman republic had only to lay

down the law, that no one should possess more than a certain number of

lots, and all the evil consequences were prevented. The fact is that

Appian and Plutarch misunderstood the ambiguous expression of their

predecessor. There is no question of any letting on lease; but a tax

was laid on the estates, the tithe (_decuma_), from corn; the fifth

(_quinta_), from fruit; and from every thing else in proportion. If,

then, the corn was taken in kind, the state was obliged to establish

great storehouses; for the cattle it had to pay the pasturage; so that

of course the revenue was different in different years. A new system

was therefore adopted of letting out the revenue from those taxes to

_publicani_. The political forms of the Romans have almost always an

analogy in the Greek constitutions, and so has often the civil law;

but with regard to the _jus agrarium_ the Romans stand alone. The

Greek state made conquests and founded colonies, but the _possessio

agri publici_ is unknown to that people: in one instance only does any

thing like it happen. We see from Xenophon’s Anabasis that he devoted

an estate at Scillus to the Artemis of Ephesus; and that the temple

did not cause the estate to be let on lease, but received the tithe

from it, and that this was farmed. As the victim was never offered

as ὁλόκαυστον, but a part of it only was burnt in honour of the god;

thus of such an estate, not the whole proceeds, but a part only, was

offered as a gift. According to the system of Roman law, the state did

not keep as much as possible of what was _publicum_ for itself; but it

proclaimed that every Romanus Quiris who wished to cultivate a part of

the conquered country, might take it. This was called _occupatio agri

publici_. At first, those who were patricians, as the oldest citizens,

might take a plot wherever they liked. This was for the most part

waste land, become desolate in the war, on the hostile frontier, and

therefore there was no great competition for it. From the very first,

the obligation was imposed of paying the _decumæ_ and _quintæ_. It was

this revenue which was farmed, and this has always been overlooked.

The terms _agrum locare_ and _agrum vendere_ are synonymous, and mean

neither more nor less than _fructus agri vendere_, _agrum fruendum

locare_. One really had the possession of such an estate very much as

if it were one’s own, so that a third party could not claim it; just

like the tenant at will, from whom the landlord may under certain

conditions take his farm, but who enjoys perfect protection against

any one else. This was secured among the Romans by the possessory

interdicts, so that this possession might also become hereditary.

But the state, on the other hand, might at any time interfere, and

say, “Now I want to establish a colony here, or to divide the land

_viritim_, the occupant has therefore notice to quit;” and in that case

the latter had no _auctoritas_ whatever against the state. From this it

is evident that the state could always dispose of the _ager publicus_,

so that, for instance, no more than a certain number of _jugera_ came

into the possession of a single person; for others would thus have been

excluded from it, and the excessive influence of an individual, from

the immense number of his clients, might have become dangerous to the

whole community.

This is the great difference between property and a mere _possessio_.

The _possessio_ was given by the prætor in the edict by which one

was called upon to take it; the prætorian right of inheritance rests

wholly and entirely upon this ground: the prætor gives _possessionem

bonorum secundum tabulas_. Property, one might leave by will as one

liked; but possession (occupancy) one could only transfer to another

by a sale before witnesses according to a fair arrangement, and he

who had received it, proved the legal acceptance, and armed himself

with his _interdictum possessorium_; he had witnesses of his having

got possession _neque vi, neque clam, neque precario_. But how was

it when the possessor died? By his will he could utterly disinherit

his children, and leave what he had in property to the most unworthy

person, without the prætor in the earlier times being able to

interfere; but the prætor could do so when the tenure was that of

possession, and as being the source of possession, he decided in the

latter case according to a principle quite different from that which

applied to the former, as the chancellor of England does in Equity.

Even those who entertain unfavourable views of the _Plebes_ and the

tribunes, as for instance Livy and Dionysius, cannot deny that the

patricians were _usurpatores agri publici_; yet these might according

to the letter of the law rightly make their claims, and it is moreover

not impossible that they appeared to have been perfectly honest. It

is in general a great result of historical research, that one learns

to judge fairly, and can see that there are good men in the most

opposite parties; that the distinctions of party do not constitute

the worth of man. Thus it was with regard to the patricians. When

Livy and Dionysius, although against the _Plebes_, state that the

_ager publicus_ had been occupied _per injuriam_ ὑπὸ τῶν ἀναιδεστάτων

πατρικίων, their remarks are unjust; a fact which can only be

understood by going back to the origin of the matter.

Only the original Roman citizen of the three old tribes, that is to

say, the patrician, could, according to the earliest law, be admitted

to the _possessio_. He got from the prætor as much as he thought he

could cultivate, no limits whatever being fixed; and for this he

had nothing to pay, but only to invest his capital in making the

land productive. The _Plebes_ now grew up at the side of this order.

These were the real strength of Rome: they furnished the whole of the

infantry; their blood was shed in the wars; and they achieved the

conquests. It was therefore undoubtedly also the right of the _Plebes_

to have their share in these conquests: the _Populus_, however,

continued to look upon these as their own property. Servius Tullius

had already ordered that no more unlimited grants should be made, but

that a part of the conquered land should remain with the state, and

that the rest should be divided among the _Plebes_ as their freeholds.

According to the rules of the augural system, squares were made, and

then lots were numbered, and tickets issued to all those who were to

have a share: each of these tickets represented a square (_centuria_).

This is called _assignatio_. Such is the law of Servius Tullius, which

is inseparably connected with the constitution of the _Plebes_. From

Sallust’s expressions, we are to suppose that after the expulsion of

the kings the Servian institutions were restored. Yet they were again

done away by the patricians. Only the _ager regius_ was as yet divided;

afterwards every thing remained with the patricians, who likewise

dispensed themselves from paying the tithes. The tribunes were anything

but mutinous; they only wished as the natural advocates of their

order to make good its right. Perhaps the plebeians felt particularly

aggrieved by the Etruscan war, as they had to sustain the deficiency of

the lost third.

Sp. Cassius was the first who brought in an agrarian law, first in

the senate, then in the curies, and lastly in the centuries; or else

perhaps, first in the centuries, and then in the curies. It was his

proposition, to restore the Servian law; to re-establish the tithes

and fifths; to sell part of the conquered country, and to mete out the

remainder and assign it to the _Plebes_. This is all that we know of

the _lex Cassia_. All the rest of Dionysius’ statement, as I positively

assert after mature consideration, bears evident traces of having

been taken from a writer of the second half of the seventh century,

and is invented with great ignorance of the old state of things.

The _senatus-consultum_ of which he speaks has not the slightest

authenticity. The law for the division of the land is so closely

connected with the whole fate of the plebeians, that there is every

likelihood that it was already mooted in the peace on the _Mons Sacer_;

under Cassius it is fully brought out. According to all appearance, it

was carried; as the _Lex agraria_, down to the time of the decemvirs,

is spoken of as a right of which the _Plebes_ were in possession, but

which was not kept as they were promised. Thus Cassius stands out as a

remarkable man; in Cicero he is mentioned as being well known, and yet

there is very little said about him.

It is historical that Sp. Cassius was executed in the following year

for high treason, and that from his estate (_ex Cassiana familia_) a

votive-gift was offered in the temple of Tellus on the Carinæ. It was

probably in order to remove from this deed the appearance of crying

injustice, that the tale of his having been judged by his father

was invented. Dionysius already is justly startled at the fact that

Cassius, who at that time had no less than thrice been invested with

the consulship, should have been put to death by his father. The _leges

annales_ were indeed not yet then in force; but nevertheless it is

incredible that one who had been thrice consul, and had triumphed,

should have still remained under his father’s rule. Another tradition

gives a milder version, which is followed by Dionysius and Cicero _de

Republica_. The father of Sp. Cassius is said to have declared before

the court that he considered his son as guilty, and on this the latter

was executed. The truth is that the public accusers (Rüge Herrn), the

_quæstores parricidii_ impeach Cassius before the curies; and the

curies, as the community to which he belongs, cause him to be executed.

This is intelligible: he had most grievously offended his order, and

therefore they are only too glad to wreak their vengeance upon him.

Dionysius is perplexed with the account; Livy gets over the difficulty.

According to him, it is the _Plebes_, which condemns Cassius, as the

tribunes are envious of him:--as if these had at that time already

been able to bring forward any proposition of the kind! A question

which has before now been mooted by the ancients, is whether he was

guilty or not. Dionysius believes him guilty; Dio Cassius holds him

to have been innocent; the all-seeing God alone can decide on it. What

he did was done with the clearest right; yet the same act may have

sprung from the best or from the most perverse intentions, and he may

either have wished to further the welfare of the state, or he may have

aspired to the royal dignity. To suspect such a design twenty-five

years after the expulsion of the kings, was by no means so absurd as

when, seventy years later, Sp. Mælius was charged with it. Cassius was

no common man, otherwise he would not in those times have been thrice

consul, which was then a thing quite unheard of: no one besides had

been invested so often with that dignity but P. Valerius Poplicola,

and with regard to him also the Fasti are very indistinct. The manner

in which Cassius concluded his leagues betokens a great soul. It is

therefore quite possible that he entertained the purest intentions of

wisdom and justice; for Rome’s position in consequence of the spread

of the Volscians was not free from danger, and it was necessary to

keep together, and to concentrate all her forces. Guilty or innocent,

a great man he was, and detestable the faction which condemned him.

With him his clan disappears from among the patricians. Very strange

is what Dionysius says about his having had children, and that a

question thereupon had risen of executing them also; but that they were

spared, and ever since the children of criminals likewise. This looks

like a quotation from the law books relative to the establishment of

a new juridical institution; yet it may be something quite different.

We shall afterwards find a son of Sp. Cassius, and in a place where

we should certainly have least expected to have met with him. In all

likelihood, the stern judge, L. Cassius Longinus, 640, as also the

murderer of Julius Cæsar, are sprung from his stock: it is no wonder

that this family went over to the _Plebes_. The condemnation of Sp.

Cassius by a Fabius lays the foundation of that greatness of the Fabian

house, of which no other instance is to be discovered in the Roman

Fasti. During seven years (269-275), we always find a Fabius consul; as

in the beginning of the republic the Valerii were for five years. The

conclusion therefore is quite natural, that the Fabii were at that time

in possession of a rightful claim, and that the second tribe, that of

the Tities, was represented by them.

One of the drawbacks of a free government is the extreme difficulty of

retrieving a fault which has been once committed. The efforts of rulers

to amend it are rarely acknowledged by the people. An independent

prince may do so without weakening his authority, and without any

danger to himself. But the case is different in republics. If the

people were good-natured and conscientious enough to hold out the hand

of reconciliation, it would do. But it is not so. If a government

wishes to make amends to those whom it has injured, the first step

which these take is to revenge themselves. This must excuse the

Romans who were in power,--especially if Sp. Cassius fell an innocent

victim,--when they were guilty of another arbitrary act, and after

his death once more changed the constitution in their own favour.

The government could not now stop short; and least of all, if it was

conscious of guilt. If it had let the constitution remain as it was,

it had to expect, that in the free election of the centuries for the

consulship the plebeians would only have allowed patricians who were

like Sp. Cassius to get it. They were therefore obliged to do what

Dionysius so strangely describes, when he tells us that the _Plebes_

had withdrawn from the elections, and that these were now conducted by

the principal men alone. As if under the Servian constitution any other

but the principal men could ever have turned the scale! The fact is

quite different. I state it as it is; the proofs I will not adduce here.

In the year after Cassius’ death, or even in the same year, when

consuls were to be elected, the election was no more held by the

centuries; but the senate nominated the candidates, and the curies

confirmed them. Yet owing to this there arose the most violent

contention between the _Plebes_ headed by the tribunes and the consuls.

For though the tribunes at that time were still confirmed by the

curies, yet the wrong was so glaring, that even the meekest could not

have borne it. And hence the character of the tribunate is now suddenly

changed. Up to that time no traces are found of tribunician commotions.

The honour of the order was too deeply wounded: on one side the

agrarian law had not been carried out; on the other, unlawfully elected

consuls were in power. The tribune Ti. Pontificius therefore puts a

veto to the levy, on the ground that the people ought not to serve

under an illegal government. The old annals would hardly have recorded

his name, if his resistance had not been the first made by a tribune.

The enlistment was then carried on by force, be it, that open defiance

was now bidden to the tribunes, and that those who did not answer

were seized and punished; or that the consuls ordered the houses of

those living in the country to be set on fire, and their cattle to be

driven away; or finally, that they transferred the place of enlistment

from the town to the country, whither the power of the tribunes did

not reach. An army being raised in this manner, the despair of the

plebeians went so far that they would rather let themselves be killed

by the enemy like victims, than fight in behalf of their tyrants. This

fermentation lasted for two years, and at length it came to such a

height, that the senate, as if by a free act of grace, consented to

give up to the _Plebes_ the election of one consul by the centuries,

perhaps without a senatus-consultum. The consequence of which was, that

the consul whom the centuries had chosen, met with no resistance from

the plebeians; whilst, on the other hand, they in every possible way

opposed the other. Meanwhile the times were so bad, the neighbouring

nations also growing more and more bold against Rome, that the

tribunes themselves saw, that one ought rather to put up with a wrong,

than to let the commonwealth go to ruin. The _Plebes_ therefore in the

following year (272) conceded to the senate and the curies the election

of one of the consuls. Yet on that occasion it must also have wrung

from them the right, that the tribunes no more needed to be confirmed

by the curies. Publilius could never have become a tribune, if this

change had not already taken place before his law was passed. According

to the traditions, there must even at that time have been as many as

five tribunes.

During this period the Volscian wars continued, yet they may not have

been of great importance, so that the Latins and Hernicans could

by themselves make head against them. But another war weighed upon

Rome alone,--that against the Veientines. Veientine wars are already

mentioned under all the kings beginning with Romulus; but they are

quite apocryphal. Veii, according to the latest researches, was about

one German mile (5 Engl.) in circumference, as was Rome in the days

of Servius Tullius. That there should have been two such large towns

so near each other, almost within two or three German miles, is very

remarkable: it shows how strong the opposition must have been in those

times between the Latins and the Etruscans. The incidents of the war

are diffusely told by Livy and Dionysius; and very prettily indeed

by the former, who deemed it all to be true. A long and severe war

against the Veientines may be held to be authentic. The details are

found in Livy; there is nothing improbable in them, and the story of

the death of Cn. Manlius, that vain attempt to elude Fate, has quite

the colouring of antiquity. If the accounts of this fight be compared

with those of the battle at the lake Regillus, a marked difference will

be found. The many narratives of it are most likely taken from the

laudations of the Fabian family, which were a tissue of repetitions,

like the panegyrical λόγοι ἐπιτάφιοι. I believe that the plebeians

always refused obedience to the consul elected by the patricians. The

Fabii doubted also this time whether the plebeians would obey their

orders; yet when the latter were filled with ardour for the fray, their

co-operation decided the battle, and the Fabii were thus reconciled

to them. With this reconciliation all the relations changed. Of the

chiefs of the Fabii, who are mentioned as three brothers (they may

have been clansmen), one had been slain; the two others who remained

at the head of their house, had their eyes opened to the fact that

the oligarchs had brought the state into a wretched condition. The

Veientines were beaten; but the war still lasted, and although the

Latins and Hernicans had been called into the field, the Volscians

spread more and more. What was therefore most requisite was union.

For this reason the Fabii themselves declared that the agrarian law

must be granted; and in consequence from henceforth no Fabius became

patrician consul, while on the other hand, the plebeians now elected

Cæso Fabius, their former enemy, to be their consul. The most frightful

commotion arose; the Fabii were looked upon by their own order as

traitors. When their propositions are rejected, they leave the city,

three hundred and six of them, and found on the Cremera a settlement

of their clan and of several thousand plebeians who had joined them.

This must have been a settlement of a peculiar kind; a colony it was

not, as it had arisen _per secessionem_: it was a political emigration;

for the Fabii were at feud with their order, and therefore established

for themselves an abode distinct from Rome.[95] It is therefore stated

that only one single Fabius, who as a child had been left sick in

Rome, had remained behind. Perizonius has sifted this matter before now

with able criticism, and has shown how preposterous it is, that three

hundred and six strong men should all but one have been childless. This

child we again meet with a few years afterwards as already consul. The

probability is this, that the number 306 is not indeed symbolical; nor

did it comprehend, as Livy has it, merely warriors, nay, leaders only,

but the whole of the _Gens Fabia_ engaged in the settlement, women and

children included. If we take them to have been three hundred and six

men able to bear arms, we should be obliged to estimate the number of

the patricians at something beyond all belief. That they had a vast

number of clients is not to be doubted; and the circumstance that these

emigrated with them, is a remarkable evidence of the nature of the

clientship.[96]

The destruction of the Fabii at the Cremera is a positive fact; but

the accounts of it are different, one being poetical, and the other

annalistic. According to the poetical version of the story, the Fabii,

relying on the peace concluded with the Etruscans, had gone from the

Cremera to Rome, in order to offer a _sacrum gentilicium_ in the city,

a rite which indeed had to be performed at Rome, and at which all the

_gentiles_ had to be present; and as they were not aware that the

Veientines intended any hostility, they had marched without their arms.

But the Veientines called on the allies of their race, and beset the

road on which the Fabii were travelling; and these were surrounded

by thousands, who did not, however, venture to attack them at close

quarters, but struck them down from a distance with slings and arrows.

The gentilician _Sacrum_ is doubtless the _statum sacrificium_ of

the Fabian _gens_ on the Quirinal, which is mentioned in the Gallic

calamity.[97]

The other account is this, that the Fabii had been enticed by means

of herds which were grazing in the neighbourhood, to go farther and

farther; and that they had then been slain in a woodland glade by

the countless host of the Etruscans. Nothing more is said about the

clients; but the stronghold on the banks of the Cremera is taken by

the Veientines. One might feel inclined to see some treason in this,

even that the rulers of Rome had betrayed them into the hands of the

Etruscans: one of the Roman consuls, T. Menenius, is said to have

been near, and to have been afterwards capitally arraigned on that

account. Yet this is hardly to be supposed. If the consul behaved with

treachery, we can only see in it a private hatred of his own. The same

consul was defeated: he fled to Rome, and the fugitives came into the

town without even being able to maintain the Janiculum. The garrison of

that place escaped with them; the other consul Horatius appeared just

in time to ward off the greatest danger, and it was all they could do

to break up the bridge. There was yet a wall, it is true, extending

from the Capitol to the Aventine, which protected the city on that side

of the river; but it was necessary to break up the bridge, in order to

isolate the suburb. The Veientines were now masters of the whole field;

they encamped on the Janiculum, crossed the river and pillaged the

whole of the Roman territory on the left bank of the Tiber. This was in

the midst of summer, the first of August being the period of the change

of consuls, in which the new ones entered into office. The enemy had

unexpectedly passed over the river on rafts; and thus the harvest may

also have been to a great extent destroyed, the farm-houses burnt down,

and man and beast have fallen into the hands of the enemy. The distress

in the city was extreme. The Roman armies were encamped before the

town, and the Veientines pressed upon them hard; on which, in despair,

they resolved to venture on a piece of daring which must end either in

the ruin of Rome, or in its deliverance. They crossed the river, and

defeated the Etruscans; part of them stormed the Janiculum, others made

an attack higher up the river. They indeed suffered an immense loss in

men, but they drove off the enemy by this means. In this story, as we

have remarked before, there is a striking similarity to that of the

wars of Porsena. A year after, an armistice was concluded for forty

years of ten months, which was also actually kept.

After these events, the importance of the tribunate manifests itself in

a peculiar way. The tribunes summon the consuls of the past year before

the people; not, as our writers represent it, before the _Plebes_, for

as yet it was much too powerless to sit in judgment on the sovereign

magistrates; nor even before the centuries, which also were in fact

chiefly plebeian. But it was either not the tribunes at all, but on

the contrary, the quæstors; or what was much more likely, a great

change had taken place, so that the tribunes insisted upon the right

of prosecuting the consuls before their own community, the _Populus_,

because those whose proper duty it was, had forborne to do it. On

the conviction of the defendants, which ended in a moderate fine,

they proceeded to impeach the consuls, their successors. These were

acquitted; but the exasperation rose higher and higher. The tribunes

had brought their charge before the body of the citizens for matters

which it was authorized to judge; it was _majestas populi Romani

imminuta re male gesta_, therefore a _crimen majestatis_. Now they went

still farther. They summoned before the body of the _Plebes_ every one

of the consuls, who had been in office since Sp. Cassius, for not

having satisfied the people with regard to the _lex agraria_; according

to the old Italian principle that when two nations were bound together

by a treaty, the complaint of its breach was to be made before the

injured people. It is at variance with our ideas, that any one should

be judge in his own cause; yet it is every where the case among the old

Italian nations, so that the Romans even held the principle of giving

up to allied nations citizens who had wronged them. Of this we have

instances in the giving up of Mancinus to the Numantines; of Postumius

and his companions to the Samnites after the defeat of Caudium; of

Fabius who had aggrieved the envoys of Apollonia. This dedition of

those _qui in noxa sunt_ is generally demanded when a _rerum repetitio_

occurs. The Greeks did not hold this principle. There is, on the one

hand, a very generous notion at the bottom of it, that the oath taken

before judging the cause, would give sufficient protection; and on the

other, an idea which was also entertained by the ancient Germans. With

our forefathers, every member of a house was to bear witness for his

clansmen when called upon to do so (_consacramentales_), which is based

on the noble idea of faith and loyalty. A member of one’s own class

one cannot judge, but only defend, a principle which, it is true, has

been dreadfully abused. It is wonderful how impartial the tribunals

at Rome often were. The case also became less difficult owing to the

circumstance that the accused, until the passing of the sentence, was

at liberty to go away from Rome, and to betake himself to some town

allied by isopolity, as there were many. In Cære, for instance, one

could demand to be received as a citizen. The origin of that right

was in the Roman books dated as far back as T. Tatius, who refused to

give up to the people of Lavinium his kinsmen, by whom they had been

aggrieved; for which he was murdered. Afterwards, the Romans bring

those who had wronged the Lavinians, and the latter the murderers of

T. Tatius, mutually before each other’s tribunal.

A tribune of the people, Cn. Genucius, of a family already then

important, had appointed the charge against the former consuls _in

trinundinum_; and here the _Plebes_ itself was to judge. Its right,

according to the treaty solemnly sworn on the Sacred Mount, was by

no means doubtful, as little indeed as the issue of the trial. The

patricians, as the rage of faction was at its height, now found their

readiest expedient in an atrocious crime, in the murder of Genucius;

and thus the impeachment was put an end to. Dionysius justly remarks,

that if the perpetrators had contented themselves with this enormity,

the panic which they had spread might have sufficed. The tribunes

were thoroughly alarmed: their sacred office had been violated; as

their houses were to be open day and night, no precaution could guard

them against such foul play, against the intrusion of disguised

assassins;--the bravest man shrinks from such a danger. The assassins

of Genucius were not discovered; every one was paralysed with terror.

The patricians were in high glee at what they had done; and they

thought to make use of the first moment of fear for levying an army,

adding insult and outrage to crime. It was their intention to enlist

the most illustrious plebeians, and to execute them in the field, or

to let them fall a prey to the enemy. But they overshot themselves in

their overbearing insolence: for in their exultation they could not

wait, and they caused a distinguished plebeian, Volero Publilius, who

had before been a centurion, to be summoned, and wanted to enrol him as

a common soldier. Among the plebeians, as well as among the patricians,

there were distinguished families, there were rich and poor: to the

former class the Publilii belonged. Publilius refused; the consuls

sent their lictors to drag him _obtorto collo_ before their tribunal,

to strip him, and to flog him _servili modo_. The toga was a very wide

garment, of one piece, in the form of a semicircle, on which nothing

was sewn; the Romans entirely wrapped themselves up in it. Now, if one

was to be taken before the authorities, the beadles flung the ends of

the toga round his head, and thus dragged him before the magistrate,

often throttling him so tight about the neck that the blood flowed from

his mouth and nose. A man who was thus dragged away, tried to defend

himself by drawing the end of the toga to himself and pressing his arm

against it, on which the lictor would take a knife, and slit the toga:

he had then a place where he might lay hold on the prisoner and pull

him away. This was called _vestem scindere_. Yet the beadles were very

shy of having recourse to this means. Volero Publilius was resolute: he

flung the lictors aside, threw himself among the _Plebes_, and called

upon the tribunes for help. The tribunes were silent. Then he turned

to those of his own order, and a crowd collected fast, and easily kept

the lictors at bay. The young patricians hastened to the spot, and an

affray took place, in which the tyrants after a short time were driven

from the forum. The day after, the consuls again attempted to make a

levy with equally bad success; and they were obliged to give it up for

the whole of the year: the murder of Genucius had made matters much

worse. In the following year, Volero Publilius was elected tribune; a

proof that the confirmation by the curies was no more requisite.

An ordinary man would have brought the consuls of the bygone year

before the tribunal of the _Plebes_; yet this would have been but a

pitiful revenge. Publilius considered that the thorough exasperation of

the commonalty might be made use of to gain permanent rights for it;

and for this reason, contrary to the general expectation, he took a

step which he ought not to have taken, but which became the beginning

of a new order of things. He promulgated an address to the people,

declaring that they had a right to deliberate on matters of state at

the motion of the tribune; and, moreover, that the tribunes ought no

longer to be elected by the centuries, but by the tribes. In these

rogations, which are much more explicitly given in Dionysius and Dio

Cassius (in the abstract of Zonaras), we only miss one circumstance,

which was that such resolutions of the tribes were to be confirmed by

the senate and the curies; for it could not possibly be, that the Lex

Publilia should already put forth the claims of the Lex Hortensia. But

this is evident from the examples themselves.

This was now the order of business. The tribunes made their proposals

of laws on a market-day. For, the people, _Populus_ as well as

_Plebes_, could not legally transact business on every day; the curies

and the centuries only on the _dies comitiales_; the tribes only on the

_nundina_; by the Lex Hortensia, it was first allowed to assemble also

the centuries on the nundines. The special expressions are, _populus

jubet_, _plebs sciscit_; but it was never said, _plebs jubet_, or

_populiscitum_. The _Plebes_ in former times assembled in the Forum,

afterwards in the _Area Capitolina_: the _Populus_ in the Comitium, or

in a grove outside the Pomœrium, the _Æsculetum_ or _Lucus Petelinus_.

In the _concilium plebis_, they voted _tabellis_; in the concilium of

the curies, _viva voce_. In the _concilium populi_, no previous notice

needed to be given. Nothing could be taken to the _Plebes_ direct from

the senate; the latter could only commission the consuls to confer

with the tribunes about any thing: the curies on the other hand could

do no business without a _senatus-consultum_, and in their assemblies

nothing could be brought forward without a curule magistrate or an

_interrex_: in the assemblies of the _Plebes_ these did not even dare

to show themselves.[98] If the tribunes wished to propose a law for

deliberation to the commons, they set it up in the forum _in albo, in

trinundinum_, that is to say, to be decided upon after fifteen days,

the first nundines being included with them. A _concio advocata_ could

take place at any time: the forum was full every day; the tribune might

mount the rostra and harangue the people, and also allow others to

speak, especially those who wished to make themselves heard against

his proposal (_edocere plebem_). Yet this deliberation is only a

preliminary, not a decisive one; as when, for instance, the English

Parliament goes into committee, or the French Chambers deliberate in

the _bureaux_: different from it is that which takes place on the

day of voting. Every resolution, as well of the _Populus_ as of the

_Plebes_, was to be carried before sunset; otherwise the day was lost.

Auspices were valid for the _Plebes_ only in later times; as for the

_Populus_, a flash of lightning, or a similar phenomenon, broke up the

assembly (_dies diffisus_). If the tribune had announced the rogation

_in albo_ fifteen days before the decisive debate came on, we generally

imagine the affair to have been more tumultuous than it was. People

assembled early in the morning; the discussion lasted the whole day;

one after another stood up to speak for and against; the opponents

tried _eximere diem_, that the measure might not be passed before

sunset; the sunset was seen from the steps of the Curia Hostilia,[99]

and the _suprema tempestas_ proclaimed. The tribune had now to

wait again eight days, and to make a fresh announcement _in trinum

nundinum_. This form must have been used from the very earliest times

in all the resolutions of the _Plebes_; for _plebiscita_[100] there

have been as long as the _Plebes_ existed. But if, on the contrary,

one wished to go to the vote, the discussion was then closed, and the

tribune bade the patricians and the clients withdraw. The rostra stood

between the comitium and the forum, and to the former the _Populus_

retired. Hereupon ropes were drawn dividing the forum into a certain

number of squares; into each of these a tribe entered, and every tribe

then voted by itself under the direction of its tribune. When it was

now settled that such a resolution was passed by the tribes, the

patricians by law might throw it out, just as the Upper House and the

King may a bill of the Lower One; yet if the latter is earnestly and

decidedly bent upon having it carried, its rejection would be quite

impossible, as it would give the signal for the dissolution of the

state. They did not wish things to go so far; they therefore tried

to defeat a motion of this kind before hand. Yet what was gained by

its having miscarried to-day, when it might again be brought forward

on the morrow? A very great deal; in fact, three weeks’ time, within

which perhaps a war might arise, which would prevent it all. Nay, they

might drag it on through a whole year; only the evil in that case grew

worse and worse, and the struggle yet fiercer. This is the folly of

all oligarchs, which they continually repeat. The patricians were so

infatuated as not to see, that, if they gained over a sufficiently

strong party in the _Plebes_ itself against the measure, it would to

all intents and purposes be the same as if the resolution had been

actually carried, and then rejected; and yet that odium would not be

excited. In the end, the patricians never show the courage of letting

matters come to a crisis; but they yield with an ill grace, reserving

to themselves their old rights, from which they will never abate unless

driven to it by sheer force.

The great importance of the Publilian law is this, that the tribunes

now obtain the initiative. Hitherto it had entirely depended upon the

senate and the patricians whether a law should be discussed or not. The

consul first made a motion in the senate; the latter decided on it,

and then it came to the curies, or to the curies and centuries. But

if the tribunes were now free to propose a matter for debate in their

own community, they could by this means generally bring any subject

to discussion which needed it. There were points, many of them of the

highest importance, which urgently required change, and, but for the

Publilian rogation, never could have been mooted in a legal manner.

The Publilian laws were therefore beneficial, and yet I do not at all

blame the then holders of power for not acknowledging this: the fury

only with which they opposed them, was as blameable as it was ruinous.

By the manner of their resistance, the charge of illegality in point

of form, under which indeed the proposals of Publilius lay, was thrown

on the opposite side. The senate needed not have deliberated at all in

such a _plebiscitum_; yet when the tribunes requested the _Populus_ to

leave the Forum, the patricians refused to withdraw, and, spreading

with their clients over the whole of the forum, so that the plebeians

could not come to give their votes, they drove away the beadles who

carried the urns, threw out the voting tablets, and did many other

things of the same kind. When this had been tried more than once, there

was at last a fight, in which the patricians and their consul Appius

Claudius were driven from the market-place. The consequence of this was

a general panic among the patricians. Yet matters did not stop there,

but the _Plebes_ put themselves in possession of the Capitol, though

without abusing their victory; for, the oppressed party frequently

restrains itself after having conquered: they only needed their victory

that they might carry their resolutions. Although Appius even now

exerted all his influence to make the senate withhold its sanction, yet

the senators saw the danger too well, and assented to the law. Livy

refers this law merely to the election of the tribunes; Dionysius and

Dio Cassius in Zonaras contain the more correct view. Livy, however,

at the conclusion of his narrative, in touching upon some points,

presupposes all the rest.

If the patricians had been wise, they ought to have been rejoiced at

the result; at least, nobody could have deemed it to be a misfortune.

From such a law it is not possible to retrograde; but instead of

seeing this, the patricians were ever trying to undo what had been

done, and to take revenge. The plebeians still continued to refuse

obedience to the consul whom they had not elected. This was the plight

in which Appius Claudius found himself, when he led an army against

the Volscians. He began on the march ruthlessly to punish the soldiers

for the most trifling offences,--to torture them--even, as Dionysius

from old traditions very credibly relates. The plebeians opposed to

him a dogged resistance, and let themselves rather be punished, than

obey him. Immediately before the battle they resolved upon flight, and

they fled into the camp, although the Volscians did not the less for

this pursue and slay them: they even left the camp, and did not stop

until they had reached the Roman territory. On this, Appius now did

what might seem to us incredible, if it were not accounted for by the

influence of the allies, the Hernicans and Latins, who were under his

command. He decimated the army, and led the decimated troops back to

Rome. For this he was impeached the year after by the tribunes before

the _Plebes_. Livy’s masterly narrative of it we may consider as

derived from an actual eye-witness of the event. Appius displays the

greatest insolence and pride before the _Plebes_, disdaining to soothe

it by prayers; even the tribunes allow themselves to be overawed by

him. The two historians agree in stating that the tribunes granted him

a respite that he might die by his own hand; and that he made use of it

before the dawn of the following day, to save himself from a shameful

death.

Hereupon the home dissensions are at rest for a while, and the foreign

wars acquire considerable importance.

WARS WITH THE VOLSCIANS AND ÆQUIANS. PLAGUE. CINCINNATUS. CÆSO

QUINCTIUS. CORIOLANUS.

In the year 286, the Romans conquer Antium, or, according to another

more probable account, Antium opens its gates to them. In the narrative

as we have it, the town is Volscian, and part of the population fly to

the Volscians at Ecetræ. Antium, just like Agylla and the other towns

on the coast, was originally Tyrrhenian; yet there may have been a

party uppermost in it, which, feeling itself too weak, called in the

Volscians, and Ecetræ, the south-eastern capital of this people, may

have sent a colony thither. This colony again was opposed by part of

the citizens; these called in the Romans, and the Volscians returned

to Ecetræ. The Volscians now wished to regain what they had lost, and

thence arose these obstinate wars. After Antium had surrendered to the

Romans and their allies, it received a colony of Romans, Latins, and

Hernicans,--a proof, that these three people divided their conquests in

equal shares. It is evident enough how this is perverted in Dionysius:

Livy thinks that too few Romans had liked to go thither. Antium was

now linked to the three confederates. The old Antiates formed the

commonalty, and the citizens of the three united states its colony,

there being probably three hundred from each, and four hundred from

the Hernicans only; for among these the division into four seems to

have been prevalent, whence also the _cohortes quadringenariæ_ are

mentioned. The _Antiates mille milites_, who are met with in the later

Volscian wars, seem to have reference to this colony. But as the

Romans at that time were not the strongest in the field, and the old

inhabitants were always badly off in a colony, it is quite accountable,

that Antium after ten years should have fallen off again, in the same

manner as it had joined the Romans.

This success of the Romans in the war was but transitory. Here ends our

first period, and these contests now assume quite a new character.

The Æquians, who at that time must have been a great people (Cicero

also calls them _gens magna_), seem until then to have taken little

share in the war: yet by the loss of Antium, not only the Volscians of

Ecetræ were roused to vigorous exertions, but also the Æquians. Over

the disasters of the Romans which followed, a veil has been drawn. The

enemy appear to have advanced to the confines of the Roman borders; in

another place, we find the Volscians in the neighbourhood of Velitræ;

and now they are every year on the Algidus, and get possession of the

Arx of Tusculum, which is only with difficulty wrested from them.

Several Latin towns utterly disappear: Corioli is destroyed; Lavici

becomes an Æquian town; Gabii was as late as in Dionysius’ times

devastated within its walls; Præneste is no more spoken of, and, when

after a hundred years it is mentioned again, it is hostile to Rome; the

nearest places only, as Tusculum and Lavinium, remain with the Romans;

Rome’s boundary is on the other side of the hills of Tusculum, Circeii,

Velitræ, Norba, and other places farther to the east, are lost. Thus it

is certain that more than half of Latium is conquered; by the Æquians,

from the Anio, and by the Volscians, from the sea shore.

We find some sort of allusion to this in the story of Coriolanus; for

the Romans tried to console themselves by attributing these victories

to one of their own countrymen, as indeed is so natural. Yet the whole

story of Coriolanus is for all that neither more nor less than a poem,

in which on one man and into one period events are concentrated which

are spread over several years; and besides this, it is dated too

early. However hard pressed the Romans may have been, it is not to be

supposed that whilst the enemy were marching victorious from one town

to the other, there should have been nothing said either of consuls

or of armies sent against them. Only in the enumeration of the places

which were destroyed, have we the intimation of those, which after the

breaking up of Latium became Volscian.

The Volscians advanced so far that men and beasts had to be brought

within the walls of Rome, and a plague arose from this crowded state

of the city. Lowness of spirits always makes people susceptible to

epidemics. Thus in the Peloponnesian war, it was the despair of the

Attic peasants, at seeing from the battlements their farms set fire

to, and their olive groves cut down, which developed the seeds of the

epidemic; the yellow fever at Cadiz in 1800 grew much more violent from

the despondency of the host of people which had flocked in without any

means of livelihood. The unfavourable season,--it was in August,--the

unwonted manner of life, the effluvia from the cattle, the want of

water and of cleanliness, might have contributed much to the breaking

out of the plague; yet it is likely that the great epidemic, which

thirty years later broke out in Greece, and afterwards in Carthage,

had begun already then. The mortality was very great; it was a true

pestilence, not a mere fever, which might have been brought on by

passing the night in the open air. There died the two consuls, two of

the four augurs, the _Curio Maximus_, the fourth part of the senate,

and a countless number of citizens of all ranks; so that the dead

carts did not suffice even to throw the corpses into the river. They

were cast into the sewers by which the evil became still greater. In

the meanwhile, the Volscians and Æquians were overrunning Latium. The

Latins resisted, but suffered a terrible defeat in the valley of Grotta

Ferrara. In the following year, we read nothing of victories: the

disease may have attacked the enemy also, and Rome thereby been saved.

After some years, the plague shows itself again.

The details of the accounts of this war are in part deserving of no

notice whatever: many of them were invented only very late, in order

to enliven with some cheerful images that dismal time. The scene of

the wars is always on the Algidus, which is not a mountain, but a cold

rugged height extending several leagues between Tusculum and Velitræ,

where the different streams divide, which partly flow towards the

Liris and the Pontine marshes, and partly towards the Anio. Horace

says, _nigræ feraci frondis in Algido_. The country round is barren,

and was in olden times, as is it to this day, overgrown with evergreen

holm oaks. It was several years ago the constant haunt of robbers, so

that I did not see it; but I have gathered very accurate information

concerning it. Here the Æquians and Volscians always appear, and unite

their armies. Here also is the scene of the poetical tale of the

victory of Cincinnatus over the Volscians. This, at least in the form

in which it has been handed down to us, belongs to a very fine cycle of

legends; but it is connected with the earlier events which happened at

home.

The Publilian law could not remain without consequences unfavourable to

peace. The great grievance was the unlimited rule of the consuls. The

consuls had come into the place of the kings, and though restricted as

to time, in their power they were hardly beneath them, the consequences

of which became apparent when there was an enlistment of troops. As

the tribunes were now authorized to propose laws, it was first moved

by C. Terentilius Harsa to appoint five men who were to draw up a law

declaring the limits of the consular authority. This undertaking was

very difficult to carry out. In reality, the supreme power can never

be perfectly defined, and least of all in free republics: it ought to

have a certain degree of pliancy, in order to admit of extraordinary

expedients. The Roman republic acknowledges this principle in the

formula, _videant Consules, ne quid detrimenti res publica capiat_,

which in the earlier times was something quite ordinary; and in such

conjunctures the limits of lawful use or of abuse could not be

easily laid down. This is one of those points with regard to which we

may fully understand, how with the greatest honesty on both sides,

people may have spoken for and against. At the same time, if there

existed a difference of opinion, it ought not to have been envenomed.

The question may, however, from the very beginning have had a wider

meaning: it was perhaps intended by it to divide the consulship equally

between the two orders.

During the first year, the commotions were still moderate; in the

next they grew more violent, since another tribune, according to

Dionysius’ account, again took up the _lex Terentilia_, but with this

addition, that Decemvirs,--five from the _Patres_, and five from

the plebeians,--were to make a general revision of the laws. The

legislations of old did not only comprehend civil and criminal law

and judicial procedure, but political law besides, and even transient

measures also. Solon’s legislation, for instance, was a complete

alteration of the constitution; but it likewise contained regulations

concerning matters of quite momentary interest, as for the payment

of debts. The idea so lately in vogue, that general legislations

were to issue from a great assembly of men learned in the law, was

quite foreign to the ancients, who were well aware, that a few only

ought to discuss the laws, and the larger assembly merely to adopt

or reject, inasmuch as it had to sanction them. This is the natural

course of legislation, and for this reason the ancients for the most

part held the principle, that lawgiving ought to be quite independent

of magistracy. In all the republics of antiquity, one or a few were

appointed to make the laws, and the people said yes or no. It was

the same among the Romans: ten men were to be nominated _legibus

scribundis_, to whom moreover consular power was to be granted. When we

see from the remnants of the Roman laws, how lengthy a single statute

was, the fact is easily accounted for that few only read them; yet

the majority did not know in the least what was spoken of, and thus

republican form in such transactions is necessarily a mere phantom.

Dionysius has this very happy expression, that the Romans had aimed

at ἰσονομία, and that they had attained to ἰσηγορία.[101] From an

occasional remark of Tacitus we know, that the ancient laws were for

the most part ascribed to kings, Romulus, Numa, Tullus, and Ancus.

This shows, that each of the three old tribes and the _Plebes_ had

their own peculiar law which was derived from their first founders.

These tribes and the _Plebes_, which had originally been separate

civic communities, had retained their old statutes when they united

into one state. I think I have been told of more than a hundred sets

of statutes, all of which, before the revolution, were in force in

the States of the Church. Many a village in Italy which does not

number a hundred hearths, has its own common law: Abbate Morelli has

collected three hundred different varieties of statutes in Italy. This

is likewise the case in many districts of Germany; yet there are also

very large tracts of country there, in which one and the same law of

the land prevails. It cannot even be stated with certainty whether

the whole of the _Plebes_ had the same law; whether in places like

Medullia and Politorium a different system was not in vogue. This

seems indeed to be contradicted by the fact that Servius Tullius swept

away every difference among the plebeians; but on the other hand it

seems confirmed by the circumstance that there were towns like Cameria

and others, which existed as _Coloniæ Romanæ_, and formed separate

communities. The ancients had a tradition according to which the clause

in the Twelve Tables, that the _Fortes_ and the _Sanates_ were to have

equal rights, applied to certain places, as for instance, to Tibur.

On the establishment of such an equality, the chiefs of the _Plebes_

might very well insist, as the disadvantages of this difference of

usages must have been great enough to have been very severely felt.

Abolition of all that constituted a glaring and oppressive inequality

was the object of this reform, and this the tribunes might certainly

demand. Still there existed no _connubium_ between patricians and

plebeians; the child took its rank from the parent of the worse blood

(_deteriorem partem sequi_). Thus in the Italian cities, Lombards,

Franks, Romans, and others, lived together for centuries under their

own peculiar laws; but this, by its very inconvenience, afterwards gave

rise to the statute law with equal rights.

Yet the tribunes went further: as the laws also affected political

rights, the lawgivers had likewise to reform the constitution. By the

Publilian Rogations, a life had been awakened in the nation which

was not in harmony with the ruling power: a new state of things was

necessarily to spring up from it; but against this new state of things

the old was arrayed in opposition. The most violent resistance was

made to this law, and the patricians had recourse to the same outrages

of which they had formerly been guilty. In this Cæso Quinctius, a son

of Cincinnatus, particularly distinguished himself. He repeated all

the intrigues of Appius Claudius, and at the head of the young men

of his order and of the clients, he again prevented the plebeians

by force from voting. Against this, either at that time, or a year

before, a law had been passed, the _lex Junia_, which is inconceivably

dated by Dionysius[102] thirty years earlier (262). By virtue of it,

any one who molested the tribunes in the discharge of their duty was

guilty of high treason against the commonalty. He had to find bail

for an amount to be fixed by the tribunes (the usual number was ten

sureties, for three thousand asses each), and if he did not attend

to receive sentence, the sureties and their goods were forfeited to

the commonalty. When the trial began, the charge was brought against

him, that with a gang of young patricians he had caused the death of

a plebeian by ill usage. Thus the Pentalides ran about in Mitylene

with clubs, and ill used the plebeians there; as late as during the

minority of Louis XIV. similar scenes took place in Paris, where people

would not go out into the streets unarmed, as they were afraid of

being attacked; in the times of Queen Anne, there was also in London

a band of young men of rank, called Mohocks, who infested the streets

in disguise; under King William, Lord Bolingbroke belonged to such a

crew, as we see from Swift’s correspondence. The charge raised such

a feeling of exasperation against Cæso Quinctius, that he left the

city. It is now stated that his father was ruined in consequence, the

tribunes having cruelly exacted the whole amount of the bail from

him. This is impossible; for the tribunes could only come upon the

securities. If these chose to come upon the father, a _sponsio_ must

have preceded; and even then, a man of so distinguished a house could

not possibly have been bereft of rights which belonged to the very

meanest of his order, but he might have called upon his clansmen and

clients to indemnify him. The story is a fiction, like so many others

which go a step beyond the truth. These embellishments might have been

made skilfully so as to deceive us; but luckily we cannot be mistaken

in this case.

Cincinnatus is one of those characters which have a very great name in

tradition, but of which the notices in history are scanty, and nearly

worthless. He occurs afterwards as a consul, and on that occasion

nothing more of any consequence is recorded. Striking facts are told of

him only in the Æquian war. There is a _prestige_ of wealth and also of

poverty about him: the latter shines forth especially in a rhetorical

age, when no one has a mind to be poor, and it seems so much the more

inconceivable if a great man is poor. We may leave the old account as

it is; but the enthusiasm which has arisen from it, is only foisted

into history. Perizonius has remarked, that the same story as that

of Cincinnatus was told of the dictator Atilius Serranus (_te sulco

Serrane serentem_), and therefore is quite apocryphal. He thinks that

in all likelihood it was made from the name (_Serranus_ from _serere_),

which was certainly older than the dictator Serranus. The story of

Cincinnatus is preserved in a poem on his dictatorship.

A Roman army under the consul Minucius was surrounded on the Algidus

by the Æquians; the senate, as is stated, then sent a deputation to

Cincinnatus, which found him ploughing his little farm of four _jugera_

beyond the river; he is said to have received the invitation of the

senate, and to have obeyed it with a bleeding heart, since he had still

the fate of his son before his mind. He then chose a brave but poor

patrician, L. Tarquitius, as his Master of the Horse; and gave orders

that all who were able to bear arms should present themselves, and that

each should bring with him twelve palisades, and provisions for five

days. In the night they accordingly set out, arrived on the following

morning, and formed the army in a line around the Æquian camp. The

consul broke through from within, and the Æquians, themselves enclosed

by a palisaded ditch, were obliged to surrender.

The whole story is quite as much a day dream, as any tale to be found

in the “Book of Heroes.” If the Roman army was in the middle, and round

it an Æquian one, and round that again another line of Romans, the

latter must have occupied a circuit of at least a league; so that the

Æquians could have broken through without any difficulty. Yet I will

not assert that this dictatorship of Cincinnatus is not historical at

all; although it is strange that afterwards a similar account occurs

at the siege of Ardea, and the same Clœlius Gracchus as a general in

it. Cincinnatus now exerts his power, to have Volscius, who had deposed

as a witness against Cæso Quinctius, banished; probably by the curies,

as the centuries had not as yet any judicial authority. At that time,

Cæso Quinctius was no more alive: it is likely that he had already

perished the year before on the following occasion, in which the spirit

of the age shows itself in its true light. When he had expatriated

himself, the tribunes remarked symptoms of a conspiracy among the

patrician youth, and had information that Cæso was in the town.

Moreover it is said that the city was surprised from the Carmental

gate, which was open, by a host of patrician clients, headed by the

Sabine Appius Herdonius who had come down the river in boats. But such

an enlistment of four thousand men must have been known at Rome, as

there was peace with the Sabines, and although the gate was to have

been open on account of a consecration, yet it surely was guarded by

double sentries; the enemy could not possibly have passed the Field of

Mars unheeded, and have occupied the Capitoline hill; the Clivus at

all events was closed. There must therefore have been treason here.

In the night people were awakened by the cry, that the enemy had got

hold of the Capitol; all who did not join the enemy were slain; the

slaves were called upon to unite with them. This of course excited

the greatest alarm and general misgiving. The plebeians thought that

it was a stratagem of the patricians, and that they had set on their

clients to take possession of the Capitol, as a means of intimidating

the plebeians; that the consuls would, as in a tumult, require them to

be sworn unconditionally, and would then avail themselves of the oath

to lead them to a place beyond the reach of the tribunician authority,

and demand of them the renunciation of their rights. The tribunes

therefore said that they could not allow the commonalty to take up

arms, before the laws were adopted. We may believe, notwithstanding,

that the government was altogether guiltless. It seems certain, that

there was a conspiracy, in which Cæso Quinctius had a share, and that

they had promised to make Appius Herdonius king. There may have been

here besides a conspiracy of the _Gentes Minores_; for one still finds

a great division between them and the _Majores_. When it was seen how

matters stood, the tribunes consented that the commonalty should take

the military oath; and under the command of the consul, the Capitol

was stormed. Luckily there seems to have been an armistice with the

Æquians; yet such a state of affairs was always dangerous, for one

could not reckon indeed with any safety that the truce would last. The

consul Valerius, the son of Poplicola, the very one who is said to

have been killed at the Regillus, was among the slain; the Capitol was

taken by assault; of those who were in it, the slaves were crucified,

and the freemen were executed. Cæso Quinctius may have been also among

the latter; and for this his father now took a revenge, pardonable

indeed, yet at all events ungenerous, in banishing Volscius, the

prosecutor of his son. The tribunes of the people are stated to have

vetoed this charge; a remarkable instance of their power, which at that

time was very great already: perhaps they only took the accused under

their protection, not allowing him to be brought by force before the

tribunal; the expression _patricios coire non passi sunt_, is first

used in later times. There were disputes about this trial for one or

two years; for Cincinnatus as consul, or as dictator (very likely the

latter), would not resign his office before Volscius was condemned.

Volscius went into exile. His cognomen Fictor is one of those instances

in which either the name arose from the tale, or the tale from the

name, being probably from _fingere_; so that the fact that the plebeian

M. Volscius Fictor had been condemned, gave rise to the story that he

had borne false witness.

It is evident, that Cincinnatus has been preposterously idolized by

posterity. Twenty years after this event, we see him, quite in the

interest of a faction, shedding the innocent blood of Mælius.

After the war of 296, the history takes a different turn. Concerning

the causes of this change we find no special notice; yet the

combination of several circumstances leaves no doubt but that

an alliance of peace and friendship was then concluded with the

Volscians of Ecetræ, of which the condition was to restore Antium to

the Volscians; so that this town now takes that character which it

preserved for a hundred and twenty years, until after the Latin war.

For, from that time the Volscians no longer appear every year on the

Algidus; only the Æquians are enemies still, but indeed enemies of no

consequence. The Antiates and Ecetrans from henceforth take a share in

the festivals on the Alban Mount, the _Feriæ Latinæ_. This is referred

to the days of Tarquin the Proud; but in that age Antium was not yet

Volscian. Before the year 290, the census amounted to 104,000; after

the plague, we find this number reduced not more than an eighth,

although one fourth of the senate had been swept away, which is owing

to the Volscians having been admitted to the right of _municipium_.

Citizens they were not; the census therefore did not comprise the Roman

citizens only. Yet the story of Coriolanus in particular is a proof

of this compromise. Coriolanus is said to have made it a condition

to the Romans, to give back the places which they had taken from the

Volscians, and to receive the Volscians as isopolites. Both of these

things were done: Antium is restored, the isopolity granted. Either to

this tradition has been transferred whatever is historically related of

the great Volscian war, or the story of Coriolanus is the catastrophe

of this struggle which brings on the peace; that is to say, Coriolanus

is really commander and mediator in this war.

That his history is not in its proper place, is manifest. The law

against those who should disturb the popular assembly could not

certainly have been made before the Publilian Rogations. If the

Volscians had advanced to the gates of Rome as early as we find it

stated in our books, there would not have been left any demesne for

the distribution of which Sp. Cassius could have proposed a law; and,

in fact, after the disastrous Volscian wars the agitations about the

agrarian laws are at an end, because there was then no occasion for

them. Moreover, if the war of Coriolanus in the year 262, had been

carried on in the manner in which it appears to have been from the

narrative, the Romans would not have had to restore any thing to the

Volscians; but after the great Volscian war, these possessed Antium.

Lastly, the demanded isopolity was really granted in the year 296,

as is proved by the numbers of the census.--As to the giving up of

Antium, the Romans say that it had fallen off: yet this is absurd

with regard to a colony. The Roman colony was simply withdrawn, and

the old Tyrrhenian population left to the Volscians. Even what is

mentioned as the cause of the breaking out of the war of Coriolanus,

that is to say, the account of the famine, during which a Greek king

of Sicily was said to have sent a gift of corn, points to a later

period. After the destructive Veientine war, under the consulship of

Virginius and Servilius, the surrounding country had been burnt and

devastated during the harvest and seed-time. In the year 262, Gelon

was at most only prince of the insignificant town of Gela. Dionysius

of Halicarnassus shows himself very clever at the expense of the old

annalists who mention here the tyrant Dionysius, when he proves that

the latter began his reign some eighty years later; yet he deserves

much more severe censure himself, as he names Gelon. But after the

Veientine war, according to the more probable chronology, Gelon, or at

least his brother Hiero, was ruler of Syracuse, and had, on account of

his hostility against the Etruscans, substantial reason to support the

Romans. All the circumstances indicate the time which we have fixed

upon. What gave rise to the mistake, was the mention of the temple of

the _Fortuna Muliebris_, as has been remarked before; yet this surely

belongs to an earlier period. The daughter of Valerius Poplicola is

mentioned as the first priestess; if it were at all connected with the

history of Coriolanus, his wife, or his mother, would have been the

first priestess. The account is now as follows.

C. or as others call him, Cn. Marcius Coriolanus, a young patrician of

eminence, very likely of the lesser clans, as these are on the whole

most opposed to the _Plebes_, had distinguished himself in the wars

against the Antiates. He had been commanding officer in the army which

the consuls had led against the Volscians, at a time which of course

the poem does not specify. The army besieged Corioli; the Volscians,

advancing from Antium, wished to relieve it; Coriolanus took it by

storm, whilst the army of the consul fought against the Antiates. For

this his name was given him, and he was highly extolled. Yet the same

person who in the war appears as a youth, is also a member of the

senate, and stands there at the head of the oligarchic faction. There

was a famine; and in contradiction to the plebeian statement that the

_Plebes_ during the secession had not been guilty of pillage, it is

now said that the land had been devastated by them. The whole story

is evidently of patrician origin; it glaringly shows the colouring of

the caste. Fruitless attempts were made to procure corn: money was

sent to Sicily to buy some; but the Greek king returned the money,

and gave the corn as a present. Perhaps it was a gift from Carthage.

Now it had been discussed in the senate what should be done with this

corn. Coriolanus had proposed, that it should neither be sold nor

distributed, unless the commonalty renounced its newly acquired rights,

selling them for a mess of pottage. Another proposition not much more

commendable, was that it should be sold to the commonalty as a body,

so that individuals had to buy it of second hand. In this manner

the patricians got double the prime cost. This plan was adopted. As

might be expected, it excited great exasperation; at the same time, it

also transpired that Coriolanus had insisted upon making use of the

opportunity to do away with the privileges. The sequel is briefly told

by Livy; Dionysius relates it at great length. According to Livy, the

tribunes brought a charge against him, as one who had broken the peace;

and they had a full right to do so by virtue of the agreement sworn at

the Sacred Mount. The impeachment, of course, was brought before the

_Plebes_, a fact indeed which Dionysius does not perceive. Coriolanus

therefore was put on his trial before the tribes, with permission

to leave the country before the decision was pronounced. This might

be done, if bail were found; only not in the way that is generally

imagined. Coriolanus is said to have met the charge proudly: Livy,

however, tells us that he had not appeared on the day that judgment

was given, but had withdrawn before the sentence was made known. Now

if he had settled in some place where he had received the right of

citizenship, the sentence could not be passed; or, if it were passed,

it was null and void, though his sureties had to pay the sums for which

they had bound themselves. Coriolanus was perhaps the first who was

allowed on this charge to find bail. According to the general account,

he now betook himself to the Volscians. This is true;--I believe

every thing as far as here,--yet his presenting himself to Attius

Tullius at Antium is apocryphal, and entirely copied from the visit

of Themistocles to Admetus, the king of the Molossians. It is then

stated, that he induced the Volscians, who had been quite disheartened,

to hazard a war once more. This is Roman exaggeration, intended to

disguise the distress which had been brought on by the Volscian arms.

It is related, how he conquered the towns one by one, first Circeri,

then those lying to the south of the Appian Way, then those on the

Latin road; and how at last he advanced against Rome itself. This

does not agree with what follows. Coriolanus now appears on the Roman

frontier near the Marrana, the canal which carries the water of the low

ground at Grotta Ferrara into the Tiber, five miles from Rome. Here the

Romans send an embassy to him: first of all, ten senators; he grants

them thirty days, and then three, as the Fetiales did whenever a war

was not yet declared; afterwards they send the priests, and at length

the matrons also. These last move his heart, and prevail upon him to

turn back.

This is all very pretty, but, if we look a little closer to it,

impossible. Livy makes on this occasion a most remarkable assertion.

He says that one would not indeed have known that the consuls of that

year had waged war with the Volscians, had it not been evident from

the league of Sp. Cassius with the Latins that one of them, Postumus

Cominius, had been absent; for Sp. Cassius had concluded that treaty

alone. To account for this, Livy alleges the eclipsing fame of

Coriolanus. This is a most valuable notice. The old traditions then do

not mention at all that the consul had taken Corioli, but merely that

Coriolanus had. Now, as we have seen before, it is not true that he

received his cognomen from the conquest of the town, as such surnames

do not occur before Scipio Africanus; moreover, Corioli was at that

time not a Volscian, but a Latin town, which first became Volscian

in the great Volscian war which we call that of Coriolanus, and was

destroyed only later. That it was Latin, is plain from the list of the

thirty towns which shared in the fight at the Regillus; and yet indeed

that list in all likelihood was not originally made out with reference

to this, but to the league of Sp. Cassius. Thus the name of Coriolanus

meant no more than that of Regillensis, Vibulanus, Mugillanus, and

others, whether it was that Corioli stood in a relation of proxeny or

clientship to his family, or from any other reason. We have therefore

nothing historical concerning Coriolanus, but that he wished to break

the treaty with the plebeians, and was therefore condemned. It is the

same with all the rest of his story. Coriolanus was condemned as one

who had transgressed against the sworn rights (_leges sacratæ_, the

German _Frohnenrechte_). He who violated them, made both himself and

his family accursed; and it was said that such persons were to be sold

for slaves at the temple of Ceres. How then could his wife and children

have stayed behind in Rome, if such a sentence had been passed upon

them? Mercy is not to be thought of in those times. The places against

which Coriolanus waged war, were in alliance with Rome; whosoever

therefore warred against them, was at war with the Romans, and Rome

would already then have been obliged to take the field. And so, when he

appeared before Rome, he could no more offer war or peace, but merely

an armistice, nor could he settle the conditions of the truce; while on

the other hand, the Romans could not possibly conclude peace on their

own account without bringing in the Latins and Hernicans. Moreover, it

is stated in the old narrative, that repeal of the _interdictio aquæ et

ignis_ had been announced to Coriolanus; but that he had not accepted

it, but had put forth claims in the name of the Volscians. Yet, after

the matrons had moved him, he goes off, and abandons all the conditions

made in their behalf. Thenceforward we find no more traces of him

beyond the notice in Fabius, that to the end of his days he dwelt among

the Volscians; and that it was a remark of his, that in old age one

began really to feel, what it was to live away from one’s native land.

Others were well aware that the Volscians could not have let things

pass off in this way; and hence we are told that they had followed

him on account of his personal superiority, but that afterwards,

when he left them, they stoned him to death at the instigation of

Attius Tullius. Yet even Livy does not believe in this, because it is

contradicted by the statement of Fabius.

The story is not altogether a fiction: Coriolanus lives too much in

the Roman legends for this to be the case. As for the assertion that

he was general of the Volscians, it is to be attributed to the natural

feeling that it is less painful to be conquered by one’s own countryman

than by a foreigner. From such a feeling of national pride, the Romans

gave a false colouring to the Volscian war, and thus softened down,

for themselves and the Latins, the disgrace of a defeat which led

to such great conquests of the Volscians. In the same spirit, they

devised the tale of the magnanimity of Coriolanus, and likewise of his

death; and I am convinced that Fabius Pictor was right in asserting

that Coriolanus, even to an advanced age, lived in exile among the

Volscians. That Rome was on the brink of utter ruin, is likely; the

distress, as represented, is perhaps not quite fictitious; but, that

the expedients for warding off the danger, namely, the three embassies,

of the senate, the priests, and the matrons, were invented to glorify

the hero, is not to be denied. The different orders in their narratives

mutually revile each other; and thus the _Plebes_ here shows itself at

once discouraged, and the patricians proud, as if they did not wish for

a reconciliation with Coriolanus.

I believe that the real truth is something quite different. At that

period when so many emigrants of the times of the Tarquins still

existed, who flocked together wherever a new gathering point presented

itself, I consider Coriolanus as one, who, on his retiring to the

Volscians, formed such a centre. As he finds an army of Roman emigrants

who are joined by the Volscians, he makes his appearance with them

on the Roman frontier. He could not, however, have had any idea of

forcing the walls of the city; but he encamped, just like a man in the

history of Dittmarsch who had renounced his country, and he threatened

war against it. He grants a respite, at first of thirty days, that the

senate might deliberate whether his demands were to be conceded or

no; and when this was not done, he waited for three days more, this

being the time which the state or the general asking for satisfaction,

still took to consider, whether war was to be declared, or how to

decide on any proposals which might have been made. Coriolanus had come

with partisans of the Tarquins, and likewise with many who had fled

the country for their crimes, and lastly with Volscians. The republic

invited him to return; the supplications of the mother, the wife, and

the matrons could have had no other meaning--but to urge him at least

to come alone, and not to bring back the terrible band. He probably

answered, that he could not enter alone, that he could not leave his

companions. If he returned, nothing remained for him but to be a tyrant

in his own native land, as we know from Greek history that the return

of the φυγάδες is an awful calamity; the ousted party cannot but crush

the other entirely. We see him here as a noble-hearted man, who will

not thus return, but rather dismisses his followers upon whom he must

have made an impression by his having renounced his country; such a

paramount influence could easily be exercised by a great man in times

like those. He did not compromise the interests of the Volscians: it

is possible that he really mediated for them, and obtained the cession

of Antium and isopolity. Thus he fulfilled his duty towards those who

had received him, and for Rome he gained the immense advantage that it

was now reconciled with its most dangerous enemy; for, the Volscians

had pressed upon Rome the hardest, and henceforth there remained only

the Æquians, whom it was easy to resist. The childish vanity of the

Romans has thrown so thick a veil upon this Volscian peace, but for

which every thing would be unconnected. It saved Rome, and gave it new

strength; and the state, with great wisdom, now turned this time to

account.

It is one of the distinguishing features of Roman history, that many

an event which seemed necessarily to lead to ruin, only brought out a

new career of prosperity. After the plague, one might have expected

the fall of Rome; and the peace with the Volscians was in the eyes of

the later Romans, who for this very reason tried to conceal it, in

some measure a humiliation; yet we have seen, how wise and fortunate

it was. From it there arose a source of power for Rome, which, even in

the most successful issue of the war, it would have been far from ever

possessing. The dissolution of the Latin state destroyed _de facto_ the

equality which was established in the league. The general opinion in

Dionysius, and also in Livy, is this, that the Latins were subjects of

the Romans, and that the war under Manlius and Decius in the year 410

(415), was a kind of rebellion. This is contradicted by the notice of

Cincius in Festus, according to which,--in his opinion, since Tullus

Hostilius--the Latins had their separate republic, and the supremacy

alternately with Rome. The true account is as follows: In the times

from Servius Tullius down to Tarquin the Proud, the Latins were on

a footing of equality with Rome; under Tarquin, they were subjects.

This state of submission was done away with by the defection of Latium

after the expulsion of the kings; after the battle at the Regillus,

it was perhaps restored for a couple of years; and at last, equality

was again established in the league of Sp. Cassius. In point of fact,

it continued for thirty years; but when the Latin towns were partly

occupied, partly destroyed by the Volscians, scarcely the fourth part

of the Latin league was left, and this could no more put forth the same

claims to equality as the whole state had done. It is evident, that

in the beginning of the fourth century, no ties of home policy bind

the Latin towns together any more. They have hardly a common tribunal

still: some towns, Ardea for instance, were entirely severed from

the rest. And thus the Latins are once more subjected to the Roman

sovereignty, as they were under Tarquin the Proud. The distinction

between the different times is the only clue to this labyrinth. Of the

Hernicans I cannot assert this with positive certainty; yet it seems

to me very likely. After the burning of the city by the Gauls, the

Latins again broke loose from the Roman sway, and renewed their claims

to equality; and, in consequence, there arose a war of thirty-two,

or according to the more probable chronology, of twenty-eight years,

which ended in a peace by which the old league of Sp. Cassius was

re-established. In the meanwhile, the Volscian war had for Rome this

advantage, that it stood alone indeed, but unmolested.

In Rome there was still at that time a considerable degree of

fermentation. According to Dio Cassius, it was by no means seldom that

distinguished plebeians were made away with by assassination. During

these dissensions, the agrarian law, and that on the νομοθέται, are

brought forward at every turn. It cannot be made out what interest the

_Plebes_ had in the increase of the number of tribunes to ten, two for

each class: their authority could not have been raised by this means.

A strange story, which is, however, enveloped in great obscurity,

belongs to this time of the increase of the tribunes. It is stated

in Valerius Maximus, that a tribune, P. Mucius, had caused his nine

colleagues to be burnt alive as traitors, because, headed by Sp.

Cassius, they had hindered the election of the magistrates. There is

here an evident confusion of dates, as ten tribunes were first elected

in 297, twenty-eight years after the consulship of Sp. Cassius. Two

hypotheses may be set up to account for this. Either these tribunes

were traitors to the _Plebes_, which is not likely, as the election

lay with the tribes; or P. Mucius was not a tribune of the people;

or at least he did not pronounce the sentence, but it was the curies

which did so, and they must have condemned the tribunes as breakers

of the peace. There must be something in this story, as Zonaras (from

Dio) likewise mentions it; perhaps this event is identical with the

impeachment of nine tribunes in Livy, about the time of the Canuleian

quarrels.