Never was a state represented in its
external
relations more firmly and worthily than Rome in its best
times by its senate.
times by its senate.
The history of Rome; tr. with the sanction of the ... v.1. Mommsen, Theodor, 1817-1903
The breach was already formed; but the adversaries still shook hands across it.
The termination of the struggles between the old and new burgesses, the various and comparatively successful endeavours to relieve the middle class, and the germs already making their appearance amidst the newly acquired civic equality—of the formation of a new aristocratic and a new democratic party, have thus been passed in review. It remains that we describe the shape which the new government assumed amidst these changes, and the positions in which after the political abolition of the nobility the three elements of the republican commonwealth -the burgesses, the magistrates, and the senate—stood towards each other.
The burgesses in their ordinary assemblies continued as hitherto to be the highest authority in the commonwealth and the legal sovereign. But it was settled by law that —apart from the matters committed once for all to the decision of the centuries, such as the election of consuls and censors-voting by districts should be just as valid as
The new govern ment.
The bur gess-body.
Its com position.
396 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK I!
voting by centuries : a regulation introduced as regards the
patricio-plebeian assembly by the Valerio-Horatian law of “9. 339. 305 368) and extended by the Publilian law of 415, but enacted as regards the plebeian separate assembly by
l
l
887. 241.
287. the Hortensian law about 467 (p. 385). We have already noticed that the same individuals, on the whole, were entitled to vote in both assemblies, but that—apart from the exclusion of the patricians from the plebeian separate assembly-in the general assembly of the districts all entitled to vote were on a footing of equality, while in the centuriate comitia the working of the suffrage was graduated with reference to the means of the voters, and in so far, therefore, the change was certainly a levelling and democratic innovation. It was a circumstance of far greater importance that, towards the end of this period, the primitive freehold basis of the right of suffrage began for the first time to be called in question. Appius Claudius, the boldest innovator known in Roman history,
812. in his censorship in 442 without consulting the senate or people so adjusted the burgess-roll, that a man who had no land was received into whatever tribe he chose and then according to his means into the corresponding century. But this alteration was too far in advance of the spirit of the age to obtain full acceptance. One of the immediate successors of Appius, Quintus Fabius Rullianus, the famous conqueror of the Samnites, undertook in his censor
804. ship of 450 not to set it aside entirely, but to confine it
within such limits that the real power in the assemblies should continue to be vested in the holders of land and of wealth. He assigned those who had no land collectively to the four city tribes, which were now made to rank not as the first but as the last. The rural tribes, on the other hand, the number of which gradually increased between 367 and 513 from seventeen to thirty-one-thus forming a majority, greatly preponderating from the first
burgess
can. in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
397
and ever increasing in preponderance, of the voting-divisions -—were reserved by law for the whole of the burgesses who were freeholders. In the centuries the equalization of the freeholders and non-freeholders remained as Appius had introduced In this manner provision was made for the preponderance of the freeholders in the comitia of the tribes, while for the centuriate comitia in themselves the wealthy already turned the scale. By this wise and moderate arrangement on the part of man who for his warlike feats and still more for this peaceful achievement justly received the surname of the Great (Maximus), on the one hand the duty of bearing arms was extended, as was fitting, also to the non-freehold burgesses on the other hand care was taken that their influence, especially that of those who had once been slaves and who were for the most part without property in land, should be subjected to that check which unfortunately, in state allowing slavery, an indispensable necessity. peculiar moral jurisdiction, moreover, which gradually came to be associated with the census and the making up of the burgess-roll, excluded from the burgess-body all individuals notoriously unworthy, and guarded the full moral and political purity of
citizenship.
The powers of the comitia exhibited during this period Increasing
tendency to enlarge their range, but manner very 5:33“ gradual. The increase in the number of magistrates to be gesses elected by the people falls, to some extent, under this head
an especially significant fact that from 392 the military 362. tribunes of one legion, and from 443 four tribunes in each 311. of the first four legions respectively, were nominated no longer by the general, but by the burgesses. During this
the burgesses did not on the whole interfere administration; only their right of declaring war was, as was reasonable, emphatically maintained, and held to extend also to cases in which prolonged armistice concluded
period
a
;
in ;
a is
it
in a
Aa
a
is
it.
Decreasing
of the burgess body.
398 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK H
instead of a peace expired and what was not in law but in 427. fact a new war began (327). In other instances a question of administration was hardly submitted to the people except
when the governing authorities fell into collision and one of them referred the matter to the people-as when the leaders of the moderate party among the nobility, Lucius Valerius
449. and Marcus Horatius, in 305, and the first plebeian 356. dictator, Gaius Marcius Rutilus, in 398, were not allowed
by the senate to receive the triumphs they had earned, 295. when the consuls of 459 could not agree as to their respective provinces of jurisdiction; and when the senate,
890. in 364, resolved to give up to the Gauls an ambassador who had forgotten his duty, and a consular tribune carried the matter to the community. This was the first occasion on which a decree of the senate was annulled by the people; and heavily the community atoned for Sometimes in difficult cases the government left the decision to the people, as first, when Caere sued for peace, after the people had declared war against but before war had actually begun
853. (401); and at subsequent period, when the senate hesitated to reject unceremoniously the humble entreaty of 818. the Samnites for peace (436). not till towards the
close of this epoch that we find considerably extended intervention of the comitia lributa in affairs of administration, particularly through the practice of consulting as to the conclusion of peace and of alliances: this extension
287. probably dates from the Hortensian law of 467.
But notwithstanding these enlargements of the powers importance of the burgess-assemblies, their practical influence on state
affairs began, particularly towards the close of this period, to wane. First of all, the extension of the bounds of Rome deprived her primary assembly of its true basis. As an assembly of the freeholders of the community, formerly might very well meet in sufliciently full numbers, and might very well know its own wishes, even without
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it.
can. in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
399
discussion; but the Roman burgess-body had now become less a civic community than a state. The fact that those dwelling together voted also with each other, no doubt, introduced into the Roman comitia, at least when the voting was by tribes, a sort of inward connection and into the voting now and then energy and independence; but under ordinary circumstances the composition of the comitia and their decision were left dependent on the person who presided or on accident, or were committed to the hands of the burgesses domiciled in the capital. It therefore, quite easy to understand how the assemblies of the burgesses,
which had great practical importance during the first two centuries of the republic, gradually became mere instru ment in the hands of the presiding magistrate, and in truth
very dangerous instrument, because the magistrates called to preside were so numerous, and every resolution of the community was regarded as the ultimate legal expression of the will of the people. But the enlargement of the consti tutional rights of the burgesses was not of much moment, inasmuch as these were less than formerly capable of will and action of their own, and there was as yet no demagog ism, in the proper sense of that term, in Rome. Had any such demagogic spirit existed, would have attempted not to extend the powers of the burgesses, but to remove the restrictions on political debate in their presence; whereas throughout this whole period there was undeviating acquiescence in the old maxims, that the magistrate alone could convoke the burgesses, and that he was entitled to exclude all debate and all proposal of amendments. At the time this incipient breaking up of the constitution made itself felt chiefly in the circumstance that the primary assemblies assumed an essentially passive attitude, and did not on the whole interfere in government either to help or to hinder it.
As regards the power of the magistrates, its diminution,
it
a
a
a
is,
400 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK I1
The magis- although not the direct design of the struggles between the
trates. Partition and weak ening of the consular powers.
old and new burgesses, was doubtless one of their most important results. At the beginning of the struggle between the orders or, in other words, of the strife for the possession of the consular power, the consulate was still the one and indivisible, essentially regal, magistracy; and the consul, like the king in former times, still had the appoint ment of all subordinate functionaries left to his own free choice. At the termination of that contest its most important functions-jurisdiction, street-police, election of senators and equites, the census and financial administration —were separated from the consulship and transferred to magistrates, who like the consul were nominated by the community and occupied a position far more co-ordinate than subordinate. The consulate, formerly the single ordinary magistracy of the state, was now no longer even absolutely the first. In the new arrangement as to the ranking and usual order of succession of the public oflices the consulate stood indeed above the praetorship, aedile ship, and quaestorship, but beneath the censorship, which —in addition to the most important financial duties-was charged with the adjustment of the rolls of burgesses, equites, and senators, and thereby wielded a wholly arbitrary moral control over the entire community and every individual burgess, the humblest as well as the most prominent. The conception of limited magisterial power or special function, which seemed to the original Roman state-law irreconcilable with the conception of supreme oflice, gradually gained a footing and mutilated and destroyed the earlier idea of the one and indivisible im
perium. A first step was already taken in this direction by the institution of the standing collateral oflices, particu larly the quaestorship 322) was completely carried out
367, by the Licinian laws (387), which prescribed the functions of the three supreme magistrates, and assigned administration
(p.
; it
can. 111 AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
4or
and the conduct of war to the two first, and the manage ment of justice to the third. But the change did not stop here. The consuls, although they were in law wholly and everywhere co-ordinate, naturally from the earliest times divided between them in practice the different departments of duty (prow'na'ae). Originally this was done simply by mutual concert, or in default of it by casting lots; but by degrees the other constituent authorities in the common wealth interfered with this practical definition of functions. It became usual for the senate to define annually the spheres of duty; and, while it did not directly distribute them among the coordinate magistrates, it exercised decided influence on the personal distribution by advice and request. In an extreme case the senate doubtless obtained a decree of the community, definitively to settle the question of distribution (p. 398) ; the government, however, very seldom employed this dangerous expedient. Further, the most important affairs, such as the concluding of peace, were withdrawn from the consuls, and they were in such matters obliged to have recourse to the senate and to act according to its instructions. Lastly, in cases of extremity the senate could at any time suspend the consuls from
oflice; for, according to an usage never established by law but never violated in practice, the creation of a dictatorship depended simply upon the resolution of the senate, and the fixing of the person to be nominated, although consti tutionally vested in the nominating consul, really under ordinary circumstances lay with the senate.
The old unity and plenary legal power of the imperium Limitation were retained longer in the case of the dictatorship than in of the die
that of the consulship. Although of course as an extra ordinary magistracy it had in reality from the first its special functions, it had in law far less of a special character than the consulate. But it also was gradually affected by the new idea of definite powers and functions introduced
v01. 1 26
tatorship.
868.
40: THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK 1]
into the legal life of Rome. In 391 we first meet with a dictator expressly nominated from theological scruples for the mere accomplishment of a religious ceremony; and though that dictator himself, doubtless in formal accord ance with the constitution, treated the restriction of his powers as null and took the command of the army in spite of such an opposition on the part of the magistrate was not repeated on occasion of the subsequent similarly restricted nominations, which occurred in 403 and thence forward very frequently. On the contrary, the dictators thenceforth accounted themselves bound by their powers as specially defined.
Lastly, further seriously felt restrictions of the magistracy
351.
Restric
tions as to were involved in the prohibition issued in 412 against the the [342.
accumula accumulation of the ordinary curule offices, and in the tion and
enactment of the same date, that the same person should occupation not again administer the same oflice under ordinary circum
stances before an interval of ten years had elapsed, as well as in the subsequent regulation that the oflice which practically was the highest, the censorship, should not be
265. held second time at all (489). But the government was still strong enough not to be afraid of its instruments or to desist purposely on that account from employing those who were the most serviceable. Brave oflicers were frequently released from these rules,1 and cases still
the re
of offices.
842.
820-311.
very
Any one who compares the consular Fasti before and after 412 will have no doubt as to the existence of the above~mentioned law respecting re-election to the consulate for, while before that year return to office, especially after three or four years, was a common occurrence, afterwards intervals of ten years and more were as frequent. Exceptions, howeva, occur in very great numbers, particularly during the severe years of war 434-443. On the other hand, the principle of not allowing a plurality of offices was strictly adhered to. There no certain instance of the com. bination of two of the three ordinary curule (Liv. xxxix. 39, oflices (the consulate. praetorship, and curule aedileship), but instances occur of other combinations, such as of the curule aedileship and the Oflice of master of the horse (Liv. xxiii. 24, 3o) of the praetorship and censorship (Fast. Cap. a. 501); of the praetorship and the dictatorship (Liv. viii. 12); of the consulate and the dictatorship (Liv. viii. :2).
;
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4)
;
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can. 111 AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
403
occurred like those of Quintus Fabius Rullianus, who was five times consul in twenty-eight years, and of Marcus Valerius Corvus (384-483) who, after he had filled six consulships, the first in his twenty-third, the last in his seventy-second year, and had been throughout three generations the protector of his countrymen and the terror of the foe, descended to the grave at the age of a hundred.
870-271.
While the Roman magistrate was thus more and more The tribun completely and definitely transformed from the absolute gage‘: lord into the limited commissioner and administrator of aninstru the community, the old counter-magistracy, the tribunate of 21:25 the people, was undergoing at the same time a similar ment. transformation internal rather than external. It served a
double purpose in the commonwealth. It had been from the beginning intended to protect the humble and the weak by a somewhat revolutionary assistance (auxilium) against the overbearing violence of the magistrates; it had subse quently been employed to get rid of the legal disabilities of the commons and the privileges of the gentile nobility. The latter end was attained. The original object was not only in itself a democratic ideal rather than a political
but it was also quite as obnoxious to the plebeian aristocracy into whose hands the tribunate necessarily fell, and quite as incompatible with the new
which originated in the equalization of the orders and bad if possible a still more decided aristocratic hue than that which preceded as was obnoxious to the gentile nobility and incompatible with the patrician ‘consular constitution. But instead of abolishing the tribunate, they preferred to convert from weapon of opposition into an instrument of government, and now introduced the tribunes of the people, who were originally excluded from all share in administration ant’ were neither magistrates nor members of the senate, into the class of governing authorities.
possibility,
organization
it
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it,
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404 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK 11
While in jurisdiction they stood from the beginning on an equality with the consuls and in the early stages of the conflicts between the orders acquired like the consuls the right of initiating legislation, they now received—we know not exactly when, but presumably at or soon after the final equalization of the orders-a position of equality with the consuls as confronting the practically governing authority, the senate. Hitherto they had been present at the pro ceedings of the senate, sitting on a bench at the door; now they obtained, like the other magistrates and by their side, a place in the senate itself and the right to interpose their word in its discussions. If they were precluded from the right of voting, this was simply an application of the general principle of Roman state-law, that those only should give counsel who were not called to act ; in accord ance with which the whole of the
not rest here. The tribunes received the
prerogative of supreme magistracy, which among the ordinary magistrates belonged only to the consuls and praetors besides-the right of convoking the senate, of consulting and of procuring decrees from it. 1 This was only as should be; the heads of the plebeian aristocracy could not but be placed on an equality with those of the patrician aristocracy in the senate, when once the govern ment had passed from the clan-nobility to the united
acting magistrates possessed during their year of office only a seat, not a vote, in the council of the state (p. 330). But concession did
aristocracy. Now that this opposition-college,
excluded from all share in the public administration, became—particularly with reference to strictly urban afi‘airs —-a second supreme executive and one of the most
and most serviceable instruments of the government, or in other words of the senate, for managing the burgesses and
Hence despatches intended for the senate were addressed to Consuls, Praetors, Tribunes of the Plebs. and Senate (Cicero, ad Fain. xv. 2, at al. )
distinctive
originally usual
1
it
it,
can. in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
405
especially for checking the excesses of the magistrates, it was certainly, as respected its original character, absorbed and politically annihilated; but this course was really enjoined by necessity. Clearly as the defects of the Roman aristocracy were apparent, and decidedly as the steady growth of aristocratic ascendency was connected with the practical setting aside of the tribunate, none can fail to see that government could not be long carried on with an authority which was not only aimless and virtually calculated to put off the suffering proletariate with a deceit ful prospect of relief, but was at the same time decidedly revolutionary and possessed of a-strictly speaking anarchical prerogative of obstruction to the authority of the magistrates and even of the state itself. But that faith in an ideal, which is the foundation of all the power and of all the impotence of democracy, had come to be closely associated in the minds of the Romans with the tribunate of the plebs; and we do not need to recall the case of Cola Rienzi in order to perceive that, however unsubstantial might be the advantage thence arising to the multitude, it could not be abolished without a formidable convulsion of the state. Accordingly with genuine political prudence they contented themselves with reducing it to a nullity under forms that should attract as little attention as
possible. The mere name of this essentially revolutionary magistracy was still retained within the aristocratically governed commonwealth-an incongruity for the present, and for the future, in the hands of a coming revolutionary party, a sharp and dangerous weapon. For the moment, however, and for a long time to come the aristocracy was so absolutely powerful and so completely possessed control over the tribunate, that no trace at all is to be met with of a collegiate opposition on the part of the tribunes to the senate; and the government overcame the forlorn move ments of opposition that now and then proceeded from
The senate. Its compo sition.
406 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK 11
individual tribunes, always without difficulty, and ordinarily by means of the tribunate itself.
In reality it was the senate that governed the common wealth, and did so almost without opposition after the equalization of the orders. Its very composition had undergone a change. The free prerogative of the chief magistrates in this matter, as it had been exercised after the setting aside of the old clan-representation (p. 98), had been already subjected to very material restrictions on the abolition of the presidency for life
331).
A further step towards the emancipation of the senate
from the power of the magistrates took place, when the adjustment of the senatorial lists was transferred from the supreme magistrates to subordinate functionaries-from the consuls to the censors (p. 37 5). Certainly, whether immediately at that time or soon afterwards, the right of the magistrate entrusted with the preparation of the list to omit from it individual senators on account of a stain
attaching to them and thereby to exclude them from the senate was, if not introduced, at least more precisely defined,1 and in this way the foundations were laid of that
1 This prerogative and the similar ones with reference to the equestrian and burgess-lists were perhaps not formally and legally assigned to the censors, but were always practically implied in their powers. It was the community, not the censor, that conferred burgess-rights ; but the person, to whom the latter in making up the list of persons entitled to vote did not assign a place or assigned an inferior one, did not lose his burgess-right, but could not exercise the privileges of a burgess, or could only exercise them in the inferior place, till the preparation of a new list. The same was the case with the senate; the person omitted by the censor from his list ceased to attend the senate, as long as the list in question remained valid—unless the presiding magistrate should reject it and reinstate the earlier list. Evidently therefore the important question in this respect
was not so much what was the legal liberty of the censors, as how far their authority availed with those magistrates who had to summon according to their lists. Hence it is easy to understand how this prerogative gradually rose in importance, and how with the increasing consolidation of the nobility such erasures assumed virtually the form of judicial decisions and were virtually respected as such. As to the adjustment of the senatorial list undoubtedly the enactment of the Ovinian plebircitu-m exercised a material share of influence-that the censors should admit to the senate " the best men out of all classes. "
crur. m AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
407
peculiar jurisdiction over morals on which the high repute of the censors was chiefly based 397). But censures of that sort—especially since the two censors had to be at one on the matter-might doubtless serve to remove particular persons who did not contribute to the credit of the assembly or were hostile to the spirit prevailing there, but could not bring the body itself into dependence on the magistracy.
But the right of the magistrates to constitute the senate according to their judgment was decidedly restricted by the Ovinian law, which was passed about the middle of this period, probably soon after the Licinian laws. That law at once conferred seat and vote in the senate provisionally on every one who had been curule aedile, praetor, or consul, and bound the next censors either formally to inscribe these expectants in the senatorial roll, or at any rate to exclude them from the roll only for such reasons as sufliced for the rejection of an actual senator. The number of those, however, who had been magistrates was far from suficing to keep the senate up to the normal number of three hundred and below that point could not be allowed to fall, especially as the list of senators was at the same time that of jurymen. Considerable room was thus always left for the exercise of the censorial right of election but those senators who were chosen not in consequence of having held oflice, but selection on the part of the censor —frequently burgesses who had filled non-curule public office, or distinguished themselves by personal valour, who had killed an enemy in battle or saved the life of burgess
-took part in voting, but not in debate 384). The main body of the senate, and that portion of into whose hands government and administration were concentrated, was thus according to the Ovinian law substantially based no longer on the arbitrary will of magistrate, but indirectly on election by the people. The Roman state in this way made some approach to, although did not reach, the
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;
;
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Powers of the senate.
The powers of the senate underwent scarcely any change in form. The senate carefully avoided giving a handle to opposition or to ambition by unpopular changes, or manifest violations, of the constitution; it permitted, though it did nor promote, the enlargement in a democratic direction of the power of the burgesses. But while the burgesses acquired the semblance, the senate acquired the substance of power -a
elections, and the whole control of the state.
Every new project of law was subjected to a preliminary deliberation in the senate, and scarcely ever did a magis trate venture to lay a proposal before the community with out or in opposition to the senate’s opinion. If he did so, the senate had—in the intercessory powers of the magis
trates and the annulling powers of the priests—an ample set of means at hand to nip in the bud, or subsequently to get rid of, obnoxious proposals; and in case of extremity it had in its hands as the supreme administrative authority not only the executing, but the power of refusing to execute, the decrees of the community. The senate further with tacit consent of the community claimed the right in urgent cases of absolving from the laws, under the reservation that the community should ratify the proceeding-a reservation which from the first was of little moment, and became by degrees so entirely a form that in later times they did not even take the trouble to propose the ratifying decree.
As to the elections, they passed, so far as they depended on the magistrates and were of political importance, practi cally into the hands of the senate. In this way it acquired,
Its in fluence in legislation.
Influence on the elections.
408 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK 1!
great institution of modern times, representative popular government, while the aggregate of the non-debating senators furnished—what it is so necessary and yet so difli
cult to get in governing corporations-a compact mass of members capable of forming and entitled to pronounce an opinion, but voting in silence.
decisive influence over legislation and the oflicial
can. it! AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 409
as has been mentioned already 402), the right to appoint the dictator. Great regard had certainly to be shown to the community; the right of bestowing the public magistracies could not be withdrawn from it; but, as has likewise been already observed, care was taken that this election of magistrates should not be constructed into the conferring of definite functions, especially of the posts of supreme command when war was imminent. Moreover the newly introduced idea of special functions on the one hand, and on the other the right practically conceded to the senate of dispensation from the laws, gave to an important share in oflicial appointments. Of the influence which the senate exercised in settling the oflicial spheres of the consuls in particular, we have already spoken 40 One of the most important applications of the dispensing right was the dispensation of the magistrate from the legal term of his tenure of oflice—a dispensation which, as con trary to the fundamental laws of the community, might not according to Roman state-law be granted in the precincts of the city proper, but beyond these was at least so far valid that the consul or praetor, whose term was prolonged, continued after its expiry to discharge his functions “in a consul’s or praetor’s stead” (pm com-ale, pro praetore). Of course this important right of extending the term of oflice —essentially on par with the right of nomination— belonged by law to the community alone, and at the
beginning was in fact exercised by it; but in 447, and 307. regularly thenceforward, the command of the commander-in
chief was prolonged mere decree of the senate. To
this was added, in fine, the preponderating and skilfully concerted influence of the aristocracy over the elections, which guided them ordinarily, although not always, to the choice of candidates agreeable to the government.
Finally as regards administration, war, peace and Swami“ . . . . govern
alliances, the founding of colonies, the assignation of mem,
.
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(p.
it
I).
(p.
410 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK 1I
lands, building, in fact every matter of permanent and general importance, and in particular the whole system of finance, depended absolutely on the senate. It was the senate which annually issued general instructions to the magistrates, settling their spheres of duty and limiting the troops and moneys to be placed at the disposal of each; and recourse was had to its counsel in every case of importance. The keepers of the state-chest could make no payment to any magistrate with the exception of the consul, or to any private person, unless authorized by a previous decree of the senate. In the management, how ever, of current affairs and in the details of judicial and military administration the supreme governing corporation did not interfere; the Roman aristocracy had too much political judgment and tact to desire to convert the control of the commonwealth into a guardianship over the individual official, or to turn the instrument into a machine.
That this new government of the senate amidst all its retention of existing forms involved a complete revolutioniz ing of the old commonwealth, is clear. That the free action of the burgesses should be arrested and benumbed; that the magistrates should be reduced to be the presidents of its sittings and its executive commissioners; that a corporation for the mere tendering of advice should seize the inheritance of both the authorities sanctioned by the constitution and should become, although under very modest forms, the central government of the state—these were steps of revolution and usurpation. Nevertheless, if any revolution or any usurpation appears justified before the bar of history by exclusive ability to govern, even its rigorous judgment must acknowledge that this corporation timeously comprehended and worthily fulfilled its great task. Called to power not by the empty accident of birth, but substantially by the free choice of the nation ; confirmed
CHAP. 111 AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
4! !
every fifth year by the stern moral judgment of the worthiest men ; holding oflice for life, and so not dependent on the expiration of its commission or on the varying opinion of the people; having its ranks close and united ever after the equalization of the orders; embracing in it all the political intelligence and practical statesmanship that the
absolute in dealing with all financial questions and in the guidance of foreign policy; having
complete power over the executive by virtue of its brief duration and of the tribunician intercession which was at the service of the senate after the termination of the quarrels between the orders-the Roman senate was the noblest organ of the nation, and in consistency and political Sagacity, in unanimity and patriotism, in grasp of power and unwavering courage, the foremost political corporation of all times-still even now an “assembly of kings,” which knew well how to combine despotic energy with republican self-devotion.
Never was a state represented in its external relations more firmly and worthily than Rome in its best
times by its senate. In matters of internal administration it certainly cannot be concealed that the moneyed and landed aristocracy, which was especially represented in the senate, acted with partiality in affairs that bore upon its peculiar interests, and that the sagacity and energy of the body were often in such cases employed far from benefi cially to the state. Nevertheless the great principle established amidst severe conflicts, that all Roman burgesses were equal in the eye of the law as respected rights and duties, and the opening up of a political career (or in other words, of admission to the senate) to every one, which was the result of that principle, concurred with the brilliance
people possessed;
of military and political successes in
harmony of the state and of the nation, and relieved the distinction of classes from that bitterness and malignity which marked the struggle of the patricians and plebeians.
preserving the
412 EQUALIZATION
OF THE ORDERS 300K 11
And, as the fortunate turn taken by external politics had the effect of giving the rich for more than a century ample space for themselves and rendered it unnecessary that they should oppress the middle class, the Roman people was enabled by means of its senate to carry out for a longer term than is usually granted to a people the grandest of all human undertakings-a wise and happy self-government.
can. rv FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER
413
CHAPTER IV
mm. or run ETRUSCAN rowan-"rm: CELTS
IN the previous chapters we have presented an outline of Etrusoo the development of the Roman constitution during the first 2:33‘ two centuries of the republic; we now recur to the corn- maritime mencement of that epoch for the purpose of tracing the supremq- external history of Rome and of Italy. About the time of
the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome the Etruscan
had reached its height. The Tuscans, and the
power
Carthaginians
possessed undisputed supremacy on the Tyrrhene Sea. Although Massilia amidst continual and severe struggles maintained her independence, the seaports of Campania
and of the Volscian land, and after the battle of Alalia Corsica also 186), were in the possession of the Etruscans. In Sardinia the sons of the Carthaginian general Mago laid the foundation of the greatness both of their house and of their city the complete conquest of
the island (about 260); and in Sicily, while the Hellenic 500. colonies were occupied with their internal feuds, the
Phoenicians retained possession of the western half without material opposition. The vessels of the Etruscans were no less dominant in the Adriatic; and their pirates were dreaded even in the more eastern waters.
By land also their power seemed to be on the increase. To acquire possession of Latium was of the most decisive
who were in close alliance with them,
by
(p.
subjuga tion of Latium by Etruria.
importance to Etruria, which was separated by the Latins alone from the Volscian towns that were dependent on it and from its possessions in Campania. Hitherto the firm bulwark of the Roman power had sufliciently protected Latium, and had successfully maintained against Etruria the frontier line of the Tiber. But now, when the whole Tuscan league, taking advantage of the confusion and the weakness of the Roman state after the expulsion of the Tarquins, renewed its attack more energetically than before under the king Lars Porsena of Clusium, it no longer encountered the wonted resistance. Rome surrendered,
414
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK II
507. and in the peace (assigned to 247) not only ceded all her possessions on the right bank of the Tiber to the adjacent Tuscan communities and thus abandoned her exclusive command of the river, but also delivered to the conqueror all her weapons of war and promised to make use of iron thenceforth only for the ploughshare. It seemed as if the union of Italy under Tuscan supremacy was not far distant.
Etruscans driven back from Latium.
506.
But the subjugation, with which the coalition of the Etruscan and Carthaginian nations had threatened both Greeks and Italians, was fortunately averted by the com bination of peoples drawn towards each other by family aflinity as well as by common peril. The Etruscan army, which after the fall of Rome had penetrated into Latium, had its victorious career checked in the first instance before the walls of Aricia by the well-timed intervention of the Cumaeans who had hastened to the succour of the Aricines
We know not how the war ended, nor, in particular, whether Rome even at that time tore up the ruinous and disgraceful peace. This n ‘. 1ch only is certain, that on this occasion also the Tuscans were unable to maintain their ground permanently on the left bank of the Tiber.
Soon the Hellenic nation was forced to engage in a still more comprehensive and still more decisive conflict with
(248).
may. IV THE CELTS
41s
the barbarians both of the west and of the east. It was
about the time of the Persian wars. The relation in which
the Tyrians stood to the great king led Carthage also to
follow in the wake of Persian policy-there exists a credible tradition even as to an alliance between the Carthaginians
and Xerxes—and, along with the Carthaginians, the Etruscans. It was one of the grandest of political com binations which simultaneously directed the Asiatic hosts
against Greece, and the Phoenician hosts against Sicily, to extirpate at a blow liberty and civilization from the face of
the earth. The victory remained with the Hellenes. _ The Victories
battle of Salamis (274) saved and avenged Hellas of Salamis and [480.
proper; and on the same day—so runs the story—the Himera, rulers of Syracuse and Agrigentum, Gelon and Theron, and their vanquished the immense army of the Carthaginian general effects. Hamilcar, son of Mago, at Himera so completely, that the
Fall of the Etrusoo Cartha ginian maritime supremacy.
war was thereby terminated, and the Phoenicians, who by no means cherished at that time the project of subduing the whole of Sicily on their own account, returned to their previous defensive policy. Some of the large silver pieces are still preserved which were coined for this campaign from the ornaments of Damareta, the wife of Gelon, and other noble Syracusan dames: and the latest times gratefully remembered the gentle and brave king of Syracuse and the glorious victory whose praises Simonides sang.
The immediate effect of the humiliation of Carthage
was the fall of the maritime supremacy of her Etruscan allies. Anaxilas, ruler of Rhegium and Zancle, had already closed the Sicilian straits against their privateers
by means of a standing fleet (about 272) ; soon afterwards 482. (280) the Cumaeans and Hiero of Syracuse achieved a 474. decisive victory near Cumae over the Tyrrhene fleet, to which the Carthaginians vainly attempted to render aid.
This is the victory which Pindar celebrates in his first Pythian ode; and there is still extant an Etruscan helmet,
Maritime supremacy of the Tarentines and Syra cusans.
which Hiero sent to Olympia, with the inscription: “Hiaron son of Deinomenes and the Syrakosians to Zeus, Tyrrhane spoil from Kyma. ”1
While these extraordinary successes against the Cartha ginians and Etruscans placed Syracuse at the head of the Greek cities in Sicily, the Doric Tarentum rose to un disputed pre-eminence among the Italian Hellenes, after the Achaean Sybaris had fallen about the time of the expulsion of the kings from Rome (243). The terrible
416
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK It
511.
474. defeat of the Tarentines by the Iapygians (280), the
most severe disaster which a Greek army had hitherto sustained, served only, like the Persian invasion of Hellas, to unshackle the whole might of the national spirit in the development of an energetic democracy. Thenceforth the Carthaginians and the Etruscans were no longer paramount in the Italian waters; the Tarentines pre dominated in the Adriatic and Ionic, the Massiliots and Syracusans in the Tyrrhene, seas. The latter in particular restricted more and more the range of Etruscan piracy. After the victory at Cumae, Hiero had occupied the island of Aenaria (Ischia), and by that means interrupted the communication between the Campanian and the northern
(52. Etruscans. About the year 302, with a view thoroughly to check Tuscan piracy, Syracuse sent forth a special ex pedition, which ravaged the island of Corsica and the Etruscan coast and occupied the island of Aethalia (Elba). Although Etrusco-Carthaginian piracy was not wholly re pressed--—Antium, for example, having apparently continued a haunt of privateering down to the beginning of the fifth century of Rome-the powerful Syracuse formed a strong bulwark against the allied Tuscans and Phoenicians. For a moment, indeed, it seemed as if the Syracusan power must be broken by the attack of the Athenians, whose naval expedition against Syracuse in the course of the
1 Fuipor 6 Aewopéveos xai. 'rol Zlvpaxéaror 10? Al Tiipaw' dl'b K614”.
can. iv THE CELTS
411
Peloponnesian war (339-341) was supported by the 415-418. Etruscans, old commercial friends of Athens, with three fifty-oared galleys. But the victory remained, as is well
known, both in the west and in the east with the Dorians.
After the ignominious failure of the Attic expedition, Syracuse became so indisputably the first Greek maritime power that the men, who were there at the head of the state, aspired to the sovereignty of Sicily and Lower Italy, and of both the Italian seas; while on the other hand the Carthaginians, who saw their dominion in Sicily now seriously in danger, were on their part also obliged to make, and made, the subjugation of the Syracusans and the reduction of the whole island the aim of their policy. We cannot here narrate the decline of the intermediate Sicilian states, and the increase of the Carthaginian power in the island, which were the immediate results of these
we notice their effect only so far as Etruria is concerned. The new ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius (who Dionysius reigned 348-387), inflicted on Etruria blows which were
severely felt. The far-scheming king laid the foundation 406-867. of his new colonial power especially in the sea to the east
of Italy, the more northern waters of which now became,
for the first time, subject to a Greek maritime power.
About the year 367, Dionysius occupied and colonized the 387.
port of Lissus and island of Issa on the Illyrian coast, and
the ports of Ancona, Numana, and Atria, on the coast of
Italy. The memory of the Syracusan dominion in this
remote region is preserved not only by the “trenches of Philistus,” a canal constructed at the mouth of the Po
beyond doubt by the well-known historian and friend of Dionysius who spent the years of his exile (3 68 et seq. ) at 335, Atria, but also by the alteration in the name of the Italian
eastern sea itself, which from this time forth, instead of its
earlier designation of the “Ionic Gulf” 16 received
the appellation still current at the present day, and probably
struggles;
vol~
27
l
(p. 5),
Romans opposed to the Etruscans of Veii.
This rapid collapse of the Etruscan maritime power would be inexplicable but for the circumstance that, at the very time when the Sicilian Greeks were attacking them by sea, the
Etruscans found themselves assailed with the severest blows on every side by land. About the time of the battles of Salamis, Himera, and Cumae a furious war raged for many years, according to the accounts of the Roman annals,
418
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER 300K I!
referable to these events, of the sea “of Hadria. "1 But not content with these attacks on the possessions and com mercial communications of the Etruscans in the eastern sea, Dionysius assailed the very heart of the Etruscan power by storming and plundering Pyrgi, the rich seaport
of Caere (369). From this blow it never recovered. When the internal disturbances that followed the death of Dionysius in Syracuse gave the Carthaginians freer scope, and their fleet resumed in the Tyrrhene sea that ascendency which with but slight interruptions they thenceforth main tained, it proved a burden no less grievous to Etruscans than to Greeks; so that, when Agathocles of Syracuse in
810. 444 was making preparations for war with Carthage, he was even joined by eighteen Tuscan vessels of war. The Etruscans perhaps had their fears in regard to Corsica, which they probably still at that time retained. The old Etrusco-Phoenician symmachy, which still existed in the
884-322. time of Aristotle (370-432), was thus broken up ; but the Etruscans never recovered their maritime strength.
488-474. between Rome and Veii (2 71-280). The Romans suffered in its course severe defeats. Tradition especially preserved 477. the memory of the catastrophe of the Fabii (277), who had in consequence of internal commotions voluntarily banished themselves from the capital 59) and had undertaken the
497. Hecataeus after 257 u. c. ) and Herodotus also (:7o-afier 345) 484-409. only know Hatrias as the delta of the Po and the sea that washes its
shores (O. Muller, Etrurker, p. r40; Gzogr. Graeci min. ed. C. Miller, p. 23). The appellation of Adriatic sea. in its more extended scale.
first occurs in the so-ealled Scylax about 418 me.
i.
1
i.
(+
(p. 3
can. rv THE CELTS
419
defence of the frontier against Etruria, and who were slain to the last man capable of bearing arms at the brook Cremera But the armistice for 400 months, which in room of a peace terminated the war, was so far favourable to the Romans that it at least restored the status quo of the regal period; the Etruscans gave up Fidenae and the district won by them on the right bank of the Tiber. We cannot ascertain how far this Romano-Etruscan war was connected directly with the war between the Hellenes and the Persians, and with that between the Sicilians and Carthaginians; but whether the Romans were or were not allies of the victors of Salamis and of Himera, there was at any rate a coincidence of interests as well as of results.
The Samnites as well as the Latins threw themselves The
upon the Etruscans ; and hardly had their Campanian igmpggsam settlement been cut off from the motherland in consequence the Emis of the battle of Cumae, when it found itself no longer able $52M,» to resist the assaults of the Sabellian mountain tribes.
Capua, the capital, fell in 3 3o ; and the Tuscan population 424.
there was soon after the conquest extirpated or expelled by
the Samnites. It is true that the Campanian Greeks also,
isolated and weakened, suffered severely from the same
invasion: Cumae itself was conquered by the Sabellians in
But the Hellenes maintained their ground at Neapolis 420. especially, perhaps with the aid of the Syracusans, while the Etruscan name in Campania disappeared from history excepting some detached Etruscan communities, which prolonged a pitiful and forlorn existence there.
Events still more momentous, however, occurred about the same time in Northern Italy. A new nation was knocking at the gates of the Alps: it was the Celts; and their first pressure fell on the Etruscans.
The Celtic, Galatian, or Gallic nation received from the Character common mother endowments different from those of its
Italian, Germanic, and Hellenic sisters. With various solid
3 34.
430
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK 11
qualities and still more that were brilliant, it was deficient in those deeper moral and political qualifications which lie at the root of all that is good and great in human develop ment. It was reckoned disgraceful, Cicero tells us, for the free Celts to till their fields with their own hands. They preferred a pastoral life to agriculture; and even in the fertile plains of the Po they chiefly practised the rearing of swine, feeding on the flesh of their herds, and staying with them in the oak forests day and night. Attachment to their native soil, such as characterized the Italians and the Germans, was wanting in the Celts; while on the other hand they delighted to congregate in towns and villages, which accordingly acquired magnitude and importance among the Celts earlier apparently than in Italy. Their political constitution was imperfect. Not only was the national unity recognized but feebly‘as a bond of connec tion-as in fact, the case with all nations at first—but the individual communities were deficient concord and firm control, in earnest public spirit and consistency of aim. The only organization for which they were fitted was a military one, where the bonds of discipline relieved the in dividual from the troublesome task of self-control. The prominent qualities of the Celtic race,” says their historian Thierry, “were personal bravery, in which they excelled all nations; an open impetuous temperament, accessible to every impression much intelligence, but at the same time extreme mobility, want of perseverance, aversion to
discipline and order, ostentation and perpetual discord— the result of boundless vanity. ” Cato the Elder more briefly describes them, nearly to the same effect; “the Celts devote themselves mainly to two things-fighting and esprit? ‘ Such qualities-those of good soldiers but of bad citizens-explain the historical fact, that the Celts have
Pin-aqua Gallic due: res indurtrioriuimperugvil‘ur: run militants‘ d avg'ute loqui (Cato, Orig. ii. fr. 2. Jordan).
1.
1
;
. “
in
is,
CHAP- Iv THE CELTS
421
shaken all states and have founded none. Everywhere we find them ready to rove or, in other words, to march ; pre ferring moveable property to landed estate, and gold to everything else ; following the profession of arms as a system of organized pillage or even as a trade for hire, and with such success at all events that even the Roman historian Sallust acknowledges that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in feats of arms. They were the true soldiers of-fortune of antiquity, as figures and descriptions represent them : with big but not sinewy bodies, with shaggy hair and long mustaches-quite a contrast to the Greeks and Romans, who shaved the head and upper lip; in variegated embroidered dresses, which in combat were not unfre quently thrown off; with a broad gold ring round the neck; wearing no helmets and without missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense shield, a long ill tempered sword, a dagger and a lance—all ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful at working in metals. Everything was made subservient to ostentation, even wounds, which were often subsequently enlarged for the purpose of boasting a broader scar. Usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on horseback, in which case every freeman was followed by two attendants likewise mounted ; war-chariots were early in use, as they were among the Libyans and the Hellenes in the earliest times. Various traits remind us of the chivalry of the Middle Ages; particularly the custom of single combat, which was foreign to the Greeks and Romans. Not only were they accus tomed during war to challenge a single enemy to fight, after having previously insulted him by words and gestures; during peace also they fought with each other in splendid suits of armour, as for life or death. After such feats carousals followed as a matter of course. In this way they led, whether under their own or a foreign banner, a restless soldier-life; they were dispersed from Ireland and Spain to
Celtic migrations.
Asia Minor, constantly occupied in fighting and so-called feats of heroism. But all their enterprises melted away like snow in spring; and nowhere did they create a great state or develop a distinctive culture of their own.
Such is the description which the ancients give us of this nation. Its origin can only be conjectured. Sprung from the same cradle from which the Hellenic, Italian, and Germanic peoples issued,1 the Celts doubtless like these migrated from their eastern motherland into Europe, where at a very early period they reached the western ocean and established their headquarters in what is now France, cross ing to settle in the British isles on the north, and on the south passing the Pyrenees and contending with the Iberian tribes for the possession of the peninsula. This, their first great migration, flowed past the Alps, and it was from the lands to the westward that they first began those move ments of smaller masses in the opposite direction-move ments which carried them over the Alps and the Haemus and even over the Bosporus, and by means of which they became and for many centuries continued to be the terror of the whole civilized nations of antiquity, till the victories of Caesar and the frontier defence organized by Augustus for ever broke their power.
The native legend of their migrations, which has been preserved to us mainly by Livy, relates the story of these
1 It has recently been maintained by expert philologists that there is a closer- afl'mity between the Celts and Italians than there is even between the latter and the Hellenes. In other words they hold that the branch of the great tree, from which the peoples of Indo-Germanic extraction in the west and south of Europe have sprung, divided itself in the first instance into Greeks and Italo-Celts, and that the latter at a considerably later period became subdivided into Italians and Celts. This hypothesis com mends itself much to acceptance in a geographical point of view, and the facts which history presents may perhaps be likewise brought into harmony with because what has hitherto been regarded as Graeco-Italian civiliza tion may very well have been Graeco-Celto-Italian-in fact we know nothing of the earliest stage of Celtic culture. Linguistic investigation, however, seems not to have made as yet such progress as to warrant the inaction of it: results in the primitive history of the peoples.
422
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER soon it
it,
cm. iv THE CELTS
4433
later retrograde movements as follows. 1 The Gallic confederacy, which was headed then as in the time of Caesar by the canton of the Bituriges (around Bourges), sent forth in the days of king Ambiatus two great hosts led by the two nephews of the king. One of these nephews, Sigovesus, crossed the Rhine and advanced in the direction of the Black Forest, while the second, Bellovesus, crossed the Graian Alps (the Little St. Bernard) and descended into the valley of the Po. From the former proceeded the Gallic settlement on the middle Danube; from the latter the oldest Celtic settlement in the modern Lombardy, the canton of the Insubres with Mediolanum (Milan) as its capital. Another host soon followed, which founded the canton of the Cenomani with the towns of Brixia (Brescia) and Verona. Ceaseless streams thenceforth poured over the Alps into the beautiful plain; the Celtic tribes with the Ligurians whom they dislodged and swept along with them wrested place after place from the Etruscans, till the whole left bank of the P0 was in their hands. After the fall of the rich Etruscan town Melpum (presumably in the district of Milan), for the subjugation of which the
1 The legend is related by Livy, v. 34, and Justin, xxiv. 4, and Caesar also has had it in view (B. 0. vi. 24). But the association of the migration of Bellovesus with the founding of Massilia, by which the former is chronologically fixed down to the middle of the second century of Rome, undoubtedly belongs not to the native legend, which of course did not specify dates, but to later ehronologizing research; and it deserves no credit. Isolated incursions and immigrations may have taken place at a very early period ; but the great overflowing of northern Italy by the Celts cannot be placed before the age of the decay of the Etruscan power, that is, not before the second half of the third century of the city.
In like manner, after the judiclousi-nvestigations of Wickham and Cramer, we cannot doubt that the line of march of Bellovesus, like that of Hannibal, lay not over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genévre) and through the territory of the Taurini. but over the Graian Alps (the Little St. Bernard) and through the territory of the Salassi. The name of the mountain is given by Livy doubtless not on the authority of the legend, but on his own conjecture.
Whether the representation that the Italian Boii came through the more easterly pass of the Poenine Alps rested on the ground of a genuine legendary reminiscence, or only on the ground of an assumed connection with the Bolt dwelling to the north of the Dam-be, is a question that must remain undecided.
The Celts assail the Etruscans in North em Italy.
474.
414
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER soox u
Attack on Etruria by the Romans.
Celts already settled in the basin of the Po had united with newly arrived tribes (3 58 these latter crossed to the right bank of the river and began to press upon the Umbrians and Etruscans in their original abodes. Those who did so were chiefly the Boii, who are alleged to have penetrated into Italy by another route, over the Poenine Alps (the Great St. Bernard): they settled in the modern Romagna, where the old Etruscan town Felsina, with its name changed by its new masters to Bononia, became their capital. Finally came the Senones, the last of the larger Celtic tribes which made their way over the Alps; they took up their abode along the coast of the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona. But isolated bands of Celtic settlers must have advanced even far in the direction of Umbria, and up to the border of Etruria proper; for stone inscriptions in the Celtic language have been found even at Todi on the upper Tiber. The limits of Etruria on the north and east became more and more contracted, and about the middle of the fourth century the Tuscan nation found themselves substantially restricted to the territory which thenceforth bore and still bears their name.
Subjected to these simultaneous and, as were, concerted assaults on the part of very different peoples— the Syracusans, Latins, Samnites, and above all the Celts —the Etruscan nation, that had just acquired so vast and sudden an ascendency in Latium and Campania and on
both the Italian seas, underwent still more rapid and
violent collapse. The loss of their maritime
and the subjugation of the Campanian Etruscans belong to the same epoch as the settlement of the Insubres and Cenomani on the Po; and about this same period the Roman burgesses, who had not very many years before been humbled to the utmost and almost reduced to bondage Porsena, first assumed an attitude of aggression towards Etruria. By the armistice with Veii in 280 Rome
supremacy
by
a
it
? ),
can. IV THE CELTS
425
had recovered its ground, and the two nations were restored in the main to the state in which they had stood in the time of the kings. When it expired in the year 309, the warfare began afresh ; but it took the form of border frays and pillaging excursions which led to no material result on either side. Etruria was still too powerful for Rome to be able seriously to attack At length the revolt of the Fidenates, who expelled the Roman garrison, murdered the Roman envoys, and submitted to Lars Tolumnius, king of the Veientes, gave rise to more considerable war, which ended favourably for the Romans; the king Tolumnius fell in combat by the hand of the Roman consul Aulus Cornelius Cossus 26 Fidenae was taken, and new armistice for 2oo months was concluded in 329. During this truce the troubles of Etruria became more and more aggravated, and the Celtic arms were already approaching the settlements that hitherto had been spared on the right bank of the Po. When the armistice expired in the end of 346, the Romans on their part resolved to undertake a war of conquest against Etruria and on this
occasion the war was carried on not merely to vanquish Veii, but to crush
The history of the war against the Veientes, Capenates, and Falisci, and of the siege of Veii, which said, like that of Troy, to have lasted ten years, rests on evidence far from trustworthy. Legend and poetry have taken possession of these events as their own, and with reason; for the struggle in this case was waged, with unprecedented exertions, for an unprecedented prize. was the first occasion on which Roman army remained in the field summer and winter, year after year, till its object was attained. It was the first occasion on which the com munity paid the levy from the resources of the state. But
was also the first occasion on which the Romans attempted to subdue nation of alien stock, and carried
44‘
428. 425.
408
Conquest of Vcii.
a
it
a
it.
It
;
is
a
(3
a
? ),
it.
426
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n
their arms beyond the ancient northern boundary of the Latin land.
The termination of the struggles between the old and new burgesses, the various and comparatively successful endeavours to relieve the middle class, and the germs already making their appearance amidst the newly acquired civic equality—of the formation of a new aristocratic and a new democratic party, have thus been passed in review. It remains that we describe the shape which the new government assumed amidst these changes, and the positions in which after the political abolition of the nobility the three elements of the republican commonwealth -the burgesses, the magistrates, and the senate—stood towards each other.
The burgesses in their ordinary assemblies continued as hitherto to be the highest authority in the commonwealth and the legal sovereign. But it was settled by law that —apart from the matters committed once for all to the decision of the centuries, such as the election of consuls and censors-voting by districts should be just as valid as
The new govern ment.
The bur gess-body.
Its com position.
396 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK I!
voting by centuries : a regulation introduced as regards the
patricio-plebeian assembly by the Valerio-Horatian law of “9. 339. 305 368) and extended by the Publilian law of 415, but enacted as regards the plebeian separate assembly by
l
l
887. 241.
287. the Hortensian law about 467 (p. 385). We have already noticed that the same individuals, on the whole, were entitled to vote in both assemblies, but that—apart from the exclusion of the patricians from the plebeian separate assembly-in the general assembly of the districts all entitled to vote were on a footing of equality, while in the centuriate comitia the working of the suffrage was graduated with reference to the means of the voters, and in so far, therefore, the change was certainly a levelling and democratic innovation. It was a circumstance of far greater importance that, towards the end of this period, the primitive freehold basis of the right of suffrage began for the first time to be called in question. Appius Claudius, the boldest innovator known in Roman history,
812. in his censorship in 442 without consulting the senate or people so adjusted the burgess-roll, that a man who had no land was received into whatever tribe he chose and then according to his means into the corresponding century. But this alteration was too far in advance of the spirit of the age to obtain full acceptance. One of the immediate successors of Appius, Quintus Fabius Rullianus, the famous conqueror of the Samnites, undertook in his censor
804. ship of 450 not to set it aside entirely, but to confine it
within such limits that the real power in the assemblies should continue to be vested in the holders of land and of wealth. He assigned those who had no land collectively to the four city tribes, which were now made to rank not as the first but as the last. The rural tribes, on the other hand, the number of which gradually increased between 367 and 513 from seventeen to thirty-one-thus forming a majority, greatly preponderating from the first
burgess
can. in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
397
and ever increasing in preponderance, of the voting-divisions -—were reserved by law for the whole of the burgesses who were freeholders. In the centuries the equalization of the freeholders and non-freeholders remained as Appius had introduced In this manner provision was made for the preponderance of the freeholders in the comitia of the tribes, while for the centuriate comitia in themselves the wealthy already turned the scale. By this wise and moderate arrangement on the part of man who for his warlike feats and still more for this peaceful achievement justly received the surname of the Great (Maximus), on the one hand the duty of bearing arms was extended, as was fitting, also to the non-freehold burgesses on the other hand care was taken that their influence, especially that of those who had once been slaves and who were for the most part without property in land, should be subjected to that check which unfortunately, in state allowing slavery, an indispensable necessity. peculiar moral jurisdiction, moreover, which gradually came to be associated with the census and the making up of the burgess-roll, excluded from the burgess-body all individuals notoriously unworthy, and guarded the full moral and political purity of
citizenship.
The powers of the comitia exhibited during this period Increasing
tendency to enlarge their range, but manner very 5:33“ gradual. The increase in the number of magistrates to be gesses elected by the people falls, to some extent, under this head
an especially significant fact that from 392 the military 362. tribunes of one legion, and from 443 four tribunes in each 311. of the first four legions respectively, were nominated no longer by the general, but by the burgesses. During this
the burgesses did not on the whole interfere administration; only their right of declaring war was, as was reasonable, emphatically maintained, and held to extend also to cases in which prolonged armistice concluded
period
a
;
in ;
a is
it
in a
Aa
a
is
it.
Decreasing
of the burgess body.
398 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK H
instead of a peace expired and what was not in law but in 427. fact a new war began (327). In other instances a question of administration was hardly submitted to the people except
when the governing authorities fell into collision and one of them referred the matter to the people-as when the leaders of the moderate party among the nobility, Lucius Valerius
449. and Marcus Horatius, in 305, and the first plebeian 356. dictator, Gaius Marcius Rutilus, in 398, were not allowed
by the senate to receive the triumphs they had earned, 295. when the consuls of 459 could not agree as to their respective provinces of jurisdiction; and when the senate,
890. in 364, resolved to give up to the Gauls an ambassador who had forgotten his duty, and a consular tribune carried the matter to the community. This was the first occasion on which a decree of the senate was annulled by the people; and heavily the community atoned for Sometimes in difficult cases the government left the decision to the people, as first, when Caere sued for peace, after the people had declared war against but before war had actually begun
853. (401); and at subsequent period, when the senate hesitated to reject unceremoniously the humble entreaty of 818. the Samnites for peace (436). not till towards the
close of this epoch that we find considerably extended intervention of the comitia lributa in affairs of administration, particularly through the practice of consulting as to the conclusion of peace and of alliances: this extension
287. probably dates from the Hortensian law of 467.
But notwithstanding these enlargements of the powers importance of the burgess-assemblies, their practical influence on state
affairs began, particularly towards the close of this period, to wane. First of all, the extension of the bounds of Rome deprived her primary assembly of its true basis. As an assembly of the freeholders of the community, formerly might very well meet in sufliciently full numbers, and might very well know its own wishes, even without
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399
discussion; but the Roman burgess-body had now become less a civic community than a state. The fact that those dwelling together voted also with each other, no doubt, introduced into the Roman comitia, at least when the voting was by tribes, a sort of inward connection and into the voting now and then energy and independence; but under ordinary circumstances the composition of the comitia and their decision were left dependent on the person who presided or on accident, or were committed to the hands of the burgesses domiciled in the capital. It therefore, quite easy to understand how the assemblies of the burgesses,
which had great practical importance during the first two centuries of the republic, gradually became mere instru ment in the hands of the presiding magistrate, and in truth
very dangerous instrument, because the magistrates called to preside were so numerous, and every resolution of the community was regarded as the ultimate legal expression of the will of the people. But the enlargement of the consti tutional rights of the burgesses was not of much moment, inasmuch as these were less than formerly capable of will and action of their own, and there was as yet no demagog ism, in the proper sense of that term, in Rome. Had any such demagogic spirit existed, would have attempted not to extend the powers of the burgesses, but to remove the restrictions on political debate in their presence; whereas throughout this whole period there was undeviating acquiescence in the old maxims, that the magistrate alone could convoke the burgesses, and that he was entitled to exclude all debate and all proposal of amendments. At the time this incipient breaking up of the constitution made itself felt chiefly in the circumstance that the primary assemblies assumed an essentially passive attitude, and did not on the whole interfere in government either to help or to hinder it.
As regards the power of the magistrates, its diminution,
it
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is,
400 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK I1
The magis- although not the direct design of the struggles between the
trates. Partition and weak ening of the consular powers.
old and new burgesses, was doubtless one of their most important results. At the beginning of the struggle between the orders or, in other words, of the strife for the possession of the consular power, the consulate was still the one and indivisible, essentially regal, magistracy; and the consul, like the king in former times, still had the appoint ment of all subordinate functionaries left to his own free choice. At the termination of that contest its most important functions-jurisdiction, street-police, election of senators and equites, the census and financial administration —were separated from the consulship and transferred to magistrates, who like the consul were nominated by the community and occupied a position far more co-ordinate than subordinate. The consulate, formerly the single ordinary magistracy of the state, was now no longer even absolutely the first. In the new arrangement as to the ranking and usual order of succession of the public oflices the consulate stood indeed above the praetorship, aedile ship, and quaestorship, but beneath the censorship, which —in addition to the most important financial duties-was charged with the adjustment of the rolls of burgesses, equites, and senators, and thereby wielded a wholly arbitrary moral control over the entire community and every individual burgess, the humblest as well as the most prominent. The conception of limited magisterial power or special function, which seemed to the original Roman state-law irreconcilable with the conception of supreme oflice, gradually gained a footing and mutilated and destroyed the earlier idea of the one and indivisible im
perium. A first step was already taken in this direction by the institution of the standing collateral oflices, particu larly the quaestorship 322) was completely carried out
367, by the Licinian laws (387), which prescribed the functions of the three supreme magistrates, and assigned administration
(p.
; it
can. 111 AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
4or
and the conduct of war to the two first, and the manage ment of justice to the third. But the change did not stop here. The consuls, although they were in law wholly and everywhere co-ordinate, naturally from the earliest times divided between them in practice the different departments of duty (prow'na'ae). Originally this was done simply by mutual concert, or in default of it by casting lots; but by degrees the other constituent authorities in the common wealth interfered with this practical definition of functions. It became usual for the senate to define annually the spheres of duty; and, while it did not directly distribute them among the coordinate magistrates, it exercised decided influence on the personal distribution by advice and request. In an extreme case the senate doubtless obtained a decree of the community, definitively to settle the question of distribution (p. 398) ; the government, however, very seldom employed this dangerous expedient. Further, the most important affairs, such as the concluding of peace, were withdrawn from the consuls, and they were in such matters obliged to have recourse to the senate and to act according to its instructions. Lastly, in cases of extremity the senate could at any time suspend the consuls from
oflice; for, according to an usage never established by law but never violated in practice, the creation of a dictatorship depended simply upon the resolution of the senate, and the fixing of the person to be nominated, although consti tutionally vested in the nominating consul, really under ordinary circumstances lay with the senate.
The old unity and plenary legal power of the imperium Limitation were retained longer in the case of the dictatorship than in of the die
that of the consulship. Although of course as an extra ordinary magistracy it had in reality from the first its special functions, it had in law far less of a special character than the consulate. But it also was gradually affected by the new idea of definite powers and functions introduced
v01. 1 26
tatorship.
868.
40: THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK 1]
into the legal life of Rome. In 391 we first meet with a dictator expressly nominated from theological scruples for the mere accomplishment of a religious ceremony; and though that dictator himself, doubtless in formal accord ance with the constitution, treated the restriction of his powers as null and took the command of the army in spite of such an opposition on the part of the magistrate was not repeated on occasion of the subsequent similarly restricted nominations, which occurred in 403 and thence forward very frequently. On the contrary, the dictators thenceforth accounted themselves bound by their powers as specially defined.
Lastly, further seriously felt restrictions of the magistracy
351.
Restric
tions as to were involved in the prohibition issued in 412 against the the [342.
accumula accumulation of the ordinary curule offices, and in the tion and
enactment of the same date, that the same person should occupation not again administer the same oflice under ordinary circum
stances before an interval of ten years had elapsed, as well as in the subsequent regulation that the oflice which practically was the highest, the censorship, should not be
265. held second time at all (489). But the government was still strong enough not to be afraid of its instruments or to desist purposely on that account from employing those who were the most serviceable. Brave oflicers were frequently released from these rules,1 and cases still
the re
of offices.
842.
820-311.
very
Any one who compares the consular Fasti before and after 412 will have no doubt as to the existence of the above~mentioned law respecting re-election to the consulate for, while before that year return to office, especially after three or four years, was a common occurrence, afterwards intervals of ten years and more were as frequent. Exceptions, howeva, occur in very great numbers, particularly during the severe years of war 434-443. On the other hand, the principle of not allowing a plurality of offices was strictly adhered to. There no certain instance of the com. bination of two of the three ordinary curule (Liv. xxxix. 39, oflices (the consulate. praetorship, and curule aedileship), but instances occur of other combinations, such as of the curule aedileship and the Oflice of master of the horse (Liv. xxiii. 24, 3o) of the praetorship and censorship (Fast. Cap. a. 501); of the praetorship and the dictatorship (Liv. viii. 12); of the consulate and the dictatorship (Liv. viii. :2).
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can. 111 AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
403
occurred like those of Quintus Fabius Rullianus, who was five times consul in twenty-eight years, and of Marcus Valerius Corvus (384-483) who, after he had filled six consulships, the first in his twenty-third, the last in his seventy-second year, and had been throughout three generations the protector of his countrymen and the terror of the foe, descended to the grave at the age of a hundred.
870-271.
While the Roman magistrate was thus more and more The tribun completely and definitely transformed from the absolute gage‘: lord into the limited commissioner and administrator of aninstru the community, the old counter-magistracy, the tribunate of 21:25 the people, was undergoing at the same time a similar ment. transformation internal rather than external. It served a
double purpose in the commonwealth. It had been from the beginning intended to protect the humble and the weak by a somewhat revolutionary assistance (auxilium) against the overbearing violence of the magistrates; it had subse quently been employed to get rid of the legal disabilities of the commons and the privileges of the gentile nobility. The latter end was attained. The original object was not only in itself a democratic ideal rather than a political
but it was also quite as obnoxious to the plebeian aristocracy into whose hands the tribunate necessarily fell, and quite as incompatible with the new
which originated in the equalization of the orders and bad if possible a still more decided aristocratic hue than that which preceded as was obnoxious to the gentile nobility and incompatible with the patrician ‘consular constitution. But instead of abolishing the tribunate, they preferred to convert from weapon of opposition into an instrument of government, and now introduced the tribunes of the people, who were originally excluded from all share in administration ant’ were neither magistrates nor members of the senate, into the class of governing authorities.
possibility,
organization
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404 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK 11
While in jurisdiction they stood from the beginning on an equality with the consuls and in the early stages of the conflicts between the orders acquired like the consuls the right of initiating legislation, they now received—we know not exactly when, but presumably at or soon after the final equalization of the orders-a position of equality with the consuls as confronting the practically governing authority, the senate. Hitherto they had been present at the pro ceedings of the senate, sitting on a bench at the door; now they obtained, like the other magistrates and by their side, a place in the senate itself and the right to interpose their word in its discussions. If they were precluded from the right of voting, this was simply an application of the general principle of Roman state-law, that those only should give counsel who were not called to act ; in accord ance with which the whole of the
not rest here. The tribunes received the
prerogative of supreme magistracy, which among the ordinary magistrates belonged only to the consuls and praetors besides-the right of convoking the senate, of consulting and of procuring decrees from it. 1 This was only as should be; the heads of the plebeian aristocracy could not but be placed on an equality with those of the patrician aristocracy in the senate, when once the govern ment had passed from the clan-nobility to the united
acting magistrates possessed during their year of office only a seat, not a vote, in the council of the state (p. 330). But concession did
aristocracy. Now that this opposition-college,
excluded from all share in the public administration, became—particularly with reference to strictly urban afi‘airs —-a second supreme executive and one of the most
and most serviceable instruments of the government, or in other words of the senate, for managing the burgesses and
Hence despatches intended for the senate were addressed to Consuls, Praetors, Tribunes of the Plebs. and Senate (Cicero, ad Fain. xv. 2, at al. )
distinctive
originally usual
1
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can. in AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
405
especially for checking the excesses of the magistrates, it was certainly, as respected its original character, absorbed and politically annihilated; but this course was really enjoined by necessity. Clearly as the defects of the Roman aristocracy were apparent, and decidedly as the steady growth of aristocratic ascendency was connected with the practical setting aside of the tribunate, none can fail to see that government could not be long carried on with an authority which was not only aimless and virtually calculated to put off the suffering proletariate with a deceit ful prospect of relief, but was at the same time decidedly revolutionary and possessed of a-strictly speaking anarchical prerogative of obstruction to the authority of the magistrates and even of the state itself. But that faith in an ideal, which is the foundation of all the power and of all the impotence of democracy, had come to be closely associated in the minds of the Romans with the tribunate of the plebs; and we do not need to recall the case of Cola Rienzi in order to perceive that, however unsubstantial might be the advantage thence arising to the multitude, it could not be abolished without a formidable convulsion of the state. Accordingly with genuine political prudence they contented themselves with reducing it to a nullity under forms that should attract as little attention as
possible. The mere name of this essentially revolutionary magistracy was still retained within the aristocratically governed commonwealth-an incongruity for the present, and for the future, in the hands of a coming revolutionary party, a sharp and dangerous weapon. For the moment, however, and for a long time to come the aristocracy was so absolutely powerful and so completely possessed control over the tribunate, that no trace at all is to be met with of a collegiate opposition on the part of the tribunes to the senate; and the government overcame the forlorn move ments of opposition that now and then proceeded from
The senate. Its compo sition.
406 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK 11
individual tribunes, always without difficulty, and ordinarily by means of the tribunate itself.
In reality it was the senate that governed the common wealth, and did so almost without opposition after the equalization of the orders. Its very composition had undergone a change. The free prerogative of the chief magistrates in this matter, as it had been exercised after the setting aside of the old clan-representation (p. 98), had been already subjected to very material restrictions on the abolition of the presidency for life
331).
A further step towards the emancipation of the senate
from the power of the magistrates took place, when the adjustment of the senatorial lists was transferred from the supreme magistrates to subordinate functionaries-from the consuls to the censors (p. 37 5). Certainly, whether immediately at that time or soon afterwards, the right of the magistrate entrusted with the preparation of the list to omit from it individual senators on account of a stain
attaching to them and thereby to exclude them from the senate was, if not introduced, at least more precisely defined,1 and in this way the foundations were laid of that
1 This prerogative and the similar ones with reference to the equestrian and burgess-lists were perhaps not formally and legally assigned to the censors, but were always practically implied in their powers. It was the community, not the censor, that conferred burgess-rights ; but the person, to whom the latter in making up the list of persons entitled to vote did not assign a place or assigned an inferior one, did not lose his burgess-right, but could not exercise the privileges of a burgess, or could only exercise them in the inferior place, till the preparation of a new list. The same was the case with the senate; the person omitted by the censor from his list ceased to attend the senate, as long as the list in question remained valid—unless the presiding magistrate should reject it and reinstate the earlier list. Evidently therefore the important question in this respect
was not so much what was the legal liberty of the censors, as how far their authority availed with those magistrates who had to summon according to their lists. Hence it is easy to understand how this prerogative gradually rose in importance, and how with the increasing consolidation of the nobility such erasures assumed virtually the form of judicial decisions and were virtually respected as such. As to the adjustment of the senatorial list undoubtedly the enactment of the Ovinian plebircitu-m exercised a material share of influence-that the censors should admit to the senate " the best men out of all classes. "
crur. m AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
407
peculiar jurisdiction over morals on which the high repute of the censors was chiefly based 397). But censures of that sort—especially since the two censors had to be at one on the matter-might doubtless serve to remove particular persons who did not contribute to the credit of the assembly or were hostile to the spirit prevailing there, but could not bring the body itself into dependence on the magistracy.
But the right of the magistrates to constitute the senate according to their judgment was decidedly restricted by the Ovinian law, which was passed about the middle of this period, probably soon after the Licinian laws. That law at once conferred seat and vote in the senate provisionally on every one who had been curule aedile, praetor, or consul, and bound the next censors either formally to inscribe these expectants in the senatorial roll, or at any rate to exclude them from the roll only for such reasons as sufliced for the rejection of an actual senator. The number of those, however, who had been magistrates was far from suficing to keep the senate up to the normal number of three hundred and below that point could not be allowed to fall, especially as the list of senators was at the same time that of jurymen. Considerable room was thus always left for the exercise of the censorial right of election but those senators who were chosen not in consequence of having held oflice, but selection on the part of the censor —frequently burgesses who had filled non-curule public office, or distinguished themselves by personal valour, who had killed an enemy in battle or saved the life of burgess
-took part in voting, but not in debate 384). The main body of the senate, and that portion of into whose hands government and administration were concentrated, was thus according to the Ovinian law substantially based no longer on the arbitrary will of magistrate, but indirectly on election by the people. The Roman state in this way made some approach to, although did not reach, the
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Powers of the senate.
The powers of the senate underwent scarcely any change in form. The senate carefully avoided giving a handle to opposition or to ambition by unpopular changes, or manifest violations, of the constitution; it permitted, though it did nor promote, the enlargement in a democratic direction of the power of the burgesses. But while the burgesses acquired the semblance, the senate acquired the substance of power -a
elections, and the whole control of the state.
Every new project of law was subjected to a preliminary deliberation in the senate, and scarcely ever did a magis trate venture to lay a proposal before the community with out or in opposition to the senate’s opinion. If he did so, the senate had—in the intercessory powers of the magis
trates and the annulling powers of the priests—an ample set of means at hand to nip in the bud, or subsequently to get rid of, obnoxious proposals; and in case of extremity it had in its hands as the supreme administrative authority not only the executing, but the power of refusing to execute, the decrees of the community. The senate further with tacit consent of the community claimed the right in urgent cases of absolving from the laws, under the reservation that the community should ratify the proceeding-a reservation which from the first was of little moment, and became by degrees so entirely a form that in later times they did not even take the trouble to propose the ratifying decree.
As to the elections, they passed, so far as they depended on the magistrates and were of political importance, practi cally into the hands of the senate. In this way it acquired,
Its in fluence in legislation.
Influence on the elections.
408 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK 1!
great institution of modern times, representative popular government, while the aggregate of the non-debating senators furnished—what it is so necessary and yet so difli
cult to get in governing corporations-a compact mass of members capable of forming and entitled to pronounce an opinion, but voting in silence.
decisive influence over legislation and the oflicial
can. it! AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY 409
as has been mentioned already 402), the right to appoint the dictator. Great regard had certainly to be shown to the community; the right of bestowing the public magistracies could not be withdrawn from it; but, as has likewise been already observed, care was taken that this election of magistrates should not be constructed into the conferring of definite functions, especially of the posts of supreme command when war was imminent. Moreover the newly introduced idea of special functions on the one hand, and on the other the right practically conceded to the senate of dispensation from the laws, gave to an important share in oflicial appointments. Of the influence which the senate exercised in settling the oflicial spheres of the consuls in particular, we have already spoken 40 One of the most important applications of the dispensing right was the dispensation of the magistrate from the legal term of his tenure of oflice—a dispensation which, as con trary to the fundamental laws of the community, might not according to Roman state-law be granted in the precincts of the city proper, but beyond these was at least so far valid that the consul or praetor, whose term was prolonged, continued after its expiry to discharge his functions “in a consul’s or praetor’s stead” (pm com-ale, pro praetore). Of course this important right of extending the term of oflice —essentially on par with the right of nomination— belonged by law to the community alone, and at the
beginning was in fact exercised by it; but in 447, and 307. regularly thenceforward, the command of the commander-in
chief was prolonged mere decree of the senate. To
this was added, in fine, the preponderating and skilfully concerted influence of the aristocracy over the elections, which guided them ordinarily, although not always, to the choice of candidates agreeable to the government.
Finally as regards administration, war, peace and Swami“ . . . . govern
alliances, the founding of colonies, the assignation of mem,
.
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(p.
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I).
(p.
410 THE EQUALIZATION OF THE ORDERS, BOOK 1I
lands, building, in fact every matter of permanent and general importance, and in particular the whole system of finance, depended absolutely on the senate. It was the senate which annually issued general instructions to the magistrates, settling their spheres of duty and limiting the troops and moneys to be placed at the disposal of each; and recourse was had to its counsel in every case of importance. The keepers of the state-chest could make no payment to any magistrate with the exception of the consul, or to any private person, unless authorized by a previous decree of the senate. In the management, how ever, of current affairs and in the details of judicial and military administration the supreme governing corporation did not interfere; the Roman aristocracy had too much political judgment and tact to desire to convert the control of the commonwealth into a guardianship over the individual official, or to turn the instrument into a machine.
That this new government of the senate amidst all its retention of existing forms involved a complete revolutioniz ing of the old commonwealth, is clear. That the free action of the burgesses should be arrested and benumbed; that the magistrates should be reduced to be the presidents of its sittings and its executive commissioners; that a corporation for the mere tendering of advice should seize the inheritance of both the authorities sanctioned by the constitution and should become, although under very modest forms, the central government of the state—these were steps of revolution and usurpation. Nevertheless, if any revolution or any usurpation appears justified before the bar of history by exclusive ability to govern, even its rigorous judgment must acknowledge that this corporation timeously comprehended and worthily fulfilled its great task. Called to power not by the empty accident of birth, but substantially by the free choice of the nation ; confirmed
CHAP. 111 AND THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
4! !
every fifth year by the stern moral judgment of the worthiest men ; holding oflice for life, and so not dependent on the expiration of its commission or on the varying opinion of the people; having its ranks close and united ever after the equalization of the orders; embracing in it all the political intelligence and practical statesmanship that the
absolute in dealing with all financial questions and in the guidance of foreign policy; having
complete power over the executive by virtue of its brief duration and of the tribunician intercession which was at the service of the senate after the termination of the quarrels between the orders-the Roman senate was the noblest organ of the nation, and in consistency and political Sagacity, in unanimity and patriotism, in grasp of power and unwavering courage, the foremost political corporation of all times-still even now an “assembly of kings,” which knew well how to combine despotic energy with republican self-devotion.
Never was a state represented in its external relations more firmly and worthily than Rome in its best
times by its senate. In matters of internal administration it certainly cannot be concealed that the moneyed and landed aristocracy, which was especially represented in the senate, acted with partiality in affairs that bore upon its peculiar interests, and that the sagacity and energy of the body were often in such cases employed far from benefi cially to the state. Nevertheless the great principle established amidst severe conflicts, that all Roman burgesses were equal in the eye of the law as respected rights and duties, and the opening up of a political career (or in other words, of admission to the senate) to every one, which was the result of that principle, concurred with the brilliance
people possessed;
of military and political successes in
harmony of the state and of the nation, and relieved the distinction of classes from that bitterness and malignity which marked the struggle of the patricians and plebeians.
preserving the
412 EQUALIZATION
OF THE ORDERS 300K 11
And, as the fortunate turn taken by external politics had the effect of giving the rich for more than a century ample space for themselves and rendered it unnecessary that they should oppress the middle class, the Roman people was enabled by means of its senate to carry out for a longer term than is usually granted to a people the grandest of all human undertakings-a wise and happy self-government.
can. rv FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER
413
CHAPTER IV
mm. or run ETRUSCAN rowan-"rm: CELTS
IN the previous chapters we have presented an outline of Etrusoo the development of the Roman constitution during the first 2:33‘ two centuries of the republic; we now recur to the corn- maritime mencement of that epoch for the purpose of tracing the supremq- external history of Rome and of Italy. About the time of
the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome the Etruscan
had reached its height. The Tuscans, and the
power
Carthaginians
possessed undisputed supremacy on the Tyrrhene Sea. Although Massilia amidst continual and severe struggles maintained her independence, the seaports of Campania
and of the Volscian land, and after the battle of Alalia Corsica also 186), were in the possession of the Etruscans. In Sardinia the sons of the Carthaginian general Mago laid the foundation of the greatness both of their house and of their city the complete conquest of
the island (about 260); and in Sicily, while the Hellenic 500. colonies were occupied with their internal feuds, the
Phoenicians retained possession of the western half without material opposition. The vessels of the Etruscans were no less dominant in the Adriatic; and their pirates were dreaded even in the more eastern waters.
By land also their power seemed to be on the increase. To acquire possession of Latium was of the most decisive
who were in close alliance with them,
by
(p.
subjuga tion of Latium by Etruria.
importance to Etruria, which was separated by the Latins alone from the Volscian towns that were dependent on it and from its possessions in Campania. Hitherto the firm bulwark of the Roman power had sufliciently protected Latium, and had successfully maintained against Etruria the frontier line of the Tiber. But now, when the whole Tuscan league, taking advantage of the confusion and the weakness of the Roman state after the expulsion of the Tarquins, renewed its attack more energetically than before under the king Lars Porsena of Clusium, it no longer encountered the wonted resistance. Rome surrendered,
414
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK II
507. and in the peace (assigned to 247) not only ceded all her possessions on the right bank of the Tiber to the adjacent Tuscan communities and thus abandoned her exclusive command of the river, but also delivered to the conqueror all her weapons of war and promised to make use of iron thenceforth only for the ploughshare. It seemed as if the union of Italy under Tuscan supremacy was not far distant.
Etruscans driven back from Latium.
506.
But the subjugation, with which the coalition of the Etruscan and Carthaginian nations had threatened both Greeks and Italians, was fortunately averted by the com bination of peoples drawn towards each other by family aflinity as well as by common peril. The Etruscan army, which after the fall of Rome had penetrated into Latium, had its victorious career checked in the first instance before the walls of Aricia by the well-timed intervention of the Cumaeans who had hastened to the succour of the Aricines
We know not how the war ended, nor, in particular, whether Rome even at that time tore up the ruinous and disgraceful peace. This n ‘. 1ch only is certain, that on this occasion also the Tuscans were unable to maintain their ground permanently on the left bank of the Tiber.
Soon the Hellenic nation was forced to engage in a still more comprehensive and still more decisive conflict with
(248).
may. IV THE CELTS
41s
the barbarians both of the west and of the east. It was
about the time of the Persian wars. The relation in which
the Tyrians stood to the great king led Carthage also to
follow in the wake of Persian policy-there exists a credible tradition even as to an alliance between the Carthaginians
and Xerxes—and, along with the Carthaginians, the Etruscans. It was one of the grandest of political com binations which simultaneously directed the Asiatic hosts
against Greece, and the Phoenician hosts against Sicily, to extirpate at a blow liberty and civilization from the face of
the earth. The victory remained with the Hellenes. _ The Victories
battle of Salamis (274) saved and avenged Hellas of Salamis and [480.
proper; and on the same day—so runs the story—the Himera, rulers of Syracuse and Agrigentum, Gelon and Theron, and their vanquished the immense army of the Carthaginian general effects. Hamilcar, son of Mago, at Himera so completely, that the
Fall of the Etrusoo Cartha ginian maritime supremacy.
war was thereby terminated, and the Phoenicians, who by no means cherished at that time the project of subduing the whole of Sicily on their own account, returned to their previous defensive policy. Some of the large silver pieces are still preserved which were coined for this campaign from the ornaments of Damareta, the wife of Gelon, and other noble Syracusan dames: and the latest times gratefully remembered the gentle and brave king of Syracuse and the glorious victory whose praises Simonides sang.
The immediate effect of the humiliation of Carthage
was the fall of the maritime supremacy of her Etruscan allies. Anaxilas, ruler of Rhegium and Zancle, had already closed the Sicilian straits against their privateers
by means of a standing fleet (about 272) ; soon afterwards 482. (280) the Cumaeans and Hiero of Syracuse achieved a 474. decisive victory near Cumae over the Tyrrhene fleet, to which the Carthaginians vainly attempted to render aid.
This is the victory which Pindar celebrates in his first Pythian ode; and there is still extant an Etruscan helmet,
Maritime supremacy of the Tarentines and Syra cusans.
which Hiero sent to Olympia, with the inscription: “Hiaron son of Deinomenes and the Syrakosians to Zeus, Tyrrhane spoil from Kyma. ”1
While these extraordinary successes against the Cartha ginians and Etruscans placed Syracuse at the head of the Greek cities in Sicily, the Doric Tarentum rose to un disputed pre-eminence among the Italian Hellenes, after the Achaean Sybaris had fallen about the time of the expulsion of the kings from Rome (243). The terrible
416
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK It
511.
474. defeat of the Tarentines by the Iapygians (280), the
most severe disaster which a Greek army had hitherto sustained, served only, like the Persian invasion of Hellas, to unshackle the whole might of the national spirit in the development of an energetic democracy. Thenceforth the Carthaginians and the Etruscans were no longer paramount in the Italian waters; the Tarentines pre dominated in the Adriatic and Ionic, the Massiliots and Syracusans in the Tyrrhene, seas. The latter in particular restricted more and more the range of Etruscan piracy. After the victory at Cumae, Hiero had occupied the island of Aenaria (Ischia), and by that means interrupted the communication between the Campanian and the northern
(52. Etruscans. About the year 302, with a view thoroughly to check Tuscan piracy, Syracuse sent forth a special ex pedition, which ravaged the island of Corsica and the Etruscan coast and occupied the island of Aethalia (Elba). Although Etrusco-Carthaginian piracy was not wholly re pressed--—Antium, for example, having apparently continued a haunt of privateering down to the beginning of the fifth century of Rome-the powerful Syracuse formed a strong bulwark against the allied Tuscans and Phoenicians. For a moment, indeed, it seemed as if the Syracusan power must be broken by the attack of the Athenians, whose naval expedition against Syracuse in the course of the
1 Fuipor 6 Aewopéveos xai. 'rol Zlvpaxéaror 10? Al Tiipaw' dl'b K614”.
can. iv THE CELTS
411
Peloponnesian war (339-341) was supported by the 415-418. Etruscans, old commercial friends of Athens, with three fifty-oared galleys. But the victory remained, as is well
known, both in the west and in the east with the Dorians.
After the ignominious failure of the Attic expedition, Syracuse became so indisputably the first Greek maritime power that the men, who were there at the head of the state, aspired to the sovereignty of Sicily and Lower Italy, and of both the Italian seas; while on the other hand the Carthaginians, who saw their dominion in Sicily now seriously in danger, were on their part also obliged to make, and made, the subjugation of the Syracusans and the reduction of the whole island the aim of their policy. We cannot here narrate the decline of the intermediate Sicilian states, and the increase of the Carthaginian power in the island, which were the immediate results of these
we notice their effect only so far as Etruria is concerned. The new ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius (who Dionysius reigned 348-387), inflicted on Etruria blows which were
severely felt. The far-scheming king laid the foundation 406-867. of his new colonial power especially in the sea to the east
of Italy, the more northern waters of which now became,
for the first time, subject to a Greek maritime power.
About the year 367, Dionysius occupied and colonized the 387.
port of Lissus and island of Issa on the Illyrian coast, and
the ports of Ancona, Numana, and Atria, on the coast of
Italy. The memory of the Syracusan dominion in this
remote region is preserved not only by the “trenches of Philistus,” a canal constructed at the mouth of the Po
beyond doubt by the well-known historian and friend of Dionysius who spent the years of his exile (3 68 et seq. ) at 335, Atria, but also by the alteration in the name of the Italian
eastern sea itself, which from this time forth, instead of its
earlier designation of the “Ionic Gulf” 16 received
the appellation still current at the present day, and probably
struggles;
vol~
27
l
(p. 5),
Romans opposed to the Etruscans of Veii.
This rapid collapse of the Etruscan maritime power would be inexplicable but for the circumstance that, at the very time when the Sicilian Greeks were attacking them by sea, the
Etruscans found themselves assailed with the severest blows on every side by land. About the time of the battles of Salamis, Himera, and Cumae a furious war raged for many years, according to the accounts of the Roman annals,
418
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER 300K I!
referable to these events, of the sea “of Hadria. "1 But not content with these attacks on the possessions and com mercial communications of the Etruscans in the eastern sea, Dionysius assailed the very heart of the Etruscan power by storming and plundering Pyrgi, the rich seaport
of Caere (369). From this blow it never recovered. When the internal disturbances that followed the death of Dionysius in Syracuse gave the Carthaginians freer scope, and their fleet resumed in the Tyrrhene sea that ascendency which with but slight interruptions they thenceforth main tained, it proved a burden no less grievous to Etruscans than to Greeks; so that, when Agathocles of Syracuse in
810. 444 was making preparations for war with Carthage, he was even joined by eighteen Tuscan vessels of war. The Etruscans perhaps had their fears in regard to Corsica, which they probably still at that time retained. The old Etrusco-Phoenician symmachy, which still existed in the
884-322. time of Aristotle (370-432), was thus broken up ; but the Etruscans never recovered their maritime strength.
488-474. between Rome and Veii (2 71-280). The Romans suffered in its course severe defeats. Tradition especially preserved 477. the memory of the catastrophe of the Fabii (277), who had in consequence of internal commotions voluntarily banished themselves from the capital 59) and had undertaken the
497. Hecataeus after 257 u. c. ) and Herodotus also (:7o-afier 345) 484-409. only know Hatrias as the delta of the Po and the sea that washes its
shores (O. Muller, Etrurker, p. r40; Gzogr. Graeci min. ed. C. Miller, p. 23). The appellation of Adriatic sea. in its more extended scale.
first occurs in the so-ealled Scylax about 418 me.
i.
1
i.
(+
(p. 3
can. rv THE CELTS
419
defence of the frontier against Etruria, and who were slain to the last man capable of bearing arms at the brook Cremera But the armistice for 400 months, which in room of a peace terminated the war, was so far favourable to the Romans that it at least restored the status quo of the regal period; the Etruscans gave up Fidenae and the district won by them on the right bank of the Tiber. We cannot ascertain how far this Romano-Etruscan war was connected directly with the war between the Hellenes and the Persians, and with that between the Sicilians and Carthaginians; but whether the Romans were or were not allies of the victors of Salamis and of Himera, there was at any rate a coincidence of interests as well as of results.
The Samnites as well as the Latins threw themselves The
upon the Etruscans ; and hardly had their Campanian igmpggsam settlement been cut off from the motherland in consequence the Emis of the battle of Cumae, when it found itself no longer able $52M,» to resist the assaults of the Sabellian mountain tribes.
Capua, the capital, fell in 3 3o ; and the Tuscan population 424.
there was soon after the conquest extirpated or expelled by
the Samnites. It is true that the Campanian Greeks also,
isolated and weakened, suffered severely from the same
invasion: Cumae itself was conquered by the Sabellians in
But the Hellenes maintained their ground at Neapolis 420. especially, perhaps with the aid of the Syracusans, while the Etruscan name in Campania disappeared from history excepting some detached Etruscan communities, which prolonged a pitiful and forlorn existence there.
Events still more momentous, however, occurred about the same time in Northern Italy. A new nation was knocking at the gates of the Alps: it was the Celts; and their first pressure fell on the Etruscans.
The Celtic, Galatian, or Gallic nation received from the Character common mother endowments different from those of its
Italian, Germanic, and Hellenic sisters. With various solid
3 34.
430
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK 11
qualities and still more that were brilliant, it was deficient in those deeper moral and political qualifications which lie at the root of all that is good and great in human develop ment. It was reckoned disgraceful, Cicero tells us, for the free Celts to till their fields with their own hands. They preferred a pastoral life to agriculture; and even in the fertile plains of the Po they chiefly practised the rearing of swine, feeding on the flesh of their herds, and staying with them in the oak forests day and night. Attachment to their native soil, such as characterized the Italians and the Germans, was wanting in the Celts; while on the other hand they delighted to congregate in towns and villages, which accordingly acquired magnitude and importance among the Celts earlier apparently than in Italy. Their political constitution was imperfect. Not only was the national unity recognized but feebly‘as a bond of connec tion-as in fact, the case with all nations at first—but the individual communities were deficient concord and firm control, in earnest public spirit and consistency of aim. The only organization for which they were fitted was a military one, where the bonds of discipline relieved the in dividual from the troublesome task of self-control. The prominent qualities of the Celtic race,” says their historian Thierry, “were personal bravery, in which they excelled all nations; an open impetuous temperament, accessible to every impression much intelligence, but at the same time extreme mobility, want of perseverance, aversion to
discipline and order, ostentation and perpetual discord— the result of boundless vanity. ” Cato the Elder more briefly describes them, nearly to the same effect; “the Celts devote themselves mainly to two things-fighting and esprit? ‘ Such qualities-those of good soldiers but of bad citizens-explain the historical fact, that the Celts have
Pin-aqua Gallic due: res indurtrioriuimperugvil‘ur: run militants‘ d avg'ute loqui (Cato, Orig. ii. fr. 2. Jordan).
1.
1
;
. “
in
is,
CHAP- Iv THE CELTS
421
shaken all states and have founded none. Everywhere we find them ready to rove or, in other words, to march ; pre ferring moveable property to landed estate, and gold to everything else ; following the profession of arms as a system of organized pillage or even as a trade for hire, and with such success at all events that even the Roman historian Sallust acknowledges that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in feats of arms. They were the true soldiers of-fortune of antiquity, as figures and descriptions represent them : with big but not sinewy bodies, with shaggy hair and long mustaches-quite a contrast to the Greeks and Romans, who shaved the head and upper lip; in variegated embroidered dresses, which in combat were not unfre quently thrown off; with a broad gold ring round the neck; wearing no helmets and without missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense shield, a long ill tempered sword, a dagger and a lance—all ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful at working in metals. Everything was made subservient to ostentation, even wounds, which were often subsequently enlarged for the purpose of boasting a broader scar. Usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on horseback, in which case every freeman was followed by two attendants likewise mounted ; war-chariots were early in use, as they were among the Libyans and the Hellenes in the earliest times. Various traits remind us of the chivalry of the Middle Ages; particularly the custom of single combat, which was foreign to the Greeks and Romans. Not only were they accus tomed during war to challenge a single enemy to fight, after having previously insulted him by words and gestures; during peace also they fought with each other in splendid suits of armour, as for life or death. After such feats carousals followed as a matter of course. In this way they led, whether under their own or a foreign banner, a restless soldier-life; they were dispersed from Ireland and Spain to
Celtic migrations.
Asia Minor, constantly occupied in fighting and so-called feats of heroism. But all their enterprises melted away like snow in spring; and nowhere did they create a great state or develop a distinctive culture of their own.
Such is the description which the ancients give us of this nation. Its origin can only be conjectured. Sprung from the same cradle from which the Hellenic, Italian, and Germanic peoples issued,1 the Celts doubtless like these migrated from their eastern motherland into Europe, where at a very early period they reached the western ocean and established their headquarters in what is now France, cross ing to settle in the British isles on the north, and on the south passing the Pyrenees and contending with the Iberian tribes for the possession of the peninsula. This, their first great migration, flowed past the Alps, and it was from the lands to the westward that they first began those move ments of smaller masses in the opposite direction-move ments which carried them over the Alps and the Haemus and even over the Bosporus, and by means of which they became and for many centuries continued to be the terror of the whole civilized nations of antiquity, till the victories of Caesar and the frontier defence organized by Augustus for ever broke their power.
The native legend of their migrations, which has been preserved to us mainly by Livy, relates the story of these
1 It has recently been maintained by expert philologists that there is a closer- afl'mity between the Celts and Italians than there is even between the latter and the Hellenes. In other words they hold that the branch of the great tree, from which the peoples of Indo-Germanic extraction in the west and south of Europe have sprung, divided itself in the first instance into Greeks and Italo-Celts, and that the latter at a considerably later period became subdivided into Italians and Celts. This hypothesis com mends itself much to acceptance in a geographical point of view, and the facts which history presents may perhaps be likewise brought into harmony with because what has hitherto been regarded as Graeco-Italian civiliza tion may very well have been Graeco-Celto-Italian-in fact we know nothing of the earliest stage of Celtic culture. Linguistic investigation, however, seems not to have made as yet such progress as to warrant the inaction of it: results in the primitive history of the peoples.
422
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER soon it
it,
cm. iv THE CELTS
4433
later retrograde movements as follows. 1 The Gallic confederacy, which was headed then as in the time of Caesar by the canton of the Bituriges (around Bourges), sent forth in the days of king Ambiatus two great hosts led by the two nephews of the king. One of these nephews, Sigovesus, crossed the Rhine and advanced in the direction of the Black Forest, while the second, Bellovesus, crossed the Graian Alps (the Little St. Bernard) and descended into the valley of the Po. From the former proceeded the Gallic settlement on the middle Danube; from the latter the oldest Celtic settlement in the modern Lombardy, the canton of the Insubres with Mediolanum (Milan) as its capital. Another host soon followed, which founded the canton of the Cenomani with the towns of Brixia (Brescia) and Verona. Ceaseless streams thenceforth poured over the Alps into the beautiful plain; the Celtic tribes with the Ligurians whom they dislodged and swept along with them wrested place after place from the Etruscans, till the whole left bank of the P0 was in their hands. After the fall of the rich Etruscan town Melpum (presumably in the district of Milan), for the subjugation of which the
1 The legend is related by Livy, v. 34, and Justin, xxiv. 4, and Caesar also has had it in view (B. 0. vi. 24). But the association of the migration of Bellovesus with the founding of Massilia, by which the former is chronologically fixed down to the middle of the second century of Rome, undoubtedly belongs not to the native legend, which of course did not specify dates, but to later ehronologizing research; and it deserves no credit. Isolated incursions and immigrations may have taken place at a very early period ; but the great overflowing of northern Italy by the Celts cannot be placed before the age of the decay of the Etruscan power, that is, not before the second half of the third century of the city.
In like manner, after the judiclousi-nvestigations of Wickham and Cramer, we cannot doubt that the line of march of Bellovesus, like that of Hannibal, lay not over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genévre) and through the territory of the Taurini. but over the Graian Alps (the Little St. Bernard) and through the territory of the Salassi. The name of the mountain is given by Livy doubtless not on the authority of the legend, but on his own conjecture.
Whether the representation that the Italian Boii came through the more easterly pass of the Poenine Alps rested on the ground of a genuine legendary reminiscence, or only on the ground of an assumed connection with the Bolt dwelling to the north of the Dam-be, is a question that must remain undecided.
The Celts assail the Etruscans in North em Italy.
474.
414
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER soox u
Attack on Etruria by the Romans.
Celts already settled in the basin of the Po had united with newly arrived tribes (3 58 these latter crossed to the right bank of the river and began to press upon the Umbrians and Etruscans in their original abodes. Those who did so were chiefly the Boii, who are alleged to have penetrated into Italy by another route, over the Poenine Alps (the Great St. Bernard): they settled in the modern Romagna, where the old Etruscan town Felsina, with its name changed by its new masters to Bononia, became their capital. Finally came the Senones, the last of the larger Celtic tribes which made their way over the Alps; they took up their abode along the coast of the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona. But isolated bands of Celtic settlers must have advanced even far in the direction of Umbria, and up to the border of Etruria proper; for stone inscriptions in the Celtic language have been found even at Todi on the upper Tiber. The limits of Etruria on the north and east became more and more contracted, and about the middle of the fourth century the Tuscan nation found themselves substantially restricted to the territory which thenceforth bore and still bears their name.
Subjected to these simultaneous and, as were, concerted assaults on the part of very different peoples— the Syracusans, Latins, Samnites, and above all the Celts —the Etruscan nation, that had just acquired so vast and sudden an ascendency in Latium and Campania and on
both the Italian seas, underwent still more rapid and
violent collapse. The loss of their maritime
and the subjugation of the Campanian Etruscans belong to the same epoch as the settlement of the Insubres and Cenomani on the Po; and about this same period the Roman burgesses, who had not very many years before been humbled to the utmost and almost reduced to bondage Porsena, first assumed an attitude of aggression towards Etruria. By the armistice with Veii in 280 Rome
supremacy
by
a
it
? ),
can. IV THE CELTS
425
had recovered its ground, and the two nations were restored in the main to the state in which they had stood in the time of the kings. When it expired in the year 309, the warfare began afresh ; but it took the form of border frays and pillaging excursions which led to no material result on either side. Etruria was still too powerful for Rome to be able seriously to attack At length the revolt of the Fidenates, who expelled the Roman garrison, murdered the Roman envoys, and submitted to Lars Tolumnius, king of the Veientes, gave rise to more considerable war, which ended favourably for the Romans; the king Tolumnius fell in combat by the hand of the Roman consul Aulus Cornelius Cossus 26 Fidenae was taken, and new armistice for 2oo months was concluded in 329. During this truce the troubles of Etruria became more and more aggravated, and the Celtic arms were already approaching the settlements that hitherto had been spared on the right bank of the Po. When the armistice expired in the end of 346, the Romans on their part resolved to undertake a war of conquest against Etruria and on this
occasion the war was carried on not merely to vanquish Veii, but to crush
The history of the war against the Veientes, Capenates, and Falisci, and of the siege of Veii, which said, like that of Troy, to have lasted ten years, rests on evidence far from trustworthy. Legend and poetry have taken possession of these events as their own, and with reason; for the struggle in this case was waged, with unprecedented exertions, for an unprecedented prize. was the first occasion on which Roman army remained in the field summer and winter, year after year, till its object was attained. It was the first occasion on which the com munity paid the levy from the resources of the state. But
was also the first occasion on which the Romans attempted to subdue nation of alien stock, and carried
44‘
428. 425.
408
Conquest of Vcii.
a
it
a
it.
It
;
is
a
(3
a
? ),
it.
426
FALL OF THE ETRUSCAN POWER BOOK n
their arms beyond the ancient northern boundary of the Latin land.
