No More Learning

CHAP- vl AGAINST ROME
477
The most natural allies of the Samnites would have Imm
been the Tarentines; but it was part of that fatality that hung over Samnium and over Italy in general, that at this moment so fraught with the destinies of the future the decision lay in the hands of these Athenians of Italy. Since the constitution of Tarentum, which was originally after the old Doric fashion strictly aristocratic, had become changed to a complete democracy, a life of singular activity
had sprung up in that city, which was inhabited chiefly by mariners, fishermen, and artisans The sentiments and conduct of the population, more wealthy than noble, dis carded all earnestness amidst the giddy hustle and witty brilliance of their daily life, and oscillated between the grandest boldness of enterprise and elevation of spirit on the one band, and a shameful frivolity and childish whim on the other. It may not be out of place, in connection with a crisis wherein the existence or destruction of nations of noble gifts and ancient renown was at stake, to mention
$22835“. time.
that Plato, who came to Tarentum some sixty years before
this time, according to his own statement saw the whole 889. city drunk at the Dionysia, and that the burlesque farce,
or “merry tragedy” as it was called, was created in Tarentum about the very time of the great Samnite war.
This licentious life and buffoon poetry of the Tarentine
fashionables and literati had a fitting counterpart in the inconstant, arrogant, and short-sighted policy of the Tarentine demagogues, who regularly meddled in matters with which they had nothing to do, and kept aloof where their immediate interests called for action. After the Caudine catastrophe, when the Romans and Samnites stood opposed in Apulia, they had sent envoys thither to
both parties to lay down their arms (434). This 320, diplomatic intervention in the decisive struggle of the Italians could not rationally have any other meaning than
that of an announcement that Tarentum had at length
enjoin
478 STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS 500! n
resolved to abandon the neutrality which it had hitherto maintained. It had in fact suflicient reason to do so. It was no doubt a diflicult and dangerous thing for Tarentum to be entangled in such a war; for the democratic develop ment of the state had directed its energies entirely to the fleet, and while that fleet, resting upon the strong com mercial marine of Tarentum, held the first rank among the maritime powers of Magna Graecia, the land force, on which they were in the present case dependent, consisted mainly of hired soldiers and was sadly disorganized. Under these circumstances it was no light undertaking for the Tarentine republic to take part in the conflict between Rome and Samnium, even apart from the-at least trouble some-—feud in which Roman policy had contrived to in volve them with the Lucanians. But these obstacles might be surmounted by an energetic will; and both the con tending parties construed the summons of the Tarentine envoys that they should desist from the strife as meant in earnest. The Samnites, as the weaker, showed themselves ready to comply with it; the Romans replied by hoisting the signal for battle. Reason and honour dictated to the Tarentines the propriety of now following up the haughty injunction of their envoys by a declaration of war against Rome; but in Tarentum neither reason nor honour characterized the government, and they had simply been trifling in a very childish fashion with very serious matters. No declaration of war against Rome took place; in its stead they preferred to support the oligarchical party in the Sicilian towns against Agathocles of Syracuse who had at a former period been in the Tarentine service and had been dismissed in disgrace, and following the example of Sparta, they sent a fleet to the island-a fleet which would
‘14. have rendered better service in the Campanian seas (440). The peoples of northern and central Italy, who seem to have been roused especially by the establishment of the
CHAP- v1 AGAINST ROME
479
fortress of Luceria, acted with more energy. The Accession Etruscans first drew the sword (443), the armistice of “a”
' Etrusmns having already expired some years before. The to the
403
Roman frontier-fortress of Sutrium had to sustain a two gifilfmg'm‘
years’ siege, and in the vehement conflicts which took place under its walls the Romans as a rule were worsted,
till the consul of the year 444 Quintus Fabius Rullianus, 810. a leader who had gained experience in the Samnite wars,
not only restored the ascendency of the Roman arms in Roman Etruria, but boldly penetrated into the land of the Etruscans proper, which had hitherto from diversity of language and scanty means of communication remained almost unknown to the Romans. His march through the Ciminian Forest which no Roman army had yet traversed, and his pillaging of a rich region that had long been spared the horrors of war, raised all Etruria in arms. The
Roman government, which had seriously disapproved the
rash expedition and had when too late forbidden the
daring leader from crossing the frontier, collected in the
greatest haste new legions, in order to meet the expected onslaught of the whole Etruscan power. But a seasonable Victoryat and decisive victory of Rullianus, the battle at the 2:33"
Vadimonian lake which long lived in the memory of the lake people, converted an imprudent enterprise into a celebrated
feat of heroism and broke the resistance of the Etruscans. Unlike the Samnites who had now for eighteen years maintained the unequal struggle, three of the most power
ful Etruscan towns-Perusia, Cortona, and Arretium consented after the first defeat to a separate peace for three hundred months (444), and after the Romans had once 310. more beaten the other Etruscans near Perusia in the following year, the Tarquinienses also agreed to a peace
of four hundred months (446); whereupon the other 308. cities desisted from the contest, and a temporary cessation
of arms took place throughout Etruria.
Last carn
paism
in [811 Samnium.
480
STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK It
While these events were passing, the war had not been suspended in Samnium. The campaign of 443 was con fined like the preceding to the besieging and storming of several strongholds of the Samnites ; but in the next year the war took a more vigorous turn. The dangerous
of Rullianus in Etruria, and the reports which spread as to the annihilation of the Roman army in the north, encouraged the Samnites to new exertions; the Roman consul Gaius Marcius Rutilus was vanquished by them and severely wounded in person. But the sudden change in the aspect of matters in Etruria destroyed their newly kindled hopes. Lucius Papirius Cursor again appeared at the head of the Roman troops sent against the Samnites, and again remained the victor in a great and
309. decisive battle (445), in which the confederates had put forth their last energies. The flower of their army-the wearers of the striped tunics and golden shields, and the wearers of the white tunics and silver shields-were there extirpated, and their splendid equipments thenceforth on festal occasions decorated the rows of shops along the Roman Forum. Their distress was ever increasing; the struggle was becoming ever more hopeless. In the follow
I08. ing year (446) the Etruscans laid down their arms; and in the same year the last town of Campania which still adhered to the Samnites, Nuceria, simultaneously assailed on the part of the Romans by water and by land, sur rendered under favourable conditions. The Samnites found new allies in the Umbrians of northern, and in the Marsi and Paeligni of central, Italy, and numerous volunteers even from the Hernici joined their ranks; but move ments which might have decidedly turned the scale against Rome, had the Etruscans still remained under arms, now simply augmented the results of the Roman victory without seriously adding to its difliculties. The Umbrians, who gave signs of marching on Rome, were intercepted
position
by
can. '1 AGAINST ROME
48!
Rullianus with the army of Samnium on the upper Tiber
a step which the enfeebled Samnites were unable to prevent; and this sufliced to disperse the Umbrian levies. The war once more returned to central Italy. The Paeligni were conquered, as were also the Marsi; and, though the other Sabellian tribes remained nominally foes of Rome, in this quarter Samnium gradually came to stand practically alone. But unexpected assistance came to them from the district of the Tiber. The confederacy of the
Hernici, called by the Romans to account for their country
men found among the Samnite captives, now declared war against Rome (in 448)-more doubtless from despair than 306. from calculation. Some of the more considerable Hernican communities from the first kept aloof from hostilities; but Anagnia, by far the most eminent of the Hernican cities, carried out this declaration of war. In a military point of view the position of the Romans was undoubtedly rendered
for the moment highly critical by this unexpected rising in
the rear of the army occupied with the siege of the strong holds of Samnium. Once more the fortune of war favoured
the Samnites ; Sora and Caiatia fell into their hands. But
the Anagnines succumbed with unexpected rapidity before
troops despatched from Rome, and these troops also gave seasonable relief to the army stationed in Samnium: all
in fact was lost. The Samnites sued for peace, but in vain ; they could not yet come to terms. The final decision was reserved for the campaign of 449. Two Roman consular 305. armies penetrated-the one, under Tiberius Minucius and after his fall under Marcus Fulvius, from Campania through
the mountain passes, the other, under Lucius Postumius, from the Adriatic upwards by the Bifemo-into Samnium, there to unite in front of Bovianum the capital; a decisive victory was achieved, the Samnite general Statius Gellius was taken prisoner, and Bovianum was carried by storm. The fall of the chief stronghold of the land terminated
vol. :.
3I
STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n Peace with the twenty-two years’ war. The Samnites withdrew their
Samnium.
804.
and with Tarentum.
482
garrisons from Sora and Arpinum, and sent envoys to Rome to sue for peace ; the Sabellian tribes, the Marsi, Marrucini, Paeligni, Frentani, Vestini, and Picentes followed their example The terms granted by Rome were tolerable; cessions of territory were required from some of them, from the Paeligni for instance, but they do not seem to have been of much importance. The equal alliance was re newed between the Sabellian tribes and the Romans (45o).
Presumably about the same time, and in consequence doubtless of the Samnite peace, peace was also made between Rome and Tarentum. The two cities had not indeed directly opposed each other in the field. The Tarentines had been inactive spectators of the long contest between Rome and Samnium from its beginning to its close, and had only kept up hostilities in league with the Sallentines against the Lucanians who were allies of Rome. In the last years of the Samnite war no doubt they had shown some signs of more energetic action. The position of embarrassment to which the ceaseless attacks of the Lucanians reduced them on the one hand, and on the other hand the feeling ever obtruding itself on them more urgently that the complete subjugation of Samnium would endanger their own independence, induced them, notwith standing their unpleasant experiences with Alexander, once more to entrust themselves to a condalh'ere. There came at their call the Spartan prince Cleonymus, accompanied by five thousand mercenaries; with whom be united a band equally numerous raised in Italy, as well as the contingent: of the Messapians and of the smaller Greek towns, and
above all the Tarentine civic army of twenty-two thousand men. At the head of this considerable force he compelled the Lucanians to make peace with Tarentum and to install a government of Samnite tendencies; in return for which Metapontum was abandoned to them. The Samnites were
can’. v1 AGAINST ROME
483
still in arms when this occurred; there was nothing to prevent the Spartan from coming to their aid and casting the weight of his numerous army and his military skill into the scale in favour of freedom for the cities and peoples of Italy. But Tarentum did not act as Rome would in similar circumstances have acted; and prince Cleonymus himself was far from being an Alexander or a Pyrrhus. He was in no hurry to undertake a war in which he might expect more blows than booty, but preferred to make
common cause with the Lucanians against Metapontum, and made himself comfortable in that city, while he talked of an expedition against Agathocles of Syracuse and of liberating the Sicilian Greeks. Thereupon the Samnites made peace; and when after its conclusion Rome began to concern herself more seriously about the south-east
of the peninsula—in token of which in the year 447 a 807. Roman force levied contributions, or rather reconnoitred by order of the government, in the territory of the Sallentines —the Spartan :ondottiere embarked with his mercenaries
and surprised the island of Corcyra, which was admirably situated as a basis for piratical expeditions against Greece
and Italy. Thus abandoned by their general, and at the same time deprived of their allies in central Italy, the Tarentines and their Italian allies, the Lucanians and Sallentines, had now no course left but to solicit an accommodation with Rome, which appears to have been granted on tolerable terms. Soon afterwards (45 I) even 80! . an incursion of Cleonymus, who had landed in the
Sallentine territory and laid siege to Uria, was repulsed by the inhabitants with Roman aid.
The victory of Rome was complete; and she turned it Consolida to full account. It was not from magnanimity in the con- gangs“ querors-for the Romans knew nothing of the sort—but rule in from shrewd and far-seeing calculation that terms so “6mm,
Italy. moderate were granted to the Samnites, the Tarentines-
484
STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK II
and the more distant peoples generally. The first and main object was not so much to compel southern Italy as
as possible to recognize formally the Roman supremacy, as to supplement and complete the subjugation of central Italy, for which the way had been prepared by the military roads and fortresses already established in Campania and Apulia during the last war, and by that means to separate the northern and southern Italians into two masses cut off in a military point of view from direct contact with each other. To this object accordingly the next undertakings of the Romans were with consistent energy directed. Above all they used, or made, the oppor tunity for getting rid of the confederacies of the Aequi and the Hernici which had once been rivals of the Roman
single power in the region of the Tiber and were not yet
quite set aside. In the same year, in which the peace with N4. Samnium took place (450), the consul Publius Sempronius
Sophus waged war on the Aequi ; forty townships surren dered in fifty days ; the whole territory with the exception of the narrow and rugged mountain valley, which still in the present day bears the old name of the people (Cicolano), passed into the possession of the Romans, and here on the northern border of the Fucine lake was founded the fortress Alba with a garrison of 6000 men, thenceforth forming a
bulwark against the valiant Marsi and a curb for central Italy ; as was also two years afterwards on the upper Turano, nearer to Rome, Carsioli—-both as allied communities with Latin rights.
The fact that in the case of the Hernici at least Anagnia had taken part in the last stage of the Samnite war, furnished the desired reason for dissolving the old relation of alliance. The fate of the Anagnines was, as might be expected, far harder than that which had under similar circumstances been meted out to the Latin communities in
the previous generation. They not merely had, like these,
quickly
can. vr AGAINST ROME
485
to acquiesce in the Roman citizenship without suffrage,
but they also like the Caerites lost self-administration ; out
of a portion of their territory on the upper Trerus (Sacco), moreover, a new tribe was instituted, and another was formed
at the same time on the lower Anio (455). The only 2”. regret was that the three Hernican communities next in importance to Anagnia, Aletrium, Verulae, and Ferentinum,
had not also revolted; for, as they courteously declined the suggestion that they should voluntarily enter into the bond of Roman citizenship and there existed no pretext for compelling them to do so, the Romans were obliged not only to respect their autonomy, but also to allow to them even the right of assembly and of intermarriage, and in this way still to leave a shadow of the old Hernican confederacy.
No such considerations fettered their action in that portion of the Volscian country which had hitherto been held by the Samnites. There Arpinum and Frusino became subject, the latter town was deprived of a third of its domain, and on the upper Liris in addition to Fregellae the Volscian town of Sora, which had previously been garrisoned,
was now permanently converted into a Roman fortress and occupied by a legion of 4000 men. In this way the old Volscian territory was completely subdued, and became rapidly Romanized. The region which separated Samnium from Etruria was penetrated by two military roads, both of which were secured by new fortresses. The northern road, which afterwards became the Flaminian, covered the line of
the Tiber; it led through Ocriculum, which was in alliance
with Rome, to Narnia, the name which the Romans gave
to the old Umbrian fortress Nequinum when they settled a military colony' there (455). The southern, afterwards the 299. Valerian, ran along the Fucine lake by way of the just mentioned fortresses of Carsioli and Alba. The small tribes within whose bounds these colonies were instituted, the Umbrians who obstinately defended Nequinum, the
Renewed outbreak of the Samnite Etruscan war.
Aequians who once more assailed Alba, and the Marsians who attacked Carsioli, could not arrest the course of Rome : the two strong curb-fortresses were inserted almost without hindrance between Samnium and Etruria We have already mentioned the great roads and fortresses instituted for per manently securing Apulia and above all Campania : by their means Samnium was further surrounded on the east and west with the net of Roman strongholds. It is a significant token of the comparative weakness of Etruria that it was not deemed necessary to secure the passes through the Ciminian Forest in a similar mode-by a highway and corresponding fortresses. The former frontier fortress of Sutrium continued to be in this quarter the terminus of the
Roman military line, and the Romans contented themselves with having the road leading thence to Arretium kept in a serviceable state for military purposes by the communities through whose territories it passed. 1
The highspirited Samnite nation perceived that such a peace was more ruinous than the most destructive war; and, what was more, it acted accordingly. The Celts in northern Italy were just beginning to bestir themselves again after a long suspension of warfare; moreover several Etruscan communities there were still in arms against the Romans, and brief armistices alternated in that quarter with vehement but indecisive conflicts. All central Italy was still in ferment and partly in open insurrection; the for tresses were still only in course of construction; the way between Etruria and Samnium was not yet completely closed. Perhaps it was not yet too late to save freedom;
1 The operations in the campaign of 537, and still more plainly the formation of the highway from Arretium to Bononia in 567, show that the road from Rome to Arretium had already been rendered serviceable before that time. But it cannot at that period have been a Roman military road, because. judging from its later appellation of the “ Cassian way," it cannot have been constructed as a via conrularir earlier than 583 ; for no Cassian appears in the lists of Roman consuls and censors between Spurius Cassius, consul in 252, 261, and a68—who of course is out of the question—a. nd Gains Cassius Longinus, consul in 583.
217. 187.
171.
502. 498. ‘8B. 171.
486
STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n
can. vr AGAINST ROME
487
but, if so, there must be no delay; the difliculty of attack increased, the power of the assailants diminished with every year by which the peace was prolonged. Five years had scarce elapsed since the contest ended, and all the wounds must still have been bleeding which the twenty-two years’ war had inflicted on the peasantry of Samnium, when in the year 456 the Samnite confederacy renewed the struggle. The last war had been decided in favour of Rome mainly through the alliance of Lucania with the Romans and the consequent standing aloof of Tarentum. The Samnites, profiting by that lesson, now threw themselves in the first instance with all their might on the Lucanians, and suc ceeded in bringing their party in that quarter to the helm of affairs, and in concluding an alliance between Samnium and Lucania. Of course the Romans immediately declared war; the Samnites had expected no other issue. It is a significant indication of the state of feeling, that the Samnite government informed the Roman envoys that it was not able to guarantee their inviolability, if they should set foot on Samnite ground.
The war thus began anew (456), and while a second 298. army was fighting in Etruria, the main Roman army traversed Samnium and compelled the Lucanians to make peace and send hostages to Rome. The following year
both consuls were able to proceed to Samnium ; Rullianus conquered at Tifernum, his faithful comrade in arms, Publius Decius Mus, at Maleventum, and for five months two Roman armies encamped in the land of the enemy. They were enabled to do so, because the Tuscan states had on their own behalf entered into negotiations for peace with Rome. The Samnites, who from the beginning could not but see that their only chance of victory lay in the combination of all Italy against Rome, exerted themselves to the utmost to prevent the threatened separate peace between Etruria and Rome; and when at last their general,
293.
488
STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK I2
Gellius Egnatius, offered to bring aid to the Etruscans in their own country, the Etruscan federal council in reality agreed to hold out and once more to appeal to the decision of
Junction of arms. Samnium made the most energetic efforts to place
the troops
of the
coalition in for the defence of its own territory, the second for an Etruria.
three armies simultaneously in the field, the first destined
invasion of Campania, the third and most numerous for 296. Etruria; and in the year 458 the last, led by Egnatius himself, actually reached Etruria in safety through the
Marsian and Umbrian territories, with whose inhabitants there was an understanding. Meanwhile the Romans were capturing some strong places in Samnium and breaking the influence of the Samnite party in Lucania ; they were not in a position to prevent the departure of the army led by Egnatius. When information reached Rome that the Sam nites had succeeded in frustrating all the enormous efl'orts made to sever the southern from the northern Italians, that the arrival of the Samnite bands in Etruria had become the signal for an almost universal rising against Rome, and that the Etruscan communities were labouring with the utmost zeal to get their own forces ready for war and to take into their pay Gallic bands, every nerve was strained also in Rome; the freedmen and the married were formed into cohorts-it was felt on all hands that the decisive crisis was
296. near. The year 458 however passed away, apparently, in 295. armings and marchings. For the following year (459) the Romans placed their two best generals, Publius Decius Mus
and the aged Quintus Fabius Rullianus, at the head of their army in Etruria, which was reinforced with all the troops that could be spared from Campania, and amounted to at least 60,000 men, of whom more than a third were full burgesses of Rome. Besides this, two reserves were formed, the first at Falerii, the second under the walls of the capital. The rendezvous of the Italians was Umbria, towards which the roads from the Gallic, Etruscan, and Sabellian territories
CHAP- VI AGAINST ROME
439
converged; towards Umbria the consuls also moved off their main force, partly along the left, partly along the right bank of the Tiber, while at the same time the first reserve made a movement towards Etruria, in order if possible to recall the Etruscan troops from the main scene of action for the defence of their homes. The first engagement did not prove fortunate for the Romans; their advanced guard was defeated by the combined Gauls and Samnites in the district of Chiusi. But that diversion accomplished its
Less magnanimous than the Samnites, who had marched through the ruins of their towns that they might not be absent from the chosen field of battle, a great part of the Etruscan contingents withdrew from the federal army on the news of the advance of the Roman reserve into Etruria, and its ranks were greatly thinned when the decisive battle came to be fought on the eastern declivity of the Apennines near Sentinum.
Nevertheless it was a hotly contested day. On the right Battle of wing of the Romans, where Rullianus with his two legions Sentinum. fought against the Samnite army, the conflict remained long undecided. On the left, which Publius Decius commanded,
the Roman cavalry was thrown into confusion by the Gallic
war chariots, and the legions also already began to give
Then the consul called to him Marcus Livius the priest, and bade him devote to the infernal gods both the head of the Roman general and the army of the enemy; and plunging into the thickest throng of the Gauls he sought death and found it. This heroic deed of despair on the part of one so eminent as a man and so beloved as a general was not in vain. The fugitive soldiers rallied; the bravest threw themselves after their leader into the hostile ranks, to avenge him or to die with him; and just at the right moment the consular Lucius Scipio, despatched by Rullianus, appeared with the Roman reserve on the im perilled lelt wing. The excellent Campanian cavalry, which
object.
way.
Peace with Etruria.
294.
fell on the flank and rear of the Gauls, turned the scale; the Gauls fled, and at length the Samnites also gave way, their general Egnatius falling at the gate of the camp. Nine thousand Romans strewed the field of battle; but dearly as the victory was purchased, it was worthy of such a sacrifice. The army of the coalition was dissolved, and with it the coalition itself; Umbria remained in the power of the Romans, the Gauls dispersed, the remnant of the Samnites still in compact order retreated homeward through the Abruzzi. Campania, which the Samnites had overrun during the Etruscan war, was after its close re-occupied with little difliculty by the Romans. Etruria sued for peace in the following year ; Volsinii, Perusia, Arretium,
Last Samnium.
49°
STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS BOOK n
(460)
and in general all the towns that had joined the league
against Rome, promised a cessation of hostilities for four hundred months.
But the Samnites were of a different mind; they pre struggles of pared for their hopeless resistance with the courage of free
men, which cannot compel success but may put it to shame.
When the two consular armies advanced into Samnium, in 294. the year 460, they encountered everywhere the most desperate resistance; in fact Marcus Atilius was discomfited near Luceria, and the Samnites were able to penetrate into Campania and to lay waste the territory of the Roman colony Interamna on the Liris. In the ensuing year Lucius Papirius Cursor, the son of the hero of the first Samnite war, and Spurius Carvilius, gave battle on a great scale near Aquilonia to the Samnite army, the flower of
which—the 16,000 in white tunics—had sworn a sacred oath to prefer death to flight. Inexorable destiny, however, heeds neither the oaths nor the supplications of despair; the Roman conquered and stormed the strongholds where the Samnites had sought refuge for themselves and their property. Even after this great defeat the confederates
still for years resisted the ever-increasing superiority of the
crun- vr AGAINST ROME
491
enemy with unparalleled perseverance in their fastnesses
and mountains, and still achieved various isolated advan tages. The experienced arm of the old Rullianus was once more called into the field against them (462), and 292 Gavius Pontius, a son perhaps of the victor of Caudium, even gained for his nation a last victory, which the Romans meanly enough avenged by causing him when subsequently taken to be executed in prison (463). But there was no 291.
further symptom of movement in Italy ; for the war, which Falerii began in 461, scarcely deserves such a name. The 299. Samnites doubtless turned with longing eyes towards Tarenturn, which alone was still in a position to grant them aid; but it held aloof. The same causes as before occasioned its inaction—internal misgovernment, and the passing over of the Lucanians once more to the Roman
party in the year 456 ; to which fell to be added a not un- 298. founded dread of Agathocles of Syracuse, who just at that time had reached the height of his power and began to turn
his views towards Italy. About 455 the latter established 299. himself in Corcyra whence Cleonymus had been expelled
by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and now threatened the Taren
tines from the Adriatic as well as from the Ionian sea.
The cession of the island to king Pyrrhus of Epirus in 459 296.
removed to a great extent the apprehensions which they had cherished; but the affairs of Corcyra con tinued to occupy the Tarentines-in the year 464, for 290. instance, they helped to protect Pyrrhus in possession of
the island against Demetrius—and in like manner Aga thocles did not cease to give the Tarentines uneasiness by
his Italian policy. When he died (465) and with him the 289 power of the Syracusans in Italy went to wreck, it was too late; Samnium, weary of the thirty-seven years’ struggle,
had concluded peace in the previous year (464) with the 290. Roman consul Manius Curius Dentatus, and had in form renewed its league with Rome. On this occasion, as in
certainly
492
STRUGGLE OF THE ITALIANS noox n
804. the peace of 450, no disgraceful ‘or destructive conditions were imposed on they brave people by the Romans; no cessions even of territory seem to have taken place. The
‘political sagacity of Rome preferred to follow the path which it had hitherto pursued, and to attach in the first place the Campanian and Adriatic coast more and more securely to Rome before proceeding to the direct conquest of the interior. Campania, indeed, had been long in subjection; but the far~seeing policy of Rome found it needful, in order to secure the Campanian coast, to establish two coast-fortresses there, Minturnae and Sinuessa
295. (459), the new burgesses of which were admitted according to the settled rule in the case of maritime colonies to the full citizenship of Rome. With still greater energy the ex tension of the Roman rule was prosecuted in central Italy. As the subjugation of the Aequi and Hernici was the immediate sequel of the first Samnite war, so that of the Sabines followed on the end of the second. The same general, who ultimately subdued the Samnites, Manius
290. Curius broke down in the same year (464) the brief and feeble resistance of the Sabines and forced them to uncon ditional surrender. A great portion of the subjugated territory was immediately taken into possession of the victors and distributed to Roman burgesses, and Roman subject-rights (dz/{tas sine sufragio) were imposed on the
communities that were left—Cures, Reate, Amiternum, Nursia. Allied towns with equal rights were not estab lished here; on the contrary the country came under the immediate rule of Rome, which thus extended as far as the Apennines and the Umbrian mountains. Nor was it even now restricted to the territory on Rome’s side of the mountains ; the last war had shown but too clearly that the Roman rule over central Italy was only secured, if it reached from sea to sea. The establishment of Romans beyond the Apennines begins with the laying out
the
CRAP. vi AGAINST ROME
493
of the strong fortress of Atria (Atri) in the year 465, on the 239 northern slope of the Abruzzi towards the Picenian plain,
not immediately on the coast and hence with Latin rights,
but still near to the sea, and the keystone of the mighty wedge separating northern and southern Italy. Of a similar nature and of still greater importance was the founding of Venusia (46 3), whither the unprecedented number of 291. 20,000 colonists was conducted. That city, founded at
the boundary of Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania, on the great road between Tarentum and Samnium, in an uncommonly strong position, was destined as a curb to keep in check the surrounding tribes, and above all to interrupt the com munications between the two most powerful enemies of Rome in southern Italy. Beyond doubt at the same time the southern highway, which Appius Claudius had carried as far as Capua, was prolonged thence to Venusia.
Thus, at the close of the Samnite wars, the Roman domain closely compact—that consisting almost exclusively of communities with Roman or Latin rights-extended on the north to the Ciminian Forest, on the east to the Abruzzi and to the Adriatic, on the south as far as Capua, while the two advanced posts, Luceria and Venusia, established towards the east and south on the lines of communication
of their opponents, isolated them on every side. Rome was no longer merely the first, but was already the ruling power in the peninsula, when towards the end of the fifth century of the city those nations, which had been raised to supremacy in their respective lands by the favour of the gods and by their own capacity, began to come into contact in council and on the battle-field and, as at Olympia the preliminary victors girt themselves for second and more serious struggle, so on the larger arena of the nations, Carthage, Macedonia, and Rome now prepared for the final and decisive contest.
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APPENDIX
THE PATRICIAN CLAUDII
[This paper, which was subjoined to the first English edition of the History as exhibiting the grounds that had induced Dr. Mommsen to modify the views which he had embodied in the text of the earlier German editions regarding Appius Claudius the decemvir and Appius Claudius the censor, may retain a place here for its intrinsic interest. It was read at the sitting of the Prussian Academy on March 4, 1861, and was subsequently included among the author's Rb‘mimio Font/lungs». I have given it almost entire-TL]
The patrician clan of the Claudii, probably one of the genus maiorer, played a leading part in the history of Rome for five hundred years. Our object in this inquiry is to arrive at a proper estimate of its political position.
We are accustomed to regard this Claudian gm: as the very incarnation of the patriciate, and its leaders as the champions of the aristocratic party and of the conservatives in opposition to the plebeians and the democrats ; and this view, in fact, already pervades the works which form our authorities. In the little, indeed, which we possess belonging to the period of the republic, and particularly in the numerous writings of Cicero, there occurs no hint of the kind ; for the circumstance that Cicero in one special instance (ad Fm iii. 7, 5), when treating of the persons of Appius and Lentulus, usa Appielu and Lentuh'tar as-what they were—superlative types of the Roman nobility, by no means falls under this category. It is in Livy that we first meet with the view which is new current. At the very beginning of his work the Claudii are introduced as the familia mperbzlm'ma a‘ rrudelim'ma in plebzm Romanam (ii. 56), and throughout the first decad, whenever an ultra aristocrat is needed, a Claudius appears on the stage. For instance, the very first consul of this name, Appius Claudius consul in 259, is contrasted with the gentle Servilius as vefiementr'r ingznii m'r (ii. 23 :19. ), and it was no fault of his that on the secession of the plebs to the Sacred Mount the quarrel was not decided by arms (ii. 29). The next consul of this gem, in 283, vehemently opposes the Publilian law as to the election of the tribunes of the plebs by the tribes, while his colleague-on this occasion a Quinctins—vainly counsels moderation (ii. 56). The third consul Q
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Claudius, in 294, unreasonably obstructs the law for preparing I national code, which his colleague of the Valerian gm had shortly before his glorious death promised to the people (iii. 19) ; and although this C. Claudius, as compared with the still more hateful decemvir Appius, plays a mediating and conciliatory part, he afterwards in the dispute regarding the amubium contends for the most extreme aristocratic view (iv. 6). The son of the decemvir, who was military tribune in 330, although there is nothing to be told about him, is not allowed to pass without mention of his hereditary hatred towards the tribunes and the plebs (iv. 36). The same character is ascribed on different occasions to the grandson of the decemvir, who was military tribune in 351 and perhaps consul in 4o5 (iv. 48, v. 2-6, 20); and in the discussions on the Licinio-Sextian laws a detailed defence of the government of the nobility is placed in his mouth (vi. 40, 41, comp. vii. 6). Lastly, on occasion of the censorship of Caecus the annalist once more sums up the roll of the Claudian sins (ix. 34).
‘The Claudii are treated in a similar style by Dionysius on these same occasions and a number of others: it is needless to enumerate here the several passages, or to dwell on the speeches in the senate attributed to them, so intolerable from their insipid wordiness.
The authors of the time of Tiberius, Valerius Maximus and Velleius, naturally indulge in no invectives against the Claudian house; but Tacitus again speaks, just like Livy and Dionysius, of the who‘ atque imita Claudia: families superbia (Ann. i. 4) ; and Suetonius in his Lives of the Caesars (Tib. 2) says still more expressly, that all the patrician Claudii, with the exception of the tribune of the people P. Clodius, had been conservative (oplimates) and the most zealous champions of the standing and power of the patriciate as opposed to the plebs. These testimonies add no strength to the proof. The later Romans derived their views of men and things under the republic entirely from Livy-—that remarkable writer, who, standing on the confines of the old and new periods, still possessed on the one hand the republican inspiration without which the history of the Roman republic could not be written, and, on the other hand, was sufiiciently imbued with the refined culture of the Augustan age to work up the older annals, which were uninteresting in conception and rude in composition, into an elegant narrative written in good Latin. The combination of these qualities produced a book which is still as readable now as it was well-nigh two thousand years ago, and this must be reckoned no mean praise; but the annals of Livy are no more a history in the true sense of the term-—in the sense in which Polybius wrote history—than the annals of Fabius. A certain systematic aim is observable in his work; but that aim is not historical, tracing the causes and effects of things; it is poetical, demanding a narrative unbroken by historic doubts, and requiring representative men and more particularly leading champions of the political parties. Thus he needed, by way of contrast to the liberal-conservative Valerii, a prototype of the proud patrician clans; and, if he and in like manner Dionysius-‘whether after the precedent of some earlier annalist, or of
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their own choice point to which we shall hereafter advertl-have used the Claudii for this purpose, their representations must not be held as absolutely binding on the historical inquirer. Materials for a revision of their judgment in this respect are not wholly wanting in fact, from the honesty with which Livy reproduces the positive accounts which lay before him, most of the materials of this nature have been preserved by him, while Dionysius with his afi'ectation of critical sagacity has in this instance etfaced every trace of the genuine truth.
Among the general characteristics of the Claudian gms nothing strikes us so much a the fact, that no notable patrician clan has given to the community so few famous warriors as the Clandian house, although flourished for so many centuries. Snetonius1 records among the honours of the clan six triumphs and two ovations; of the former four can be pointed out with certainty, viz. that of Appius Crassus over the Picentes in 486, that of Gains Nero over Hasdrubal in 547, that of Gains Pulcher over the Istrians and Ligurians in 577, and that of Appius Pulcher over the Salassi in 6H of the latter one, viz. that of Appius over the Celtiberians in 580; the missing triumph or missing ovation was perhaps that of the dictator in 392. But, as
well known, there was not among the Romans one general in ten triumphators and of the triumphs just named one alone commemorated an important military snccess—the gain of the battle of Sena by the two consuls M. Livins and C. Nero; the latter, moreover, belonged to a collateral branch of the patrician house little spoken of in the republican period, the Claudii Nerones. Among the Claudii proper there not single soldier of note, and can be proved that the most important of them did not owe their reputation to their services in the field. How far different was the case with the noble houses of equal standing with the Claudii, such as the Fabii, Aemilii, Corneliil
On the other hand, no gem‘ of the Roman nobility displayed so much activity in science and literature from the earliest times as the Claudian house. From the decemvir Appius Claudius proceeded, as is well known, the Roman code of law, which, as the oldest Roman book, as modelled after the laws of Solon, and as including the earliest calendar that was publicly promulgated, exercised in literary and scientific point of view the deepest and most permanent influence. To the achievements of the censor Appius Claudius in this respect we shall return. Even in subsequent times, when culture was general, there are various evidences that the patrician Claudii con tinued to have at heart the interests of science. may refer to the different aedileships of men of this gznr, which form epochs in the history of the theatre; to the adept in the Greek mysticism who was contemporary with Cicero, Appius Claudius consul in 700, and his Eleusinian Propylaeum, the votive inscription of which has been recently found and to the emperors Tiberius and Claudius, both of
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whom cherished a deeper interest in philology and archaeology than is common with princely dilettanti.
It will be allowed that neither of these observations tells exactly in favour of the current view of the Claudian family. The aristocratic party at all times set a higher value on martial prowess than on mental gifts; democracy on the contrary, and above all the Roman democracy down to a late age, sought its sphere in the Forum beyond the reach of the sword, and found powerful levers in science and art. How is all this reconcilahle with the familia ruperbim'ma a: :rudelirn'ma in plebs! » Romanam? And various other considerations might be adduced. The statement that the Claudii only migrated to Rome in the sixth year after the expulsion of the kings is not merely untrust worthy as to date, but decidedly at variance with the requirements of republican state law; moreover the Claudian gem, which gave in name to a Roman tribe, and which appears at an early date in the Fasti, cannot possibly have migrated to Rome at so recent I. period. But, apart from the date, the fact itself of the migration of the Claudii from Sabina is attested by a highly credible family tradition ; and it is a surprising circumstance that this same patrician clan, which was almost the only one to preserve and to value the recollection of its having come from abroad, should have furnished the champion of the native patrieians. The Claudii, too, were almost the only patrician gem which had a counterpart of the same name and of kindred origin among the old plebeian nobility ;1 for that more than a mere nominal kinship was assumed to exist between the patrician Claudii and the plebeian Marcelli, is attested by the competing claims of the two houses in the case of heritages passing to gentiles (Cic. dc
Oral. i. 39, 176). One would think that this relation must have con ltituted a connecting bond between the patrician Claudii and the plebs rather than the reverse.
But general considerations of this sort do not determine the matter. The question depends on the political position which the prominent men of the Claudian gen: took up, and by which they determined that of the whole clan, so far as in the case of the latter we can speak of such a position at all. Now of such prominent men the Claudian clan in the earlier centuries of the republic produced two,—-Appius the Decemvir and Appius the Censor : of the other Claudii of this epoch we know, laying aside idle inventions, just about. as much as we know of the Egyptian kings-their names and their years of ofiice. We shall have to treat accordingly in the first instance of the two former, and then to subjoin what is to be said regarding the far less important Claudii of later regular history.
The accounts given in the annals which have reached us regarding the Ap. Claudius who was consul in 283 and decemvir in 303 can certainly make no claim to historical credibility, and are still more corrupted and disfigured than other accounts of the same epoch. Authors, who record under the year 284 the death of the man who was decemvir twenty years afterwards, will receive credit from nobody
I ‘lhe Veturii alone were in the same position.
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when they report his speeches in the Forum and the senate and the history of his impeachment. Yet the most important facts relating to the origin of the Twelve Tables are as little doubtful as the Twelve Tables themselves; and in this case it is not difficult to separate a historical kernel from the loose tissue of fable. First of all, it is clear and undisputed that the committal of the public law to writing was a measure directed against the patrician magistrates and consequently against the patrician government itself. Moreover, it is no less certain that the decemvirs were not all patricians. For, if there is anything good and reliable in what has been handed down to us, the list of magistrates is so; and we know also the patrician clans suihciently to be certain that, while the decemvirs first nominated were all patricians, of those elected in 304 at least the three described by Dionysius (x. 58) as plebeian, and probably two others-or, in other words, one-half— were plebeians. The circumstance that Livy in his narrative itself says nothing of the quality of the members of this college, and afterwards in a speech (iv. 3) calls all the decemvirs patricians, is of no moment. Niebuhr, who did not fail to see the conclusive force of the evidence in favour of the plebeian character of a portion of the second decemvirs,‘ supposed (and Schwegler assents to his view) that the first and second decemvirate were different in kind,-the former being an extraordinary
. legislative commission, the latter a college of archons organized as a permanent institution and composed of both orders. But this hypothesis is opposed to all tradition, as well as to all probability ; the two sets of magistrates occurring in so close succession, both occupied with the preparation of the legal code, and both comprehended under the same title decemvirs’ conrulari imperio legibus scribundi: in the roll of magistrates, must have been in constitutional law homogeneous. Consequently nothing remains but the hypothesis that the decemvirate stood open from the first to both orders; and this view is necessarily demanded by the analogy of the military tribunate camulari potzrtale. For the essential features-the substitution of a larger number of rragistrates for the pair, and the assigning to these magistrates not the I tie and rank of consul with the relative honours (right to celebrate a
iumph and to carry images of ancestors), but only delegated consular I)ower—are common to the military tribunate and the decemvirate; and, as the military tribunate was notoriously organized in this way just in order to make the supreme magistracy, but not the highest honours of that magistracy, accessible to the plebeians, the decemvirate cannot well be conceived otherwise than common from the first to both orders. The fact that the first college consisted exclusively of patricians is not inconsistent with this hypothesis, but agreeable to all analogy ; the military tribunate in like manner, although always common in law, remained practically for many years in the hands of the patricians. Lastly, Livy himself narrates the course of the matter as if the plebs had demanded at first a commission composed of plebeians, and then one in which the two orders were to be mixed (iii. 9, 5 ; iii. 31, 7 plzlm'az lager), and yet the ten commissioners were at last chosen from the patricians: plant craari deumviror-admfl
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cermturm plain-r‘, mntrm/erria ah'quama'iu fin'l; poriremo couters-um patribur, made us [ex la'lia dc Aventine alituque sacratae legs: almzgarmlur (iii. 31). It is easy to see how the older view has here
been not really altered, but merely obscured by the omission of the circumstance that the plebeians carried their demand for the appoint ment of a mixed magistracy. What was true of the election, viz. , that patricians only were fixed upon, was erroneously referred to the institution itself—an error which might be the more readily excused, as the point related not to a magistracy that was often to recur, but to a college which was to finish within its year of office the compilation of the code for which preparations had long been making, and con sequently was to be elected only once.
Ifwe reflect on these surely-established facts, first, that the obtain ing of a written body of law was in itself a severe defeat of the nobility, and secondly, that men of both orders might be and were placed on the legislative commission and the eligibility of the plebeians to the supreme magistracy was in its case first legally and practically recognized, it is plainly preposterous to make the head of the decemvirate the leader of the patrician party. This, however, is what Livy has done; but that the older annals, characterized by 165 of literary taste and by a more vivid realization of the matters which they narrate, did not give any such version, may be proved from his own pages. He introduces his narrative of the second decemvirate by the remark that a. new spirit had possessed Appius and the furious patrician had all at once become a mob-courtier (plebimla, iii. 33)» that, surrounded by the leading men of the plebs, the Duellii and Icilii, he had appeared in the Forum, and had by vile demagogic arts carried his re-election for the next year and the nomination of men of little standing as his colleagues (iii. 36). By this view Livy thence forth abides on the whole, although he now and again falls back on the earlier, representing the decemvirs for instance as afterwards appearing with a retinue of young patricians and perpetrating their deeds of violence under its protection (iii. 37). This new spirit, which is alleged to have strangely taken possession of Appius at the close of 303, is evidently none other than that which ha been eliminated from his character by the misrepresentations of later historians but is ascribed to him by the earlier annals generally, and alone befits the part that he played—the spirit of a patrician demagogue who ends as a tyrant to patricians as well as plebeians. How much in the story of his fall is historical, and what may have been the real incidents of the process of Verg'inia—the murder of Siccius seems to have been a late addition-cannot of course be ascertained, and is a matter of comparative indifference; but the import of that story of Verginia, given in Diodorus and consequently proceeding from Fabius, may be easily perceived, and is significant enough, even should it be an invention. The unjust judicial sentence pronounced in his own personal interest, not in that of his order, the coming forward of the complaisant accommodating retainer, the greedy lust from which the burgher-maiden only saves her honour in death—
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these are all well-known traits in the picture of the ancient tyrannu. r , and, in fact, the charge of usurping the tyrannir is brought up very distinctly in many passages by Livy against the second decemvirs generally (iii. 36 ; deem regum speaks arm‘, 0. 32; I'd 112m rzg‘num baud dubie videri, c. 39; a’eznn Tarquim'nr. The emperor Claudius also speaks of decemm'rale regnum on the Lyons Tables, i. 33). There was certainly good reason also for placing the demagogic gms of the Icilii in the foreground both at the second election of Appius and at the catastrophe. The oldest annals, written in a patrician spirit, showed at this point-when they were compelled to relate the momentous victory of the plebs over the nobility-by an instructive example, what fruit the people themselves derived from such a success of the popular party; how every demagogue naturally turns into a tyrant ; how the honest plebeian, who had helped to place Appius in the judgment seat, himself suffered most at the hands of the judge; and how the plebs, thoroughly cured of its blindness by such consequences of its own act, took up arms against the self-constituted tyrant, was brought back by its true aristocratic protectors, the Valerii and Horatii, to that old constitution which could alone give happiness, and at length received from them as a free gift the real prize for which the plebs had contended, but which the demagogues who had turned tyrants had neglected to confer-the completion of the legal code. This no doubt is not history; but it approaches nearer to the reality
than the well-written but ill-concocted epida'xir of Livy.
Respectingr Appius Claudius Caecus, censor in 442, consul in 447
and 458, the accounts are both more trustworthy and more copious. Niebuhr has already formed a judgment substantially correct regarding him, and I have in my History of Rome given a short sketch of him, in the main outlines of which I have no occasion to make any change, although, in consequence of my not then possessing an insight into the very peculiar character of the traditional accounts of the Claudii, there are various misapprehensions in the details. He was not only no representative of conservative tendencies, but a decided revolutionist, although he employed the forms and handles furnished by the con stitution for the purpose of overthrowing it. Let us briefly review the accounts handed down in regard to him. First of all, the story of his blindness has perhaps arisen solely from the misunderstanding of a surname‘ That the current story, which represents him as struck with blindness by Hercules on account of a sacrilegious offence committed in his censorship of 442, is absurd in reference to a man who was twice afterwards consul, has long been seen; and it is also evident that the version of Diodorus (xx. 1o), according to which he feigned himself blind in order that he might have a suitable pretext for keeping aloof from the senate which was hostile to him, is simply a second absurdity which has arisen out of a perception of the first. The view now usually adopted, that Appius had grown blind in his old age, is inconsistent with the Capitoline Fasti, which already under
442 register him as Ap. Claudiur C. j: Ap. n. Caecus ; for, as they distinctly specify surnames acquired after entering on oflice as such
50, APPENDIX
(recording, for instance, in the very case of his colleague, C. Plautiu: C. f. C. n. qui in lwc honor: Vmx appzllatur at), their compilers appear to have regarded Canur as a simple cognomen, and the fact of his being blind at all is thus rendered doubtful. It is possible, indeed, that they may either have fallen into an error or may have wished in this way to avoid those absurdities of the older annals, and that the current hypothesis may still be the truth ; certainty is not on such a question to be attained.
Of the martial deeds of Appius there is little to tell. Although he was once dictator, twice consul, and twice praetor, and took the field against the Samnites and Etruscans, and although his activity fell within the epoch of Rome's greatest military glory, yet he never triumphed. He built a temple to Bellona; but it is well known that man not unfrequently pays the most zealous homage to the divinity that seems him. The really significant activity of Appius belongs to the field of civil life. In particular, that speech of the venerable old man who had long retired from all state affairs, which vanquished the first Greek diplomatist that appeared in the Roman senate, and at :1 decisive moment gave fresh courage and power to the Roman govern ment-the speech against Pyrrhus—remained indelibly engraven on the memory of posterity. This result was partly due to the fact that it was the first speech which, so far as we know, was committed to writing in Rome—at least Cicero, who read had no doubt of its genuineness. Nor have we any reason to regard his poetical “ say ings” (senlenh'ae), which Panaetius had read, as spurious; they were maxims of general nature, such as that “ he who gets sight of friend forgets his grief” (Prise. viii. I8), and the well-known saying, "every one the architect of his own fortune ” (Sallust, d: On]. Rep.
I); when Cicero called them Pythagorean, he was undoubtedly thinking of the pseudo-Pythagorean “ Golden Words,” and this oldest Latin poem must in fact have been formed under the influence of such Greek collections. He said also to have introduced the practice of writing the r between two vowels instead of the earlier (Dig. 2, 2, 36), and to have banished the use of a,1 doubtless bringing the writing into conformity with the pronunciation. The same bold and far-seeing spirit of innovation, which discernible in his literary activity, marks also his political career; and remarkable how he in this respect walks in the steps of his great-great-grandfather, the decemvir. The publication of the Iegis actianer, which was carried out by his clerk Cn. Flavius, beyond all doubt at his suggestion-by some indeed was attributed to himself (Dig, :. )-was virtually the publication of
revised and enlarged code. The Twelve Tables, indeed, were in substance regulation of civil procedure; and the object in both cases, as in all similar instances, was to emancipate the humble burgess from dependence on the caprice of the aristocratic magistrate and on
Man, Cap. 26:, Kopp. : : idn'nro Appius Claudius detestalur, quad dentn mar-Mi dun: uprr'mitur /'milalur, where we should perhaps read dnctis norm. A pius, probable, only assigned (or was alleged to have assigned) thi: as reason or the banishment of the from the language and writing.
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the advice of the no less aristocratic men of lore, by means of a written code accessible to all. The same remark applies to the Fasti, which at that time were still in the main what the name indicates, a list of court days: as the calendar had been an integral part of the Twelve Tables, it now became a part of the legal directory of Flavius, and was diti'used along with the latter in the form of a book.
A mere notice may suflice for the innovations of Appius in ritual matters; viz. , the transference of the public worship of Hercules in the Forum Boarium from the gm: of the Potitii to the charge of public slaves, and the ejection of the guild of libicines from the temple of Jupiter, which in the following year led to the well-known quarrel so happily ended by the jocose diplomatic intervention of the Tihnrtinea and the yielding of the senate. 5‘
The conversion of the burgess-qualification hitherto in force from landed property into a money-rating was materially modified by the successor of Appius in the censorship, the great Quintus Fabius; but
enough of his innovations remained both as regards the mmitia tributa and the comitia cantun‘ata, but more especially the latter, to associate the censorship of Appius with perhaps the most material constitutional change which ever took place in republican Rome. The nomination of sons of freedmen as senators, the omission to purge the senatorial and equestrian rolls of disreputable and infamous individuals, and the election, at the suggestion of Appius, of his clerk Cn. Flavius the son of a freedman to a curule oflice; the spending of the moneys
accumulated in the treasury, without the previous sanction of the senate, on magnificent structures called-a thing hitherto unheard of —at'ter the builder's name; the Appian aqueduct and the Appian highway; lastly, his prolongation of the censorship beyond the legal term of eighteen months; are each and all measures diametrically opposed to Roman conservatism and to Roman reverence for the constitution and for use and wont, and belonging to the most advanced demagogism-measures which savour more of Cleisthenes and Periclm than of a statesman of the Roman commonwealth. “Such a character," Niebuhr aptly remarks, “would not surprise us in the history of Greece; in that of Rome it appears very strange. ” It is not my intention at present to do more than merely to indicate these several undertakings of Appius, which in general are sufiiciently well known, and which could not be adequately estimated without
lengthened and minute explanation. I shall only advert to a general opinion regarding the character of his proceedings in the censorship, and to an isolated notice which has not hitherto been correctly apprehended. The opinion to which I refer is that of Fabius, pre served by Diodorus (xx. 36). He says under the year 444-5, “ One of the censors of this year, Appius Claudius, on whom his colleague was entirely dependent, disturbed many matters of use and wont, for, gratifying the multitude, he troubled himself little about the senate. " The notice to which I refer occurs in Suetonius (Tib. 2). In enumerating the injuries done by the Claudii to the commonwealth, he "lays, Claudius Drurur, rlatua . Irr'bi riiadunata ad Appi Forum parita,
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Italian: percb'enlelar ormpare temptam‘t. According to the order in which this statement occurs, it falls between the decemvirate and the first Punic war. It has at all times, and very justly, excited extreme suspicion; few perhaps will be inclined with Niebuhr to hold simply as stands, as historical, and to see in this Claudius Drnsus an otherwise totally unknown tyrant of Italy. The name in fact demonstrably corrupt, not only because Claudii Druri do not occur elsewhere, but more especially because Suetonius after discussing the paternal ancestors of the emperor Tiberius passes on to the maternal and treats minutely of the Lir/ii Druri and of the origin of that
He could not but have noticed so singular a coincidence of the two families in the possession of cognomen anything but frequent, had that name of Claudius Drusus been the real one while on the other hand the subsequent occurrence of the cognomen Drusus might lead copyist to anticipate at the wrong place. How the passage should be amended, know not in point of fact beyond all doubt no other can be meant here but Appius Caecus; for he not only falls in point of time exactly within the requisite epoch and is the only one of all the Claudii against whom such a charge as that indicated by Suetonius rationally conceivable, but the Forum Appii, the present Foro Appio between Treponti and Terracina not far from
Sena, was itself, like the Appian way, work of his-situated in the middle of that immense embankment of hewn stone carried across the Pomptine marshes, in the construction of which, as Diodorus says, Appius exhausted the treasure of the state and left an eternal monu ment to his name. To him alone could the idea occur of having statue erected to himself at this otherwise inconsiderable place; and
further easy to understand how the-at that time novel-institu tion of a market village along the highway, and the naming of after its originator, might give rise to the allegation that its founder designed to bring all Italy under his power by forming client-com munities. Valerius Maximus also assigns to Caecus plurimar rh'enlzla: (viii. r3, 5).
The portrait of Caecus, as has just been sketched, delineated in our tradition in strong, clear, mutually harmonious lines. At the same time must be added that strictly suits only Appius as censor in the two consulships which he held after his censorship and in his other later activity we encounter nothing more of that vehemently revolutionary spirit.