well have been Graeco-Celto-Italian--in fact we know nothing of the
earliest stage of Celtic culture.  Linguistic investigation, however,
seems not to have made as yet such progress as to warrant the
insertion of its results in the primitive history of the peoples.

8.  The legend is related by Livy, v. 34, and Justin, xxiv. 4, and
Caesar also has had it in view (B. G. vi. 24).  But the association
of the migration of Bellovesus with the founding of Massilia, by which
the former is chronologically fixed down to the middle of the second
century of Rome, undoubtedly belongs not to the native legend, which
of course did not specify dates, but to later chronologizing research;
and it deserves no credit.  Isolated incursions and immigrations may
have taken place at a very early period; but the great overflowing of
northern Italy by the Celts cannot be placed before the age of the
decay of the Etruscan power, that is, not before the second half
of the third century of the city.

In like manner, after the judicious investigations of Wickham and
Cramer, we cannot doubt that the line of march of Bellovesus, like
that of Hannibal, lay not over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genevre) and
through the territory of the Taurini, but over the Graian Alps (the
Little St. Bernard) and through the territory of the Salassi.  The
name of the mountain is given by Livy doubtless not on the authority
of the legend, but on his own conjecture.

Whether the representation that the Italian Boii came through the more
easterly pass of the Poenine Alps rested on the ground of a genuine
legendary reminiscence, or only on the ground of an assumed connection
with the Boii dwelling to the north of the Danube, is a question that
must remain undecided.

9.  This is according to the current computation 390 B. C.; but, in
fact, the capture of Rome occurred in Ol. 98, 1 = 388 B. C., and has
been thrown out of its proper place merely by the confusion of the
Roman calendar.

10.  I. XIV. Development of Alphabets in Italy

CHAPTER V

Subjugation of the Latins and Campanians by Rome

The Hegemony of Rome over Latium Shaken and Re-established

The great achievement of the regal period was the establishment of the
sovereignty of Rome over Latium under the form of hegemony.  It is in
the nature of the case evident that the change in the constitution of
Rome could not but powerfully affect both the relations of the Roman
state towards Latium and the internal organization of the Latin
communities themselves; and that it did so, is obvious from tradition.
The fluctuations which the revolution in Rome occasioned in the
Romano-Latin confederacy are attested by the legend, unusually vivid
and various in its hues, of the victory at the lake Regillus, which
the dictator or consul Aulus Postumius (255? 258?) is said to have
gained over the Latins with the help of the Dioscuri, and still more
definitely by the renewal of the perpetual league between Rome and
Latium by Spurius Cassius in his second consulate (261).  These
narratives, however, give us no information as to the main matter,
the legal relation between the new Roman republic and the Latin
confederacy; and what from other sources we learn regarding that
relation comes to us without date, and can only be inserted here
with an approximation to probability.

Original Equality of Rights between Rome and Latium

The nature of a hegemony implies that it becomes gradually converted
into sovereignty by the mere inward force of circumstances; and the
Roman hegemony over Latium formed no exception to the rule.  It was
based upon the essential equality of rights between the Roman state
on the one side and the Latin confederacy on the other;(1) but at
least in matters of war and in the treatment of the acquisitions
thereby made this relation between the single state on the one hand
and the league of states on the other virtually involved a hegemony.
According to the original constitution of the league not only was the
right of making wars and treaties with foreign states--in other words,
the full right of political self-determination--reserved in all
probability both to Rome and to the individual towns of the Latin
league; and when a joint war took place, Rome and Latium probably
furnished the like contingent, each, as a rule, an "army" of 8400
men;(2) but the chief command was held by the Roman general, who then
nominated the officers of the staff, and so the leaders-of-division
(-tribuni militum-), according to his own choice.  In case of victory
the moveable part of the spoil, as well as the conquered territory,
was shared between Rome and the confederacy; when the establishment of
fortresses in the conquered territory was resolved on, their garrisons
and population were composed partly of Roman, partly of confederate
colonists; and not only so, but the newly-founded community was
received as a sovereign federal state into the Latin confederacy
and furnished with a seat and vote in the Latin diet.

Encroachments on That Equality of Rights--
As to Wars and Treaties--
As to the Officering of the Army--
As to Acquisitions in War

These stipulations must probably even in the regal period, certainly
in the republican epoch, have undergone alteration more and more to
the disadvantage of the confederacy and to the further development of
the hegemony of Rome.  The earliest that fell into abeyance was beyond
doubt the right of the confederacy to make wars and treaties with
foreigners;(3) the decision of war and treaty passed once for all to
Rome.  The staff officers for the Latin troops must doubtless in
earlier times have been likewise Latins; afterwards for that
purpose Roman citizens were taken, if not exclusively, at any rate
predominantly.(4)  On the other hand, afterwards as formerly, no
stronger contingent could be demanded from the Latin confederacy
as a whole than was furnished by the Roman community; and the Roman
commander-in-chief was likewise bound not to break up the Latin
contingents, but to keep the contingent sent by each community as a
separate division of the army under the leader whom that community had
appointed.(5)  The right of the Latin confederacy to an equal share in
the moveable spoil and in the conquered land continued to subsist in
form; in reality, however, the substantial fruits of war beyond doubt
went, even at an early period, to the leading state.  Even in the
founding of the federal fortresses or the so-called Latin colonies
as a rule presumably most, and not unfrequently all, of the colonists
were Romans; and although by the transference they were converted from
Roman burgesses into members of an allied community, the newly planted
township in all probability frequently retained a preponderant--and
for the confederacy dangerous--attachment to the real mother-city.

Private Rights

The rights, on the contrary, which were secured by the federal
treaties to the individual burgess of one of the allied communities
in every city belonging to the league, underwent no restriction.
These included, in particular, full equality of rights as to the
acquisition of landed property and moveable estate, as to traffic
and exchange, marriage and testament, and an unlimited liberty of
migration; so that not only was a man who had burgess-rights in a
town of the league legally entitled to settle in any other, but
whereever he settled, he as a right-sharer (-municeps-) participated
in all private and political rights and duties with the exception of
eligibility to office, and was even--although in a limited fashion
--entitled to vote at least in the -comitia tributa-.(6)

Of some such nature, in all probability, was the relation between
the Roman community and the Latin confederacy in the first period
of the republic.  We cannot, however ascertain what elements are
to be referred to earlier stipulations, and what to the revision
of the alliance in 261.

With somewhat greater certainty the remodelling of the arrangements of
the several communities belonging to the Latin confederacy, after the
pattern of the consular constitution in Rome, may be characterized as
an innovation and introduced in this connection.  For, although the
different communities may very well have arrived at the abolition
of royalty in itself independently of each other,(7) the identity
in the appellation of the new annual kings in the Roman and other
commonwealths of Latium, and the comprehensive application of the
peculiar principle of collegiateness,(8) evidently point to some
external connection.  At some time or other after the expulsion of
the Tarquins from Rome the arrangements of the Latin communities must
have been throughout revised in accordance with the scheme of the
consular constitution.  This adjustment of the Latin constitutions in
conformity with that of the leading city may possibly belong only to a
later period; but internal probability rather favours the supposition
that the Roman nobility, after having effected the abolition of
royalty for life at home, suggested a similar change of constitution
to the communities of the Latin confederacy, and at length introduced
aristocratic government everywhere in Latium-- notwithstanding the
serious resistance, imperilling the stability of the Romano-Latin
league itself, which seems to have been offered on the one hand by
the expelled Tarquins, and on the other by the royal clans and by
partisans well affected to monarchy in the other communities of
Latium.  The mighty development of the power of Etruria that occurred
at this very time, the constant assaults of the Veientes, and the
expedition of Porsena, may have materially contributed to secure the
adherence of the Latin nation to the once-established form of union,
or, in other words, to the continued recognition of the supremacy
of Rome, and disposed them for its sake to acquiesce in a change
of constitution for which, beyond doubt, the way had been in many
respects prepared even in the bosom of the Latin communities, nay
perhaps to submit even to an enlargement of the rights of hegemony.

Extension of Rome and Latium to the East and South

The permanently united nation was able not only to maintain, but
also to extend on all sides its power.  We have already(9) mentioned
that the Etruscans remained only for a short time in possession of
supremacy over Latium, and that the relations there soon returned to
the position in which they stood during the regal period; but it was
not till more than a century after the expulsion of the kings from
Rome that any real extension of the Roman boundaries took place
in this direction.

With the Sabines who occupied the middle mountain range from the
borders of the Umbrians down to the region between the Tiber and
the Anio, and who, at the epoch when the history of Rome begins,
penetrated fighting and conquering as far as Latium itself, the
Romans notwithstanding their immediate neighbourhood subsequently came
comparatively little into contact.  The feeble sympathy of the Sabines
with the desperate resistance offered by the neighbouring peoples in
the east and south, is evident even from the accounts of the annals;
and--what is of more importance--we find here no fortresses to keep
the land in subjection, such as were so numerously established
especially in the Volscian plain.  Perhaps this lack of opposition
was connected with the fact that the Sabine hordes probably about
this very time poured themselves over Lower Italy.  Allured by the
pleasantness of the settlements on the Tifernus and Volturnus, they
appear to have interfered but little in the conflicts of which the
region to the south of the Tiber was the arena.

At the Expense of the Aequi and Volsci--
League with the Hernici

Far more vehement and lasting was the resistance of the Aequi, who,
having their settlements to the eastward of Rome as far as the valleys
of the Turano and Salto and on the northern verge of the Fucine lake,
bordered with the Sabines and Marsi,(10) and of the Volsci, who to the
south of the Rutuli settled around Ardea, and of the Latins extending
southward as far as Cora, possessed the coast almost as far as the
river Liris along with the adjacent islands and in the interior the
whole region drained by the Liris.  We do not intend to narrate the
feuds annually renewed with these two peoples--feuds which are related
in the Roman chronicles in such a way that the most insignificant
foray is scarcely distinguishable from a momentous war, and historical
connection is totally disregarded; it is sufficient to indicate the
permanent results.  We plainly perceive that it was the especial aim
of the Romans and Latins to separate the Aequi from the Volsci, and
to become masters of the communications between them; in the region
between the southern slope of the Alban range, the Volscian mountains
and the Pomptine marshes, moreover, the Latins and the Volscians
appear to have come first into contact and to have even had their
settlements intermingled.(11)  In this region the Latins took
the first steps beyond the bounds of their own land, and federal
fortresses on foreign soil--Latin colonies, as they were called--were
first established, namely: in the plain Velitrae (as is alleged, about
260) beneath the Alban range itself, and Suessa in the Pomptine low
lands, in the mountains Norba (as is alleged, in 262) and Signia
(alleged to have been strengthened in 259), both of which lie at
the points of connection between the Aequian and Volscian territories.
The object was attained still more fully by the accession of the
Hernici to the league of the Romans and Latins (268), an accession
which isolated the Volscians completely, and provided the league with
a bulwark against the Sabellian tribes dwelling on the south and east;
it is easy therefore to perceive why this little people obtained the
concession of full equality with the two others in counsel and in
distribution of the spoil.  The feebler Aequi were thenceforth but
little formidable; it was sufficient to undertake from time to time
a plundering expedition against them.  The Rutuli also, who bordered
with Latium on the south in the plain along the coast, early
succumbed; their town Ardea was converted into a Latin colony as
early as 312.(12)  The Volscians opposed a more serious resistance.
The first notable success, after those mentioned above, achieved over
them by the Romans was, remarkably enough, the foundation of Circeii
in 361, which, as long as Antium and Tarracina continued free, can
only have held communication with Latium by sea.  Attempts were often
made to occupy Antium, and one was temporarily successful in 287; but
in 295 the town recovered its freedom, and it was not till after the
Gallic conflagration that, in consequence of a violent war of thirteen
years (365-377), the Romans gained a decided superiority in the
Antiate and Pomptine territory.  Satricum, not far from Antium, was
occupied with a Latin colony in 369, and not long afterwards probably
Antium itself as well as Tarracina.(13)  The Pomptine territory was
secured by the founding of the fortress Setia (372, strengthened in
375), and was distributed into farm-allotments and burgess-districts
in the year 371 and following years.  After this date the Volscians
still perhaps rose in revolt, but they waged no further wars
against Rome.

Crises within the Romano-Latin League

But the more decided the successes that the league of Romans, Latins,
and Hernici achieved against the Etruscans, Aequi, Volsci, and Rutuli,
the more that league became liable to disunion.  The reason lay
partly in the increase of the hegemonic power of Rome, of which
we have already spoken as necessarily springing out of the existing
circumstances, but which nevertheless was felt as a heavy burden in
Latium; partly in particular acts of odious injustice perpetrated by
the leading community.  Of this nature was especially the infamous
sentence of arbitration between the Aricini and the Rutuli in Ardea
in 308, in which the Romans, called in to be arbiters regarding a
border territory in dispute between the two communities, took it to
themselves; and when this decision occasioned in Ardea internal
dissensions in which the people wished to join the Volsci, while
the nobility adhered to Rome, these dissensions were still more
disgracefully employed as a pretext for the--already mentioned
--sending of Roman colonists into the wealthy city, amongst whom the
lands of the adherents of the party opposed to Rome were distributed
(312).  The main cause however of the internal breaking up of the
league was the very subjugation of the common foe; forbearance ceased
on one side, devotedness ceased on the other, from the time when they
thought that they had no longer need of each other.  The open breach
between the Latins and Hernici on the one hand and the Romans on the
other was more immediately occasioned partly by the capture of Rome
by the Celts and the momentary weakness which it produced, partly by
the definitive occupation and distribution of the Pomptine territory.
The former allies soon stood opposed in the field.  Already Latin
volunteers in great numbers had taken part in the last despairing
struggle of the Antiates: now the most famous of the Latin cities,
Lanuvium (371), Praeneste (372-374, 400), Tusculum (373), Tibur (394,
400), and even several of the fortresses established in the Volscian
land by the Romano-Latin league, such as Velitrae and Circeii, had to
be subdued by force of arms, and the Tiburtines were not afraid even
to make common cause against Rome with the once more advancing hordes
of the Gauls.  No concerted revolt however took place, and Rome
mastered the individual towns without much trouble.

Tusculum was even compelled (in 373) to give up its political
independence, and to enter into the burgess-union of Rome as a
subject community (-civitas sine suffragio-) so that the town
retained its walls and an--although limited--self-administration,
including magistrates and a burgess-assembly of its own, whereas
its burgesses as Romans lacked the right of electing or being elected
--the first instance of a whole burgess-body being incorporated as
a dependent community with the Roman commonwealth.

Renewal of the Treaties of Alliance

The struggle with the Hernici was more severe (392-396); the first
consular commander-in-chief belonging to the plebs, Lucius Genucius,
fell in it; but here too the Romans were victorious.  The crisis
terminated with the renewal of the treaties between Rome and the Latin
and Hernican confederacies in 396.  The precise contents of these
treaties are not known, but it is evident that both confederacies
submitted once more, and probably on harder terms, to the Roman
hegemony.  The institution which took place in the same year of two
new tribes in the Pomptine territory shows clearly the mighty
advances made by the Roman power.

Closing of the Latin Confederation

In manifest connection with this crisis in the relations between Rome
and Latium stands the closing of the Latin confederation,(14) which
took place about the year 370, although we cannot precisely determine
whether it was the effect or, as is more probable, the cause of the
revolt of Latium against Rome which we have just described.  As the
law had hitherto stood, every sovereign city founded by Rome and
Latium took its place among the communes entitled to participate
in the federal festival and federal diet, whereas every community
incorporated with another city and thereby politically annihilated
was erased from the ranks of the members of the league.  At the same
time, however, according to Latin use and wont the number once fixed
of thirty confederate communities was so adhered to, that of the
participating cities never more and never less than thirty were
entitled to vote, and a number of the communities that were of later
admission, or were disqualified for their slight importance or for the
crimes they had committed, were without the right of voting.  In this
way the confederacy was constituted about 370 as follows.  Of old
Latin townships there were--besides some which have now fallen into
oblivion, or whose sites are unknown--still autonomous and entitled to
vote, Nomentum, between the Tiber and the Anio; Tibur, Gabii, Scaptia,
Labici,(15) Pedum, and Praeneste, between the Anio and the Alban
range; Corbio, Tusculum, Bovillae, Aricia, Corioli, and Lanuvium on
the Alban range; Cora in the Volscian mountains, and lastly, Laurentum
in the plain along the coast.  To these fell to be added the colonies
instituted by Rome and the Latin league; Ardea in the former territory
of the Rutuli, and Satricum, Velitrae, Norba, Signia, Setia and
Circeii in that of the Volsci.  Besides, seventeen other townships,
whose names are not known with certainty, had the privilege of
participating in the Latin festival without the right of voting.
On this footing--of forty-seven townships entitled to participate and
thirty entitled to vote--the Latin confederacy continued henceforward
unalterably fixed.  The Latin communities founded subsequently, such
as Sutrium, Nepete,(16) Antium, Tarracina,(17) and Gales, were not
admitted into the confederacy, nor were the Latin communities
subsequently divested of their autonomy, such as Tusculum and
Lanuvium, erased from the list.

Fixing of the Limits of Latium

With this closing of the confederacy was connected the geographical
settlement of the limits of Latium.  So long as the Latin confederacy
continued open, the bounds of Latium had advanced with the
establishment of new federal cities: but as the later Latin
colonies had no share in the Alban festival, they were not regarded
geographically as part of Latium.  For this reason doubtless Ardea
and Circeii were reckoned as belonging to Latium, but not Sutrium
or Tarracina.

Isolation of the Later Latin Cities as Respected Private Rights

But not only were the places on which Latin privileges were bestowed
after 370 kept aloof from the federal association; they were isolated
also from one another as respected private rights.  While each of
them was allowed to have reciprocity of commercial dealings and
probably also of marriage (-commercium et conubium-) with Rome,
no such reciprocity was permitted with the other Latin communities.
The burgess of Satrium, for example, might possess in full property
a piece of ground in Rome, but not in Praeneste; and might have
legitimate children with a Roman, but not with a Tiburtine, wife.(18)

Prevention of Special Leagues

If hitherto considerable freedom of movement had been allowed within
the confederacy, and for example the six old Latin communities,
Aricia, Tusculum, Tibur, Lanuvium, Cora, and Laurentum, and the two
new Latin, Ardea and Suessa Pometia, had been permitted to found in
common a shrine for the Aricine Diana; it is doubtless not the mere
result of accident that we find no further instance in later times
of similar separate confederations fraught with danger to the hegemony
of Rome.

Revision of the Municipal Constitutions.  Police Judges

We may likewise assign to this epoch the further remodelling which
the Latin municipal constitutions underwent, and their complete
assimilation to the constitution of Rome.  If in after times two
aediles, intrusted with the police-supervision of markets and highways
and the administration of justice in connection therewith, make their
appearance side by side with the two praetors as necessary elements
of the Latin magistracy, the institution of these urban police
functionaries, which evidently took place at the same time and at
the instigation of the leading power in all the federal communities,
certainly cannot have preceded the establishment of the curule
aedileship in Rome, which occurred in 387; probably it took place
about that very time.  Beyond doubt this arrangement was only one
of a series of measures curtailing the liberties and modifying
the organization of the federal communities in the interest of
aristocratic policy.

Domination of the Romans; Exasperation of the Latins--
Collision between the Romans and the Samnites

After the fall of Veii and the conquest of the Pomptine territory,
Rome evidently felt herself powerful enough to tighten the reins of
her hegemony and to reduce the whole of the Latin cities to a position
so dependent that they became in fact completely subject.  At this
period (406) the Carthaginians, in a commercial treaty concluded with
Rome, bound themselves to inflict no injury on the Latins who were
subject to Rome, viz.  the maritime towns of Ardea, Antium, Circeii,
and Tarracina; if, however, any one of the Latin towns should fall
away from the Roman alliance, the Phoenicians were to be allowed to
attack it, but in the event of conquering it they were bound not to
raze it, but to hand it over to the Romans.  This plainly shows by
what chains the Roman community bound to itself the towns protected
by it and how much a town, which dared to withdraw from the native
protectorate, sacrificed or risked by such a course.

It is true that even now the Latin confederacy at least--if not also
the Hernican--retained its formal title to a third of the gains of
war, and doubtless some other remnants of the former equality of
rights; but what was palpably lost was important enough to explain the
exasperation which at this period prevailed among the Latins against
Rome.  Not only did numerous Latin volunteers fight under foreign
standards against the community at their head, wherever they found
armies in the field against Rome; but in 405 even the Latin federal
assembly resolved to refuse to the Romans its contingent.  To all
appearance a renewed rising of the whole Latin confederacy might be
anticipated at no distant date; and at that very moment a collision
was imminent with another Italian nation, which was able to encounter
on equal terms the united strength of the Latin stock.  After the
overthrow of the northern Volscians no considerable people in
the first instance opposed the Romans in the south; their legions
unchecked approached the Liris.  As early as 397 they had contended;
successfully with the Privernates; and in 409 occupied Sora on the
upper Liris.  Thus the Roman armies had reached the Samnite frontier;
and the friendly alliance, which the two bravest and most powerful
of the Italian nations concluded with each other in 400, was the
sure token of an approaching struggle for the supremacy of Italy--a
struggle which threatened to become interwoven with the crisis within
the Latin nation.

Conquests of the Samnites in the South of Italy

The Samnite nation, which, at the time of the expulsion of the
Tarquins from Rome, had doubtless already been for a considerable
period in possession of the hill-country which rises between the
Apulian and Campanian plains and commands them both, had hitherto
found its further advance impeded on the one side by the Daunians
--the power and prosperity of Arpi fall within this period--on the
other by the Greeks and Etruscans.  But the fall of the Etruscan power
towards the end of the third, and the decline of the Greek colonies in
the course of the fourth century, made room for them towards the west
and south; and now one Samnite host after another marched down to,
and even moved across, the south Italian seas.  They first made their
appearance in the plain adjoining the bay, with which the name of
the Campanians has been associated from the beginning of the fourth
century; the Etruscans there were suppressed, and the Greeks were
confined within narrower bounds; Capua was wrested from the former
(330), Cumae from the latter (334).  About the same time, perhaps even
earlier, the Lucanians appeared in Magna Graecia: at the beginning
of the fourth century they were involved in conflict with the people
of Terina and Thurii; and a considerable time before 364 they had
established themselves in the Greek Laus.  About this period their
levy amounted to 30,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry.  Towards the end of
the fourth century mention first occurs of the separate confederacy of
the Bruttii,(19) who had detached themselves from the Lucanians--not,
like the other Sabellian stocks, as a colony, but through a quarrel
--and had become mixed up with many foreign elements.  The Greeks of
Lower Italy tried to resist the pressure of the barbarians; the league
of the Achaean cities was reconstructed in 361; and it was determined
that, if any of the allied towns should be assailed by the Lucanians,
all should furnish contingents, and that the leaders of contingents
which failed to appear should suffer the punishment of death.  But
even the union of Magna Graecia no longer availed; for the ruler of
Syracuse, Dionysius the Elder, made common cause with the Italians
against his countrymen.  While Dionysius wrested from the fleets of
Magna Graecia the mastery of the Italian seas, one Greek city after
another was occupied or annihilated by the Italians.  In an incredibly
short time the circle of flourishing cities was destroyed or laid
desolate.  Only a few Greek settlements, such as Neapolis, succeeded
with difficulty, and more by means of treaties than by force of
arms, in preserving at least their existence and their nationality.
Tarentum alone remained thoroughly independent and powerful,
maintaining its ground in consequence of its more remote position
and its preparation for war--the result of its constant conflicts
with the Messapians.  Even that city, however, had constantly to
fight for its existence with the Lucanians, and was compelled to
seek for alliances and mercenaries in the mother-country of Greece.

About the period when Veii and the Pomptine plain came into the hands
of Rome, the Samnite hordes were already in possession of all Lower
Italy, with the exception of a few unconnected Greek colonies, and
of the Apulo-Messapian coast.  The Greek Periplus, composed about 418,
sets down the Samnites proper with their "five tongues" as reaching
from the one sea to the other; and specifies the Campanians as
adjoining them on the Tyrrhene sea to the north, and the Lucanians
to the south, amongst whom in this instance, as often, the Bruttii
are included, and who already had the whole coast apportioned among
them from Paestum on the Tyrrhene, to Thurii on the Ionic sea.  In
fact to one who compares the achievements of the two great nations
of Italy, the Latins and the Samnites, before they came into contact,
the career of conquest on the part of the latter appears far wider
and more splendid than that of the former.  But the character of their
conquests was essentially different.  From the fixed urban centre
which Latium possessed in Rome the dominion of the Latin stock spread
slowly on all sides, and lay within limits comparatively narrow; but
it planted its foot firmly at every step, partly by founding fortified
towns of the Roman type with the rights of dependent allies, partly
by Romanizing the territory which it conquered.  It was otherwise
with Samnium.  There was in its case no single leading community and
therefore no policy of conquest.  While the conquest of the Veientine
and Pomptine territories was for Rome a real enlargement of power,
Samnium was weakened rather than strengthened by the rise of the
Campanian cities and of the Lucanian and Bruttian confederacies; for
every swarm, which had sought and found new settlements, thenceforward
pursued a path of its own.

Relations between the Samnites and the Greeks

The Samnite tribes filled a disproportionately large space, while
yet they showed no disposition to make it thoroughly their own.
The larger Greek cities, Tarentum, Thurii, Croton, Metapontum,
Heraclea, Rhegium, and Neapolis, although weakened and often
dependent, continued to exist; and the Hellenes were tolerated
even in the open country and in the smaller towns, so that Cumae
for instance, Posidonia, Laus, and Hipponium, still remained--as
the Periplus already mentioned and coins show--Greek cities even
under Samnite rule.  Mixed populations thus arose; the bi-lingual
Bruttii, in particular, included Hellenic as well as Samnite elements
and even perhaps remains of the ancient autochthones; in Lucania
and Campania also similar mixtures must to a lesser extent have
taken place.

Campanian Hellenism

The Samnite nation, moreover, could not resist the dangerous charm
of Hellenic culture; least of all in Campania, where Neapolis early
entered into friendly intercourse with the immigrants, and where
the sky itself humanized the barbarians.  Nola, Nuceria, and Teanum,
although having a purely Samnite population, adopted Greek manners
and a Greek civic constitution; in fact the indigenous cantonal form
of constitution could not possibly subsist under these altered
circumstances.  The Samnite cities of Campania began to coin money,
in part with Greek inscriptions; Capua became by its commerce and
agriculture the second city in Italy in point of size--the first in
point of wealth and luxury.  The deep demoralization, in which,
according to the accounts of the ancients, that city surpassed all
others in Italy, is especially reflected in the mercenary recruiting
and in the gladiatorial sports, both of which pre-eminently flourished
in Capua.  Nowhere did recruiting officers find so numerous a
concourse as in this metropolis of demoralized civilization; while
Capua knew not how to save itself from the attacks of the aggressive
Samnites, the warlike Campanian youth flocked forth in crowds under
self-elected -condottteri-, especially to Sicily.  How deeply these
soldiers of fortune influenced by their enterprises the destinies of
Italy, we shall have afterwards to show; they form as characteristic
a feature of Campanian life as the gladiatorial sports which likewise,
if they did not originate, were at any rate carried to perfection in
Capua.  There sets of gladiators made their appearance even during
banquets; and their number was proportioned to the rank of the guests
invited.  This degeneracy of the most important Samnite city--a
degeneracy which beyond doubt was closely connected with the Etruscan
habits that lingered there--must have been fatal for the nation at
large; although the Campanian nobility knew how to combine chivalrous
valour and high mental culture with the deepest moral corruption, it
could never become to its nation what the Roman nobility was to the
Latin.  Hellenic influence had a similar, though less powerful, effect
on the Lucanians and Bruttians as on the Campanians.  The objects
discovered in the tombs throughout all these regions show how Greek
art was cherished there in barbaric luxuriance; the rich ornaments
of gold and amber and the magnificent painted pottery, which are now
disinterred from the abodes of the dead, enable us to conjecture how
extensive had been their departure from the ancient manners of their
fathers.  Other indications are preserved in their writing.  The old
national writing which they had brought with them from the north was
abandoned by the Lucanians and Bruttians, and exchanged for Greek;
while in Campania the national alphabet, and perhaps also the
language, developed itself under the influence of the Greek model
into greater clearness and delicacy.  We meet even with isolated
traces of the influence of Greek philosophy.

The Samnite Confederacy

The Samnite land, properly so called, alone remained unaffected by
these innovations, which, beautiful and natural as they may to some
extent have been, powerfully contributed to relax still more the bond
of national unity which even from the first was loose.  Through the
influence of Hellenic habits a deep schism took place in the Samnite
stock.  The civilized "Philhellenes" of Campania were accustomed to
tremble like the Hellenes themselves before the ruder tribes of
the mountains, who were continually penetrating into Campania and
disturbing the degenerate earlier settlers.  Rome was a compact state,
having the strength of all Latium at its disposal; its subjects might
murmur, but they obeyed.  The Samnite stock was dispersed and divided;
and, while the confederacy in Samnium proper had preserved unimpaired
the manners and valour of their ancestors, they were on that very
account completely at variance with the other Samnite tribes
and towns.

Submission of Capua to Rome--
Rome and Samnium Come to Terms--
Revolt of the Latins and Campanians against Rome--
Victory of the Romans--
Dissolution of the Latin League--
Colonization of the Land of the Volsci

In fact, it was this variance between the Samnites of the plain and
the Samnites of the mountains that led the Romans over the Liris.
The Sidicini in Teanum, and the Campanians in Capua, sought aid
from the Romans (411) against their own countrymen, who in swarms ever
renewed ravaged their territory and threatened to establish themselves
there.  When the desired alliance was refused, the Campanian envoys
made offer of the submission of their country to the supremacy of
Rome: and the Romans were unable to resist the bait.  Roman envoys
were sent to the Samnites to inform them of the new acquisition,
and to summon them to respect the territory of the friendly power.
The further course of events can no longer be ascertained in
detail;(20) we discover only that--whether after a campaign,
or without the intervention of a war--Rome and Samnium came to
an agreement, by which Capua was left at the disposal of the Romans,
Teanum in the hands of the Samnites, and the upper Liris in those
of the Volscians.

The consent of the Samnites to treat is explained by the energetic
exertions made about this very period by the Tarentines to get quit
of their Sabellian neighbours.  But the Romans also had good reason
for coming to terms as quickly as possible with the Samnites; for the
impending transition of the region bordering on the south of Latium
into the possession of the Romans converted the ferment that had long
existed among the Latins into open insurrection.  All the original
Latin towns, even the Tusculans who had been received into the
burgess-union of Rome, took up arms against Rome, with the single
exception of the Laurentes, whereas of the colonies founded beyond
the bounds of Latium only the old Volscian towns Velitrae, Antium,
and Tarracina adhered to the revolt.  We can readily understand how
the Capuans, notwithstanding their very recent and voluntarily offered
submission to the Romans, should readily embrace the first opportunity
of again ridding themselves of the Roman rule and, in spite of the
opposition of the optimate party that adhered to the treaty with Rome,
should make common cause with the Latin confederacy, whereas the still
independent Volscian towns, such as Fundi and Formiae, and the Hernici
abstained like the Campanian aristocracy from taking part in this
revolt.  The position of the Romans was critical; the legions which
had crossed the Liris and occupied Campania were cut off by the revolt
of the Latins and Volsci from their home, and a victory alone could
save them.  The decisive battle was fought near Trifanum (between
Minturnae, Suessa, and Sinuessa) in 414; the consul Titus Manlius
Imperiosus Torquatus achieved a complete victory over the united
Latins and Campanians.  In the two following years the individual
towns, so far as they still offered resistance, were reduced by
capitulation or assault, and the whole country was brought into
subjection.  The effect of the victory was the dissolution of the
Latin league.  It was transformed from an independent political
federation into a mere association for the purpose of a religious
festival; the ancient stipulated rights of the confederacy as to
a maximum for the levy of troops and a share of the gains of war
perished as such along with it, and assumed, where they were
recognized in future, the character of acts of grace.  Instead of
the one treaty between Rome on the one hand and the Latin confederacy
on the other, there came at best perpetual alliances between Rome and
the several confederate towns.  To this footing of treaty there were
admitted of the old-Latin places, besides Laurentum, also Tibur and
Praeneste, which however were compelled to cede portions of their
territory to Rome.  Like terms were obtained by the communities of
Latin rights founded outside of Latium, so far as they had not taken
part in the war.  The principle of isolating the communities from each
other, which had already been established in regard to the places
founded after 370,(21) was thus extended to the whole Latin nation.
In other respects the several places retained their former privileges
and their autonomy.  The other old-Latin communities as well as the
colonies that had revolted lost--all of them--independence and
entered in one form or another into the Roman burgess-union.  The two
important coast towns Antium (416) and Tarracina (425) were, after
the model of Ostia, occupied with Roman full-burgesses and restricted
to a communal independence confined within narrow limits, while the
previous burgesses were deprived in great part of their landed
property in favour of the Roman colonists and, so far as they retained
it, likewise adopted into the full burgess-union.  Lanuvium, Aricia,
Momentum, Pedum became Roman burgess-communities after the model of
Tusculum.(22)  The walls of Velitrae were demolished, its senate was
ejected -en masse- and deported to the interior of Roman Etruria,
and the town was probably constituted a dependent community with
Caerite rights.(23)  Of the land acquired a portion--the estates,
for instance, of the senators of Velitrae--was distributed to Roman
burgesses: with these special assignations was connected the erection
of two new tribes in 422.  The deep sense which prevailed in Rome
of the enormous importance of the result achieved is attested by
the honorary column, which was erected in the Roman Forum to the
victorious dictator of 416, Gaius Maenius, and by the decoration
of the orators' platform in the same place with the beaks taken
from the galleys of Antium that were found unserviceable.

Complete Submission of the Volscian and Campanian Provinces

In like manner the dominion of Rome was established and confirmed in
the south Volscian and Campanian territories.  Fundi, Formiae,
Capua, Cumae, and a number of smaller towns became dependent Roman
communities with self-administration.  To secure the pre-eminently
important city of Capua, the breach between the nobility and commons
was artfully widened, the communal constitution was revised in the
Roman interest, and the administration of the town was controlled by
Roman officials annually sent to Campania.  The same treatment was
measured out some years after to the Volscian Privernum, whose
citizens, supported by Vitruvius Vaccus a bold partisan belonging to
Fundi, had the honour of fighting the last battle for the freedom of
this region; the struggle ended with the storming of the town (425)
and the execution of Vaccus in a Roman prison.  In order to rear a
population devoted to Rome in these regions, they distributed, out
of the lands won in war particularly in the Privernate and Falernian
territories, so numerous allotments to Roman burgesses, that a few
years later (436) they were able to institute there also two new
tribes.  The establishment of two fortresses as colonies with Latin
rights finally secured the newly won land.  These were Cales (420)
in the middle of the Campanian plain, whence the movements of Teanum
and Capua could be observed, and Fregellae (426), which commanded
the passage of the Liris.  Both colonies were unusually strong, and
rapidly became flourishing, notwithstanding the obstacles which the
Sidicines interposed to the founding of Cales and the Samnites to that
of Fregellae.  A Roman garrison was also despatched to Sora, a step
of which the Samnites, to whom this district had been left by the
treaty, complained with reason, but in vain.  Rome pursued her purpose
with undeviating steadfastness, and displayed her energetic and
far-reaching policy--more even than on the battlefield--in the securing
of the territory which she gained by enveloping it, politically and
militarily, in a net whose meshes could not be broken.

Inaction of the Samnites

As a matter of course, the Samnites could not behold the threatening
progress of the Romans with satisfaction, and they probably put
obstacles in its way; nevertheless they neglected to intercept the new
career of conquest, while there was still perhaps time to do so, with
that energy which the circumstances required.  They appear indeed in
accordance with their treaty with Rome to have occupied and strongly
garrisoned Teanum; for while in earlier times that city sought help
against Samnium from Capua and Rome, in the later struggles it appears
as the bulwark of the Samnite power on the west.  They spread,
conquering and destroying, on the upper Liris, but they neglected
to establish themselves permanently in that quarter.  They destroyed
the Volscian town Fregellae--by which they simply facilitated the
institution of the Roman colony there which we have just mentioned
--and they so terrified two other Volscian towns, Fabrateria (Ceccano)
and Luca (site unknown), that these, following the example of Capua,
surrendered themselves to the Romans (424).  The Samnite confederacy
allowed the Roman conquest of Campania to be completed before they in
earnest opposed it; and the reason for their doing so is to be sought
partly in the contemporary hostilities between the Samnite nation and
the Italian Hellenes, but principally in the remiss and distracted
policy which the confederacy pursued.

Notes for Book II Chapter V

1.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

2.  The original equality of the two armies is evident from Liv. i. 52;
viii. 8, 14, and Dionys. viii, 15; but most clearly from Polyb. vi. 26.

3.  Dionysius (viii. 15) expressly states, that in the later federal
treaties between Rome and Latium the Latin communities were interdicted
from calling out their contingents of their own motion and sending them
into the field alone.

4.  These Latin staff-officers were the twelve -praefecti sociorum-,
who subsequently, when the old phalanx had been resolved into the
later legions and -alae-, had the charge of the two -alae- of the
federal contingents, six to each -ala-, just as the twelve war-tribunes
of the Roman army had charge of the two legions, six to each legion.
Polybius (vi. 26, 5) states that the consul nominated the former,
as he originally nominated the latter.  Now, as according to the
ancient maxim of law, that every person under obligation of service
might become an officer (p. 106), it was legally allowable for the
general to appoint a Latin as leader of a Roman, as well as conversely
a Roman as leader of a Latin, legion, this led to the practical result
that the -tribuni militum- were wholly, and the -praefecti sociorum-
at least ordinarily, Romans.

5.  These were the -decuriones turmarum- and -praefecti cohortium-
(Polyb. vi. 21, 5; Liv. xxv. 14; Sallust. Jug. 69, et al.)  Of
course, as the Roman consuls were in law and ordinarily also in fact
commanders-in-chief, the presidents of the community in the dependent
towns also were perhaps throughout, or at least very frequently,
placed at the head of the community-contingents (Liv. xxiii. 19;
Orelli, Inscr. 7022).  Indeed, the usual name given to the Latin
magistrates (-praetores-) indicates that they were officers.

6.  Such a --metoikos-- was not like an actual burgess assigned to a
specific voting district once for all, but before each particular vote
the district in which the --metoeci-- were upon that occasion to vote
was fixed by lot.  In reality this probably amounted to the concession
to the Latins of one vote in the Roman -comitia tributa-.  As a place
in some tribe was a preliminary condition of the ordinary centuriate
suffrage, if the --metoeci-- shared in the voting in the assembly of
the centuries-which we do not know-a similar allotment must have been
fixed for the latter.  In the curies they must have taken part like
the plebeians.

7.  II. I. Abolition of the Life-Presidency of the Community

8.  Ordinarily, as is well known, the Latin communities were
presided over by two praetors.  Besides these there occur in several
communities single magistrates, who in that case bear the title of
dictator; as in Alba (Orelli-Henzen, Inscr. 2293), Tusculum (p. 445,
note 2), Lanuvium (Cicero, pro Mil. 10, 27; 17, 45; Asconius, in Mil.
p. 32, Orell.; Orelli, n. 2786, 5157, 6086); Compitum (Orelli, 3324);
Nomentum (Orelli, 208, 6138, 7032; comp. Henzen, Bullett. 1858, p.
169); and Aricia (Orelli, n. 1455).  To these falls to be added the
similar dictator in the -civitas sine suffragio- of Caere (Orelli, n.
3787, 5772; also Garrucci Diss. arch., i. p. 31, although erroneously
placed after Sutrium); and further the officials of the like name at
Fidenae (Orelli, 112).  All these magistracies or priesthoods that
originated in magistracies (the dictator of Caere is to be explained
in accordance with Liv. ix. 43: -Anagninis--magistratibus praeter quam
sacrorum curatione interdictum-), were annual (Orelli, 208).
The statement of Macer likewise and of the annalists who borrowed
from him, that Alba was at the time of its fall no longer under kings,
but under annual directors (Dionys. v. 74; Plutarch, Romul. 27; Liv.
i. 23), is presumably a mere inference from the institution, with
which he was acquainted, of the sacerdotal Alban dictatorship which
was beyond doubt annual like that of Nomentum; a view in which,
moreover, the democratic partisanship of its author may have come
into play.  It may be a question whether the inference is valid, and
whether, even if Alba at the time of its dissolution was under rulers
holding office for life, the abolition of monarchy in Rome might not
subsequently lead to the conversion of the Alban dictatorship into
an annual office.

All these Latin magistracies substantially coincide in reality, as
well as specially in name, with the arrangement established in Rome
by the revolution in a way which is not adequately explained by the
mere similarity of the political circumstances underlying them.

9.  II. IV. Etruscans Driven Back from Latium

10.  The country of the Aequi embraces not merely the valley of
the Anio above Tibur and the territory of the later Latin colonies
Carsioli (on the upper part of the Turano) and Alba (on the Fucine
lake), but also the district of the later municipium of the Aequiculi,
who are nothing but that remnant of the Aequi to which, after the
subjugation by the Romans, and after the assignation of the largest
portion of the territory to Roman or Latin colonists, municipal
independence was left.

11.  To all appearance Velitrae, although situated in the plain, was
originally Volscian, and so a Latin colony; Cora, on the other hand,
on the Volscian mountains, was originally Latin.

12.  Not long afterwards must have taken place the founding of the
-Nemus Dianae- in the forest of Aricia, which, according to Cato's
account (p. 12, Jordan), a Tusculan dictator accomplished for
the urban communities of old Latium, Tusculum, Aricia, Lanuvium,
Laurentum, Cora, and Tibur, and of the two Latin colonies (which
therefore stand last) Suessa Pometia and Ardea (-populus Ardeatis
Rutulus-).  The absence of Praeneste and of the smaller communities
of the old Latium shows, as was implied in the nature of the case,
that not all the communities of the Latin league at that time took
part in the consecration.  That it falls before 372 is proved by the
emergence of Pometia (II. V. Closing Of The Latin Confederation), and
the list quite accords with what can otherwise be ascertained as to
the state of the league shortly after the accession of Ardea.

More credit may be given to the traditional statements regarding the
years of the foundations than to most of the oldest traditions, seeing
that the numbering of the year -ab urbe condita-, common to the
Italian cities, has to all appearance preserved, by direct tradition,
the year in which the colonies were founded.

13.  The two do not appear as Latin colonies in the so-called Cassian
list about 372, but they so appear in the Carthaginian treaty of 406;
the towns had thus become Latin colonies in the interval.

14.  In the list given by Dionysius (v. 61) of the thirty Latin
federal cities--the only list which we possess--there are named the
Ardeates, Aricini, Bovillani, Bubentani (site unknown), Corni (rather
Corani), Carventani (site unknown), Circeienses, Coriolani, Corbintes,
Cabani (perhaps the Cabenses on the Alban Mount, Bull, dell' Inst.
1861, p. 205), Fortinei (unknown), Gabini, Laurentes, Lanuvini,
Lavinates, Labicani, Nomentani, Norbani, Praenestini, Pedani,
Querquetulani (site unknown), Satricani, Scaptini, Setini, Tiburtini,
Tusculani, Tellenii (site unknown), Tolerini (site unknown), and
Veliterni.  The occasional notices of communities entitled to
participate, such as of Ardea (Liv. xxxii. x), Laurentum (Liv. xxxvii.
3), Lanuvium (Liv. xli. 16), Bovillae, Gabii, Labici (Cicero, pro
Plane. 9, 23) agree with this list.  Dionysius gives it on occasion
of the declaration of war by Latium against Rome in 256, and it was
natural therefore to regard--as Niebuhr did--this list as derived
from the well-known renewal of the league in 261, But, as in this list
drawn up according to the Latin alphabet the letter -g appears in a
position which it certainly had not at the time of the Twelve Tables
and scarcely came to occupy before the fifth century (see my
Unteritalische Dial. p. 33), it must be taken from a much more recent
source; and it is by far the simplest hypothesis to recognize it as
a list of those places which were afterwards regarded as the ordinary
members of the Latin confederacy, and which Dionysius in accordance
with his systematizing custom specifies as its original component
elements.  As was to be expected, the list presents not a single
non-Latin community; it simply enumerates places originally Latin
or occupied by Latin colonies--no one will lay stress on Corbio and
Corioli as exceptions.  Now if we compare with this list that of the
Latin colonies, there had been founded down to 372 Suessa Pometia,
Velitrae, Norba, Signia, Ardea, Circeii (361), Satricum (369), Sutrium
(371), Nepete (371), Setia (372).  Of the last three founded at nearly
the same time the two Etruscan ones may very well date somewhat later
than Setia, since in fact the foundation of every town claimed
a certain amount of time, and our list cannot be free from minor
inaccuracies.  If we assume this, then the list contains all the
colonies sent out up to the year 372, including the two soon
afterwards deleted from the list, Satricum destroyed in 377 and
Velitrae divested of Latin rights in 416; there are wanting only
Suessa Pometia, beyond doubt as having been destroyed before 372, and
Signia, probably because in the text of Dionysius, who mentions only
twenty-nine names, --SIGNINON-- has dropped out after --SEITINON--.
In entire harmony with this view there are absent from this list all
the Latin colonies founded after 372 as well as all places, which like
Ostia, Antemnae, Alba, were incorporated with the Roman community
before the year 370, whereas those incorporated subsequently, such
as Tusculum, Lanuvium, Velitrae, are retained in it.

As regards the list given by Pliny of thirty-two townships extinct in
his time which had formerly participated in the Alban festival, after
deduction of seven that also occur in Dionysius (for the Cusuetani
of Pliny appear to be the Carventani of Dionysius), there remain
twenty-five townships, most of them quite unknown, doubtless made up
partly of those seventeen non-voting communities--most of which perhaps
were just the oldest subsequently disqualified members of the Alban
festal league--partly of a number of other decayed or ejected members
of the league, to which latter class above all the ancient presiding
township of Alba, also named by Pliny, belonged.

15.  Livy certainly states (iv. 47) that Labici became a colony in
336.  But--apart from the fact that Diodorus (xiii. 6) says nothing
of it--Labici cannot have been a burgess-colony, for the town did
not lie on the coast and besides it appears subsequently as still in
possession of autonomy; nor can it have been a Latin one, for there is
not, nor can there be from the nature of these foundations, a single
other example of a Latin colony established in the original Latium.
Here as elsewhere it is most probable--especially as two -jugera- are
named as the portion of land allotted--that a public assignation to
the burgesses has been confounded with a colonial assignation ( I.
XIII. System of Joint Cultivation ).

16.  II. IV. South Etruria Roman

17.  II. V. League with the Hernici

18.  This restriction of the ancient full reciprocity of Latin rights
first occurs in the renewal of the treaty in 416 (Liv. viii. 14); but
as the system of isolation, of which it was an essential part, first
began in reference to the Latin colonies settled after 370, and was
only generalized in 416, it is proper to mention this alteration here.

19.  The name itself is very ancient; in fact it is the most
ancient indigenous name for the inhabitants of the present Calabria
(Antiochus, Fr. 5.  Mull.).  The well-known derivation is doubtless
an invention.

20.  Perhaps no section of the Roman annals has been more disfigured
than the narrative of the first Samnite-Latin war, as it stands or
stood in Livy, Dionysius, and Appian.  It runs somewhat to the
following effect.  After both consuls had marched into Campania in
411, first the consul Marcus Valerius Corvus gained a severe and
bloody victory over the Samnites at Mount Gaurus; then his colleague
Aulus Cornelius Cossus gained another, after he had been rescued from
annihilation in a narrow pass by the self-devotion of a division led
by the military tribune Publius Decius.  The third and decisive battle
was fought by both consuls at the entrance of the Caudine Pass near
Suessula; the Samnites were completely vanquished--forty thousand of
their shields were picked up on the field of battle--and they were
compelled to make a peace, in which the Romans retained Capua, which
had given itself over to their possession, while they left Teanum to
the Samnites (413).  Congratulations came from all sides, even from
Carthage.  The Latins, who had refused their contingent and seemed to
be arming against Rome, turned their arms not against Rome but against
the Paeligni, while the Romans were occupied first with a military
conspiracy of the garrison left behind in Campania (412), then with
the capture of Privernum (413) and the war against the Antiates.  But
now a sudden and singular change occurred in the position of parties.
The Latins, who had demanded in vain Roman citizenship and a share in
the consulate, rose against Rome in conjunction with the Sidicines,
who had vainly offered to submit to the Romans and knew not how to
save themselves from the Samnites, and with the Campanians, who were
already tired of the Roman rule.  Only the Laurentes in Latium and the
-equites- of Campania adhered to the Romans, who on their part found
support among the Paeligni and Samnites.  The Latin army fell upon
Samnium; the Romano-Samnite army, after it had marched to the Fucine
lake and from thence, avoiding Latium, into Campania, fought the
decisive battle against the combined Latins and Campanians at
Vesuvius; the consul Titus Manlius Imperiosus, after he had himself
restored the wavering discipline of the army by the execution of his
own son who had slain a foe in opposition to orders from headquarters,
and after his colleague Publius Decius Mus had appeased the gods by
sacrificing his life, at length gained the victory by calling up the
last reserves.  But the war was only terminated by a second battle,
in which the consul Manlius engaged the Latins and Campanians near
Trifanum; Latium and Capua submitted, and were mulcted in a portion
of their territory.

The judicious and candid reader will not fail to observe that this
report swarms with all sorts of impossibilities.  Such are the
statement of the Antiates waging war after the surrender of 377 (Liv.
vi. 33); the independent campaign of the Latins against the Paeligni,
in distinct contradiction to the stipulations of the treaties between
Rome and Latium; the unprecedented march of the Roman army through the
Marsian and Samnite territory to Capua, while all Latium was in arms
against Rome; to say nothing of the equally confused and sentimental
account of the military insurrection of 412, and the story of
its forced leader, the lame Titus Quinctius, the Roman Gotz von
Berlichingen.  Still more suspicious perhaps, are the repetitions.
Such is the story of the military tribune Publius Decius modelled on
the courageous deed of Marcus Calpurnius Flamma, or whatever he was
called, in the first Punic war; such is the recurrence of the conquest
of Privernum by Gaius Plautius in the year 425, which second conquest
alone is registered in the triumphal Fasti; such is the self-immolation
of Publius Decius, repeated, as is well known, in the case of his son
in 459.  Throughout this section the whole representation betrays
a different period and a different hand from the other more credible
accounts of the annals.  The narrative is full of detailed pictures
of battles; of inwoven anecdotes, such as that of the praetor
of Setia, who breaks his neck on the steps of the senate-house because
he had been audacious enough to solicit the consulship, and the
various anecdotes concocted out of the surname of Titus Manlius; and
of prolix and in part suspicious archaeological digressions.  In this
class we include the history of the legion--of which the notice, most
probably apocryphal, in Liv. i. 52, regarding the maniples of Romans
and Latins intermingled formed by the second Tarquin, is evidently a
second fragment, the erroneous view given of the treaty between Capua
and Rome (see my Rom. Munzwesen, p. 334, n. 122); the formularies of
self-devotion, the Campanian -denarius-, the Laurentine alliance,
and the -bina jugera- in the assignation (p. 450, note).  Under such
circumstances it appears a fact of great weight that Diodorus, who
follows other and often older accounts, knows absolutely nothing of
any of these events except the last battle at Trifanum; a battle
in fact that ill accords with the rest of the narrative, which, in
accordance with the rules of poetical justice, ought to have concluded
with the death of Decius.

21.  II. V. Isolation of the Later Latin Cities as Respected Private
Rights

22.  II. V. Crises within the Romano-Latin League

23.  II. IV. South Etruria Roman

CHAPTER VI

Struggle of the Italians against Rome

Wars between the Sabellians and Tarentines--
Archidamus--
Alexander the Molossian--

While the Romans were fighting on the Liris and Volturnus, other
conflicts agitated the south-east of the peninsula.  The wealthy
merchant-republic of Tarentum, daily exposed to more serious peril
from the Lucanian and Messapian bands and justly distrusting its own
sword, gained by good words and better coin the help of -condottieri-
from the mother-country.  The Spartan king, Archidamus, who with
a strong band had come to the assistance of his fellow-Dorians,
succumbed to the Lucanians on the same day on which Philip conquered
at Chaeronea (416); a retribution, in the belief of the pious Greeks,
for the share which nineteen years previously he and his people had
taken in pillaging the sanctuary of Delphi.  His place was taken by
an abler commander, Alexander the Molossian, brother of Olympias the
mother of Alexander the Great.  In addition to the troops which he had
brought along with him he united under his banner the contingents of
the Greek cities, especially those of the Tarentines and Metapontines;
the Poediculi (around Rubi, now Ruvo), who like the Greeks found
themselves in danger from the Sabellian nation; and lastly, even the
Lucanian exiles themselves, whose considerable numbers point to the
existence of violent internal troubles in that confederacy.  Thus he
soon found himself superior to the enemy.  Consentia (Cosenza), which
seems to have been the federal headquarters of the Sabellians settled
in Magna Graecia, fell into his hands.  In vain the Samnites came to
the help of the Lucanians; Alexander defeated their combined forces
near Paestum.  He subdued the Daunians around Sipontum, and the
Messapians in the south-eastern peninsula; he already commanded from
sea to sea, and was on the point of arranging with the Romans a joint
attack on the Samnites in their native abodes.  But successes so
unexpected went beyond the desires of the Tarentine merchants, and
filled them with alarm.  War broke out between them and their captain,
who had come amongst them a hired mercenary and now appeared desirous
to found a Hellenic empire in the west like his nephew in the east.
Alexander had at first the advantage; he wrested Heraclea from the
Tarentines, restored Thurii, and seems to have called upon the other
Italian Greeks to unite under his protection against the Tarentines,
while he at the same time tried to bring about a peace between them
and the Sabellian tribes.  But his grand projects found only feeble
support among the degenerate and desponding Greeks, and the forced
change of sides alienated from him his former Lucanian adherents: he
fell at Pandosia by the hand of a Lucanian emigrant (422).(1)  On his
death matters substantially reverted to their old position.  The Greek
cities found themselves once more isolated and once more left to
protect themselves as best they might by treaty or payment of tribute,
or even by extraneous aid; Croton for instance repulsed the Bruttii
about 430 with the help of the Syracusans.  The Samnite tribes acquire
renewed ascendency, and were able, without troubling themselves
about the Greeks, once more to direct their eyes towards Campania
and Latium.

But there during the brief interval a prodigious change had occurred.
The Latin confederacy was broken and scattered, the last resistance
of the Volsci was overcome, the province of Campania, the richest
and finest in the peninsula, was in the undisputed and well-secured
possession of the Romans, and the second city of Italy was a
dependency of Rome.  While the Greeks and Samnites were contending
with each other, Rome had almost without a contest raised herself to
a position of power which no single people in the peninsula possessed
the means of shaking, and which threatened to render all of them
subject to her yoke.  A joint exertion on the part of the peoples who
were not severally a match for Rome might perhaps still burst the
chains, ere they became fastened completely.  But the clearness of
perception, the courage, the self-sacrifice required for such a
coalition of numerous peoples and cities that had hitherto been for
the most part foes or at any rate strangers to each other, were not
to be found at all, or were found only when it was already too late.

Coalition of the Italians against Rome

After the fall of the Etruscan power and the weakening of the Greek
republics, the Samnite confederacy was beyond doubt, next to Rome, the
most considerable power in Italy, and at the same time that which was
most closely and immediately endangered by Roman encroachments.  To
its lot therefore fell the foremost place and the heaviest burden in
the struggle for freedom and nationality which the Italians had to
wage against Rome.  It might reckon upon the assistance of the small
Sabellian tribes, the Vestini, Frentani, Marrucini, and other smaller
cantons, who dwelt in rustic seclusion amidst their mountains, but
were not deaf to the appeal of a kindred stock calling them to take
up arms in defence of their common possessions.  The assistance
of the Campanian Greeks and those of Magna Graecia (especially the
Tarentines), and of the powerful Lucanians and Bruttians would have
been of greater importance; but the negligence and supineness of the
demagogues ruling in Tarentum and the entanglement of that city in
the affairs of Sicily, the internal distractions of the Lucanian
confederacy, and above all the deep hostility that had subsisted
for centuries between the Greeks of Lower Italy and their Lucanian
oppressors, scarcely permitted the hope that Tarentum and Lucania
would make common cause with the Samnites.  From the Sabines and the
Marsi, who were the nearest neighbours of the Romans and had long
lived in peaceful relations with Rome, little more could be expected
than lukewarm sympathy or neutrality.  The Apulians, the ancient and
bitter antagonists of the Sabellians, were the natural allies of the
Romans.  On the other hand it might be expected that the more remote
Etruscans would join the league if a first success were gained; and
even a revolt in Latium and the land of the Volsci and Hernici was
not impossible.  But the Samnites--the Aetolians of Italy, in whom
national vigour still lived unimpaired--had mainly to rely on their
own energies for such perseverance in the unequal struggle as would
give the other peoples time for a generous sense of shame, for calm
deliberation, and for the mustering of their forces; a single success
might then kindle the flames of war and insurrection all around Rome.
History cannot but do the noble people the justice of acknowledging
that they understood and performed their duty.

Outbreak of War between Samnium and Rome--
Pacification of Campania

Differences had already for several years existed between Rome and
Samnium in consequence of the continual aggressions in which the
Romans indulged on the Liris, and of which the founding of Fregellae
in 426 was the latest and most important.  But it was the Greeks of
Campania that gave occasion to the outbreak of the contest.  After
Cumae and Capua had become Roman, nothing so naturally suggested
itself to the Romans as the subjugation of the Greek city Neapolis,
which ruled also over the Greek islands in the bay--the only town
not yet reduced to subjection within the field of the Roman power.
The Tarentines and Samnites, informed of the scheme of the Romans to
obtain possession of the town, resolved to anticipate them; and while
the Tarentines were too remiss perhaps rather than too distant for the
execution of this plan, the Samnites actually threw into it a strong
garrison.  The Romans immediately declared war nominally against the
Neapolitans, really against the Samnites (427), and began the siege
of Neapolis.  After it had lasted a while, the Campanian Greeks
became weary of the disturbance of their commerce and of the foreign
garrison; and the Romans, whose whole efforts were directed to keep
states of the second and third rank by means of separate treaties
aloof from the coalition which was about to be formed, hastened, as
soon as the Greeks consented to negotiate, to offer them the most
favourable terms--full equality of rights and exemption from land
service, equal alliance and perpetual peace.  Upon these conditions,
after the Neapolitans had rid themselves of the garrison by stratagem,
a treaty was concluded (428).

The Sabellian towns to the south of the Volturnus, Nola, Nuceria,
Herculaneum, and Pompeii, took part with Samnium in the beginning of
the war; but their greatly exposed situation and the machinations of
the Romans--who endeavoured to bring over to their side the optimate
party in these towns by all the levers of artifice and self-interest,
and found a powerful support to their endeavours in the precedent of
Capua--induced these towns to declare themselves either in favour of
Rome or neutral not long after the fall of Neapolis.

Alliance between the Romans and Lucanians

A still more important success befell the Romans in Lucania.  There
also the people with true instinct was in favour of joining the
Samnites; but, as an alliance with the Samnites involved peace with
Tarentum and a large portion of the governing lords of Lucania were
not disposed to suspend their profitable pillaging expeditions, the
Romans succeeded in concluding an alliance with Lucania--an alliance
which was invaluable, because it provided employment for the
Tarentines and thus left the whole power of Rome available
against Samnium.

War in Samnium--
The Caudine Pass and the Caudine Peace

Thus Samnium stood on all sides unsupported; excepting that some of
the eastern mountain districts sent their contingents.  In the year
428 the war began within the Samnite land itself: some towns on the
Campanian frontier, Rufrae (between Venafrum and Teanum) and Allifae,
were occupied by the Romans.  In the following years the Roman armies
penetrated Samnium, fighting and pillaging, as far as the territory of
the Vestini, and even as far as Apulia, where they were received with
open arms; everywhere they had very decidedly the advantage.
The courage of the Samnites was broken; they sent back the Roman
prisoners, and along with them the dead body of the leader of the war
party, Brutulus Papius, who had anticipated the Roman executioners,
when the Samnite national assembly determined to ask the enemy for
peace and to procure for themselves more tolerable terms by the
surrender of their bravest general.  But when the humble, almost
suppliant, request was not listened to by the Roman people (432),
the Samnites, under their new general Gavius Pontius, prepared for the
utmost and most desperate resistance.  The Roman army, which under the
two consuls of the following year (433) Spurius Postumius and Titus
Veturius was encamped near Calatia (between Caserta and Maddaloni),
received accounts, confirmed by the affirmation of numerous captives,
that the Samnites had closely invested Luceria, and that that
important town, on which depended the possession of Apulia, was
in great danger.  They broke up in haste.  If they wished to arrive in
good time, no other route could be taken than through the midst of the
enemy's territory--where afterwards, in continuation of the Appian
Way, the Roman road was constructed from Capua by way of Beneventum
to Apulia.  This route led, between the present villages of Arpaja
and Montesarchio (Caudium), through a watery meadow, which was wholly
enclosed by high and steep wooded hills and was only accessible
through deep defiles at the entrance and outlet.  Here the Samnites
had posted themselves in ambush.  The Romans, who had entered the
valley unopposed, found its outlet obstructed by abattis and strongly
occupied; on marching back they saw that the entrance was similarly
closed, while at the same time the crests of the surrounding mountains
were crowned by Samnite cohorts.  They perceived, when it was too
late, that they had suffered themselves to be misled by a stratagem,
and that the Samnites awaited them, not at Luceria, but in the fatal
pass of Caudium.  They fought, but without hope of success and without
earnest aim; the Roman army was totally unable to manoeuvre and was
completely vanquished without a struggle.  The Roman generals offered
to capitulate.  It is only a foolish rhetoric that represents the
Samnite general as shut up to the simple alternatives of disbanding or
of slaughtering the Roman army; he could not have done better than
accept the offered capitulation and make prisoners of the hostile
army--the whole force which for the moment the Roman community could
bring into action--with both its commanders-in-chief.  In that case
the way to Campania and Latium would have stood open; and in the then
existing state of feeling, when the Volsci and Hernici and the larger
portion of the Latins would have received him with open arms, the
political existence of Rome would have been in serious danger.  But
instead of taking this course and concluding a military convention,
Gavius Pontius thought that he could at once terminate the whole
quarrel by an equitable peace; whether it was that he shared that
foolish longing of the confederates for peace, to which Brutulus
Papius had fallen a victim in the previous year, or whether it was
that he was unable to prevent the party which was tired of the war
from spoiling his unexampled victory.  The terms laid down were
moderate enough; Rome was to raze the fortresses which she had
constructed in defiance of the treaty--Cales and Fregellae--and to
renew her equal alliance with Samnium.  After the Roman generals had
agreed to these terms and had given six hundred hostages chosen from
the cavalry for their faithful execution--besides pledging their own
word and that of all their staff-officers on oath to the same effect
--the Roman army was dismissed uninjured, but disgraced; for the
Samnite army, drunk with victory, could not resist the desire to
subject their hated enemies to the disgraceful formality of laying
down their arms and passing under the yoke.

But the Roman senate, regardless of the oath of their officers and
of the fate of the hostages, cancelled the agreement, and contented
themselves with surrendering to the enemy those who had concluded it
as personally responsible for its fulfilment.  Impartial history can
attach little importance to the question whether in so doing the
casuistry of Roman advocates and priests kept the letter of the law,
or whether the decree of the Roman senate violated it; under a human
and political point of view no blame in this matter rests upon the
Romans.  It was a question of comparative indifference whether,
according to the formal state law of the Romans, the general in
command was or was not entitled to conclude peace without reserving
its ratification by the burgesses.  According to the spirit and
practice of the constitution it was quite an established principle
that in Rome every state-agreement, not purely military, pertained
to the province of the civil authorities, and a general who concluded
peace without the instructions of the senate and the burgesses
exceeded his powers.  It was a greater error on the part of the
Samnite general to give the Roman generals the choice between saving
their army and exceeding their powers, than it was on the part of
the latter that they had not the magnanimity absolutely to repel such
a suggestion; and it was right and necessary that the Roman senate
should reject such an agreement.  A great nation does not surrender
what it possesses except under the pressure of extreme necessity: all
treaties making concessions are acknowledgments of such a necessity,
not moral obligations.  If every people justly reckons it a point
of honour to tear to pieces by force of arms treaties that are
disgraceful, how could honour enjoin a patient adherence to a
convention like the Caudine to which an unfortunate general was
morally compelled, while the sting of the recent disgrace was
keenly felt and the vigour of the nation subsisted unimpaired?

Victory of the Romans

Thus the convention of Caudium did not produce the rest which the
enthusiasts for peace in Samnium had foolishly expected from it, but
only led to war after war with exasperation aggravated on either side
by the opportunity forfeited, by the breach of a solemn engagement,
by military honour disgraced, and by comrades that had been abandoned.
The Roman officers given up were not received by the Samnites, partly
because they were too magnanimous to wreak their vengeance on those
unfortunates, partly because they would thereby have admitted the
Roman plea that the agreement bound only those who swore to it, not
the Roman state.  Magnanimously they spared even the hostages whose
lives had been forfeited by the rules of war, and preferred to resort
at once to arms.

Luceria was occupied by them and Fregellae surprised and taken by
assault (434) before the Romans had reorganized their broken army;
the passing of the Satricans(2) over to the Samnites shows what they
might have accomplished, had they not allowed their advantage to slip
through their hands.  But Rome was only momentarily paralyzed, not
weakened; full of shame and indignation the Romans raised all the
men and means they could, and placed the highly experienced Lucius
Papirius Cursor, equally distinguished as a soldier and as a general,
at the head of the newly formed army.  The army divided; the one-half
marched by Sabina and the Adriatic coast to appear before Luceria,
the other proceeded to the same destination through Samnium itself,
successfully engaging and driving before it the Samnite army.  They
formed a junction again under the walls of Luceria, the siege of which
was prosecuted with the greater zeal, because the Roman equites lay
in captivity there; the Apulians, particularly the Arpani, lent the
Romans important assistance in the siege, especially by procuring
supplies.  After the Samnites had given battle for the relief of
the town and been defeated, Luceria surrendered to the Romans (435).
Papirius enjoyed the double satisfaction of liberating his comrades
who had been given up for lost, and of requiting the yoke of Caudium
on the Samnite garrison of Luceria.  In the next years (435-437)
the war was carried on(3) not so much in Samnium itself as in the
adjoining districts.  In the first place the Romans chastised the
allies of the Samnites in the Apulian and Frentanian territories,
and concluded new conventions with the Teanenses of Apulia and the
Canusini.  At the same time Satricum was again reduced to subjection
and severely punished for its revolt.  Then the war turned to
Campania, where the Romans conquered the frontier town towards
Samnium, Saticula (perhaps S. Agata de' Goti) (438).  But now
the fortune of war seemed disposed once more to turn against them.
The Samnites gained over the Nucerians (438), and soon afterwards
the Nolans, to their side; on the upper Liris the Sorani of themselves
expelled the Roman garrison (439); the Ausonians were preparing to
rise, and threatened the important Cales; even in Capua the party
opposed to Rome was vigorously stirring.  A Samnite army advanced into
Campania and encamped before the city, in the hope that its vicinity
might place the national party in the ascendant (440).  But Sora was
immediately attacked by the Romans and recaptured after the defeat
of a Samnite relieving force (440).  The movements among the Ausonians
were suppressed with cruel rigour ere the insurrection fairly broke
out, and at the same time a special dictator was nominated to
institute and decide political processes against the leaders of
the Samnite party in Capua, so that the most illustrious of them
died a voluntary death to escape from the Roman executioner (440).
The Samnite army before Capua was defeated and compelled to retreat
from Campania; the Romans, following close at the heels of the enemy,
crossed the Matese and encamped in the winter of 440 before Bovianum,
the: capital of Samnium.  Nola was abandoned by its allies; and the
Romans had the sagacity to detach the town for ever from the Samnite
party by a very favourable convention, similar to that concluded with
Neapolis (441).  Fregellae, which after the catastrophe of Caudium had
fallen into the hands of the party adverse to Rome and had been their
chief stronghold in the district on the Liris, finally fell in the
eighth year after its occupation by the Samnites (441); two hundred of
the citizens, the chief members of the national party, were conveyed
to Rome, and there openly beheaded in the Forum as an example and a
warning to the patriots who were everywhere bestirring themselves.

New Fortresses in Apulia and Campania

Apulia and Campania were thus in the hands of the Romans.  In order
finally to secure and permanently to command the conquered territory,
several new fortresses were founded in it during the years 440-442:
Luceria in Apulia, to which on account of its isolated and exposed
situation half a legion was sent as a permanent garrison; Pontiae (the
Ponza islands) for the securing of the Campanian waters; Saticula on
the Campano-Samnite frontier, as a bulwark against Samnium; and lastly
Interamna (near Monte Cassino) and Suessa Aurunca (Sessa) on the
road from Rome to Capua.  Garrisons moreover were sent to Caiatia
(Cajazzo), Sora, and other stations of military importance.  The great
military road from Rome to Capua, which with the necessary embankment
for it across the Pomptine marshes the censor Appius Claudius caused
to be constructed in 442, completed the securing of Campania.  The
designs of the Romans were more and more fully developed; their object
was the subjugation of Italy, which was enveloped more closely from
year to year in a network of Roman fortresses and roads.  The Samnites
were already on both sides surrounded by the Roman meshes; already the
line from Rome to Luceria severed north and south Italy from each
other, as the fortresses of Norba and Signia had formerly severed the
Volsci and Aequi; and Rome now rested on the Arpani, as it formerly
rested on the Hernici.  The Italians could not but see that the
freedom of all of them was gone if Samnium succumbed, and that it was
high time at length to hasten with all their might to the help of the
brave mountain people which had now for fifteen years singly sustained
the unequal struggle with the Romans.

Intervention of the Tarentines

The most natural allies of the Samnites would have 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, discarded all earnestness
amidst the giddy bustle and witty brilliance of their daily life, and
oscillated between the grandest boldness of enterprise and elevation
of spirit on the one hand, 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 that Plato, who came to
Tarentum some sixty years before this time, according to his own
statement saw the whole 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 enjoin both parties to lay down their
arms (434).  This 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 resolved to abandon
the neutrality which it had hitherto maintained.  It had in fact
sufficient reason to do so.  It was no doubt a difficult and dangerous
thing for Tarentum to be entangled in such a war; for the democratic
development of the state had directed its energies entirely to the
fleet, and while that fleet, resting upon the strong commercial
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 troublesome--feud in which
Roman policy had contrived to involve them with the Lucanians.  But
these obstacles might be surmounted by an energetic will; and both the
contending 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 have rendered better service
in the Campanian seas (440).

Accession of the Etruscans to the Coalition--
Victory at the Vadimonian Lake

The peoples of northern and central Italy, who seem to have been
roused especially by the establishment of the fortress of Luceria,
acted with more energy.  The Etruscans first drew the sword (443), the
armistice of 403 having already expired some years before.  The Roman
frontier-fortress of Sutrium had to sustain a two 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, 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 and decisive victory of
Rullianus, the battle at the Vadimonian lake which long lived in
the memory of the 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 powerful 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
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 cities desisted from the contest, and a temporary
cessation of arms took place throughout Etruria.

Last Campaigns in Samnium

While these events were passing, the war had not been suspended in
Samnium.  The campaign of 443 was confined 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
position 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 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 following 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, surrendered 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 movements 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 difficulties.  The Umbrians, who gave signs of marching on Rome,
were intercepted by Rullianus with the army of Samnium on the upper
Tiber--a step which the enfeebled Samnites were unable to prevent;
and this sufficed 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 countrymen found among the Samnite
captives, now declared war against Rome (in 448)--more doubtless from
despair than 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 strongholds 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 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 Biferno--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.

Peace with Samnium

The fall of the chief stronghold of the land terminated the twenty-two
years' war.  The Samnites withdrew their 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 renewed between the Sabellian
tribes and the Romans (450).

And with Tarentum

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, notwithstanding
their unpleasant experiences with Alexander, once more to entrust
themselves to a -condottiere-.  There came at their call the Spartan
prince Cleonymus, accompanied by five thousand mercenaries; with whom
he united a band equally numerous raised in Italy, as well as the
contingents 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 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 Roman force levied contributions, or rather
reconnoitred by order of the government, in the territory of the
Sallentines--the Spartan -condottiere- 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 (451) even an incursion of
Cleonymus, who had landed in the Sallentine territory and laid
siege to Uria, was repulsed by the inhabitants with Roman aid.

Consolidation of the Roman Rule in Central Italy

The victory of Rome was complete; and she turned it to full account.
It was not from magnanimity in the conquerors--for the Romans knew
nothing of the sort--but from shrewd and far-seeing calculation that
terms so moderate were granted to the Samnites, the Tarentines, and
the more distant peoples generally.  The first and main object was not
so much to compel southern Italy as quickly 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 opportunity 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 Samnium took place (450), the consul Publius Sempronius Sophus
waged war on the Aequi; forty townships surrendered 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, 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 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 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 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 permanently 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.(4)

Renewed Outbreak of the Samnite-Etruscan War--
Junction of the Troops of the Coalition in Etruria

The high-spirited 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 fortresses 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;
but, if so, there must be no delay; the difficulty 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 succeeded 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 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,
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 arms.  Samnium made the
most energetic efforts to place three armies simultaneously in the
field, the first destined for the defence of its own territory, the
second for an invasion of Campania, the third and most numerous
for 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 Samnites had succeeded in
frustrating all the enormous efforts 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 near.  The year 458 however passed away,
apparently, in 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 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 object.  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.

Battle of Sentinum--
Peace with Etruria

Nevertheless it was a hotly contested day.  On the right wing of
the Romans, where Rullianus with his two legions 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 way.  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 imperilled left wing.  The excellent Campanian
cavalry, which 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 difficulty by the
Romans.  Etruria sued for peace in the following year (460); Volsinii,
Perusia, Arretium, and in general all the towns that had joined the
league against Rome, promised a cessation of hostilities for four
hundred months.

Last Struggles of Samnium

But the Samnites were of a different mind; they prepared 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 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 enemy with
unparalleled perseverance in their fastnesses and mountains, and still
achieved various isolated advantages.  The experienced arm of the old
Rullianus was once more called into the field against them (462), and
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 further symptom of movement in Italy; for the war,
which Falerii began in 461, scarcely deserves such a name.  The
Samnites doubtless turned with longing eyes towards Tarentum, 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 unfounded
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 himself in Corcyra whence Cleonymus
had been expelled by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and now threatened the
Tarentines from the Adriatic as well as from the Ionian sea.
The cession of the island to king Pyrrhus of Epirus in 459 certainly
removed to a great extent the apprehensions which they had cherished;
but the affairs of Corcyra continued to occupy the Tarentines--in the
year 464, for instance, they helped to protect Pyrrhus in possession
of the island against Demetrius--and in like manner Agathocles did not
cease to give the Tarentines uneasiness by his Italian policy.  When
he died (465) and with him the 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
Roman consul Manius Curius Dentatus, and had in form renewed its
league with Rome.  On this occasion, as in the peace of 450, no
disgraceful or destructive conditions were imposed on the 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 (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 extension 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 Curius broke down in the same year (464) the brief and feeble
resistance of the Sabines and forced them to unconditional 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 (-civitas sine suffragio-) were imposed on the
communities that were left--Cures, Reate, Amiternum, Nursia.  Allied
towns with equal rights were not established 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 the Romans beyond the Apennines begins with the laying out of the
strong fortress of Atria (Atri) in the year 465, on the 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 (463), whither the unprecedented number of 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 communications
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 is, 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 a 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.

Notes for Book II Chapter VI

1.  It may not be superfluous to mention that our knowledge Archidamus
and Alexander is derived from Greek annals, and that the synchronism
between these and the Roman is in reference to the present epoch only
approximately established.  We must beware, therefore, of pursuing too
far into detail the unmistakable general connection between the events
in the west and those in the east of Italy.

2.  These were not the inhabitants of Satricum near Antium (II. V.
League with The Hernici), but those of another Volscian town
constituted at that time as a Roman burgess-community without right
of voting, near Arpinum.

3.  That a formal armistice for two years subsisted between the Romans
and Samnites in 436-437 is more than improbable.

4.  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 consularis-
earlier than 583; for no Cassian appears in the lists of Roman consuls
and censors between Spurius Cassius, consul in 252, 261, and 268--who
of course is out of the question--and Gaius Cassius Longinus, consul
in 583.

CHAPTER VII

Struggle between Pyrrhus and Rome, and Union of Italy

Relations between the East and West

After Rome had acquired the undisputed mastery of the world, the
Greeks were wont to annoy their Roman masters by the assertion that
Rome was indebted for her greatness to the fever of which Alexander of
Macedonia died at Babylon on the 11th of June, 431.  As it was not too
agreeable for them to reflect on the actual past, they were fond of
allowing their thoughts to dwell on what might have happened, had the
great king turned his arms--as was said to have been his intention at
the time of his death--towards the west and contested the Carthaginian
supremacy by sea with his fleet, and the Roman supremacy by land with
his phalanxes.  It is not impossible that Alexander may have cherished
such thoughts; nor is it necessary to resort for an explanation of
their origin to the mere difficulty which an autocrat, who is fond
of war and is well provided with soldiers and ships, experiences in
setting limits to his warlike career.  It was an enterprise worthy of
a Greek great king to protect the Siceliots against Carthage and the
Tarentines against Rome, and to put an end to piracy on either sea;
and the Italian embassies from the Bruttians, Lucanians, and
Etruscans,(1) that along with numerous others made their appearance at
Babylon, afforded him sufficient opportunities of becoming acquainted
with the circumstances of the peninsula and of entering into relations
with it.  Carthage with its many connections in the east could not but
attract the attention of the mighty monarch, and it was probably one
of his designs to convert the nominal sovereignty of the Persian king
over the Tyrian colony into a real one: it was not for nothing that
a Phoenician spy was found in the retinue of Alexander.  Whether,
however, these ideas were dreams or actual projects, the king died
without having interfered in the affairs of the west, and his ideas
were buried with him.  For but a few brief years a Greek ruler had
held in his hand the whole intellectual vigour of the Hellenic race
combined with the whole material resources of the east.  On his death
the work to which his life had been devoted--the establishment of
Hellenism in the east--was by no means undone; but his empire had
barely been united when it was again dismembered, and, amidst the
constant quarrels of the different states that were formed out of
its ruins, the object of world-wide interest which they were destined
to promote--the diffusion of Greek culture in the east--though not
abandoned, was prosecuted on a feeble and stunted scale.  Under such
circumstances, neither the Greek nor the Asiatico-Egyptian states
could think of acquiring a footing in the west or of turning their
efforts against the Romans or the Carthaginians.  The eastern and
western state-systems subsisted side by side for a time without
crossing, politically, each other's path; and Rome in particular
remained substantially aloof from the complications in the days
of Alexander's successors.  The only relations established were of
a mercantile kind; as in the instance of the free state of Rhodes,
the leading representative of the policy of commercial neutrality in
Greece and in consequence the universal medium of intercourse in an
age of perpetual wars, which about 448 concluded a treaty with Rome
--a commercial convention of course, such as was natural between a
mercantile people and the masters of the Caerite and Campanian
coasts.  Even in the supply of mercenaries from Hellas, the universal
recruiting field of those times, to Italy, and to Tarentum in
particular, political relations--such as subsisted, for instance,
between Tarentum and Sparta its mother-city--exercised but a very
subordinate influence.  In general the raising of mercenaries was
simply a matter of traffic, and Sparta, although it regularly supplied
the Tarentines with captains for their Italian wars, was by that
course as little involved in hostilities with the Italians, as in the
North American war of independence the German states were involved in
hostilities with the Union, to whose opponents they sold the services
of their subjects.

The Historical Position of Pyrrhus

Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, was himself simply a military adventurer.
He was none the less a soldier of fortune that he traced back his
pedigree to Aeacus and Achilles, and that, had he been more peacefully
disposed, he might have lived and died as "king" of a small mountain
tribe under the supremacy of Macedonia or perhaps in isolated
independence.  He has been compared to Alexander of Macedonia; and
certainly the idea of founding a Hellenic empire of the west--which
would have had as its core Epirus, Magna Graecia, and Sicily, would
have commanded both the Italian seas, and would have reduced Rome and
Carthage to the rank of barbarian peoples bordering on the Hellenistic
state-system, like the Celts and the Indians--was analogous in
greatness and boldness to the idea which led the Macedonian king over
the Hellespont.  But it was not the mere difference of issue that
formed the distinction between the expedition to the east and that
to the west.  Alexander with his Macedonian army, in which the
staff especially was excellent, could fully make head against the
great-king; but the king of Epirus, which stood by the side of
Macedonia somewhat as Hesse by the side of Prussia, could only raise
an army worthy of the name by means of mercenaries and of alliances
based on accidental political combinations.  Alexander made his
appearance in the Persian empire as a conqueror; Pyrrhus appeared in
Italy as the general of a coalition of secondary states.  Alexander
left his hereditary dominions completely secured by the unconditional
subjection of Greece, and by the strong army that remained behind
under Antipater; Pyrrhus had no security for the integrity of his
native dominions but the word of a doubtful neighbour.  In the case
of both conquerors, if their plans should be crowned with success,
their native country would necessarily cease to be the centre of
their new empire; but it was far more practicable to transfer the
seat of the Macedonian military monarchy to Babylon than to found a
soldier-dynasty in Tarentum or Syracuse.  The democracy of the Greek
republics--perpetual agony though it was--could not be at all coerced
into the stiff forms of a military state; Philip had good reason for
not incorporating the Greek republics with his empire.  In the east no
national resistance was to be expected; ruling and subject races had
long lived there side by side, and a change of despot was a matter of
indifference or even of satisfaction to the mass of the population.
In the west the Romans, the Samnites, the Carthaginians, might be
vanquished; but no conqueror could have transformed the Italians
into Egyptian fellahs, or rendered the Roman farmers tributaries of
Hellenic barons.  Whatever we take into view--whether their own power,
their allies, or the resources of their antagonists--in all points the
plan of the Macedonian appears as a feasible, that of the Epirot an
impracticable, enterprise; the former as the completion of a great
historical task, the latter as a remarkable blunder; the former as
the foundation of a new system of states and of a new phase of
civilization, the latter as a mere episode in history.  The work of
Alexander outlived him, although its creator met an untimely death;
Pyrrhus saw with his own eyes the wreck of all his plans, ere death
called him away.  Both were by nature daring and great, but Pyrrhus
was only the foremost general, Alexander was eminently the most gifted
statesman, of his time; and, if it is insight into what is and what is