WAR WITH THE SABINES. COMMOTIONS AT HOME. LEX MÆNIA. LEX HORTENSIA.
M’. Curius was called upon to chastise the Sabines. These consisted of several peoples which were very loosely connected with each other: Amiternum had already leagued itself before with the Samnites, and had been taken in the third Samnite war. Hitherto, the fear which the Romans had of the Gauls, had protected the Sabines; but now the former no doubt required that they should accept the Cærite citizenship (sympolity): the Sabines refused, and war broke out. As nearly all their towns were open, the struggle was short and bloodless, and the conquest easy; the booty also was immense, owing to the length of time in which they had lived in peace.
This Sabine war led to a great division of land, as the Roman people by their many and mighty wars had been brought into great distress, like that which is described by Massillon in his funeral oration on Louis XIV. All these great victories appear to us brilliant in a political point of view; the whole period is grand, and we cannot but own in our hearts, that if we were Romans, we should have liked to live in those days, and with men like these: but all this splendour was but a fair outside which covered very grievous misery, and however much Augustine and his friend Orosius may exaggerate, they were not so far wrong at bottom. Before the battle of Sentinum, a miracle had taken place: the statue of the goddess of victory was found lowered from its pedestal and turned towards the north; from her altar, milk, blood, and honey were pouring forth. This was a hard task for the soothsayers: they interpreted it in this way, that the Romans were to go and meet the enemy; that the blood meant war; that the honey betokened the plague, inasmuch as it was wont to be given to those who were thus stricken; that milk was the sign of a bad harvest, as one had then to do without corn, and to make shift with whatever grew of itself. This interpretation is so far-fetched, that evidently it cannot be very old; yet it is a poetical embodying of what really happened. A pestilence spread far and wide, which may not even have begun in Rome, but in Umbria or Samnium: it may have been a sickness which had arisen from the wars; but perhaps it was connected with a deeper source. The age was on the whole a time of great physical changes; there are still traces which show that in Italy all nature was then in a state of convulsion. Earthquakes are felt, and become quite frightful, until towards the end of the century; the winters are most bitterly cold; an eruption of the volcano in the island of Ischia takes place. In the whole of Europe, epidemics must have reigned: according to Pausanias, a terrible plague was wasting Greece at the time of Antigonus Gonatas, which completed the work of depopulation there. At Rome, according to Livy, it raged for the third year already in 460. There certainly was also a famine in Latium, owing to the devastation of Campania, the granary of Rome. On this occasion, the Romans were directed by the Sibylline books to send an embassy to Epidaurus, and bring Æsculapius to Rome. It consisted of Q. Ogulnius and another. When the state trireme arrived, and they laid the request before the people of Epidaurus, the senate of that town referred them to the god himself: at the incubation, the god promised them that he would follow; a gigantic serpent came forth from the sanctuary, and remained on the deck. At the mouth of the Tiber, it crawled out, plunged into the water, and swam up the Tiber to the island near the city, where the temple of the god was then built. The embassy is not by any means to be doubted: in the temple of Æsculapius at Epidaurus, harmless snakes were kept, one of which had likewise formerly been carried in a waggon to Sicyon. The ground work of this legend is true, all the rest is added to it; we are here on quite different ground from what we were on before. The tale is also remarkable, as it shows how little the Greek ideas were at that time foreign to the Romans.
In this great distress, there now arose in Rome, on the one hand, a great burthen of debt, and on the other, the necessity for a better state of things. The booty from the Sabines, which was gained just then, was so considerable, that the historian Fabius, in Strabo, says that the Romans had first known by this victory what riches were. Besides money, a great part of it must have been land and cattle. Curius declared, that there was so much land, that it must have lain waste, if he had not taken so many prisoners.
This is the obscurest period of Roman history, as here the eleventh book of Livy is wanting. Certain it is, that Curius had a most fierce quarrel with the senate, no doubt about the division of the public land. Curius insisted upon a larger assignation being made to the people,—for so we must call it, and not commonalty any longer,—and likewise to the libertini, inasmuch as they were in the tribes. The quarrel was now also with the plebeian nobility; and so great was the exasperation, that a band of eight hundred youths united to defend the life of Curius, as the knights did that of Cicero. In this state of things, the triumvirs wanted to give Curius seven times seven jugera, a whole century at that period; but Curius rejected it, saying that he was a bad citizen, who was not content with his share. Of Agrippa Menenius, we may believe that he was poor; but hardly of Valerius Poplicola, as he was able to build himself a splendid house. As to M’. Curius, his poverty, and the cheerfulness with which he bore it, are well attested; and it is likewise well known how the Samnite ambassadors found him in his farm by his hearth, and how he spurned their gifts; and also that the senate provided for the maintenance of his family while he was consul.
Two years afterwards, he executed during his censorship one of the most magnificent works to be found in the world, the draining of the lake Velinus, by which the cascade of Terni, which is a hundred and forty feet high, was called into existence,—the finest fall of water known, and yet the work of man. Livy calls the Appian Way monumentum gentis Appiæ, this is monumentum Curii. The lake Velinus filled a great valley in the mountains, and had no outlet, a ridge of rocks of no very great height cutting it off from the Nar (the Nera). Here Curius cut through the rock; gave the lake Pié de Luna and Velino an outlet; and thus created several square leagues of the richest soils, the fields of la campagna Rieti, the Rosea which Cicero calls another Tempe. It is owing to quite an accidental remark of Cicero’s, that we know this to have been done by Curius. The water is calcareous, as it is everywhere in the Apennines; and therefore stalactites are growing all about it, on which account it has more than once become necessary since the sixteenth century, the work having been neglected during the middle ages, to change the course of the stream. The lake has shifted its bed, so that a bridge built in those ages is now entirely covered with limestone, and has only been found again a few years ago. A noble Roman bridge across the canal is still to be seen; yet it is not visited by strangers, being rather difficult of access: undoubtedly it is likewise a work of Curius. It was shown to me by an intelligent peasant, and it is built of large blocks of stone fitted together into an arch without cement, in the old Etruscan manner. Although earth as high as a house, on which trees are growing, is lying upon it, yet there is not a stone moved from its place, even to the breadth of the back of a knife.
The interval between the third Samnite war and Pyrrhus’ being called into Italy, which is not quite ten years, is one of the most important in the whole of ancient history, and the want of a more accurate knowledge of it we feel most painfully. Were we able to conjure up some of the lost writings of antiquity, the eleventh book of Livy would be the most instructive; yet sooner or later, this history will certainly be one day discovered. I have collected much of it, but not enough to give a complete historical outline of the time. In the year 462 (according to Cato), the Lex Mænia was passed. Only a few days ago, I have discovered a passage concerning it, which I had indeed read more than once before, but in a place where until now it has been overlooked by every one: otherwise, the law is merely known by a cursory remark of Cicero’s. It can have no other meaning, but that the auctoritas of the patres for the curule elections was now done away with, even as forty-six years before it had been by the Lex Publilia for the laws made by the centuries. This Lex Mænia was absolutely necessary, as the patricians had already voted once. From henceforth, the senate gave its auctoritas beforehand; yet the curies were not abolished, as were at Augsburg the chambers (Stuben), the meetings of the houses. The imperium was conferred by the mere simulacrum of the curies, that is, by the lictors, who represented the curies, as the five witnesses did the classes of the centuries. The carrying of this law is one of the stormy events which happened during the consulship of M’. Curius.
Quite different from it was the Lex Hortensia, about which we should be so glad to learn something. From Zonaras we knew until now, that there was much debt, and that from thence arose disturbances; on this the tribunes moved, that the debts should be cancelled, and when all was of no avail, the Plebes entrenched itself on the Janiculum, and was after a long sedition at last brought back by the dictator Q. Hortensius. From this dictatorship sprang the Lex Hortensia, which is known from Gaius and the Institutiones, and of which the purport is, ut plebiscita omnes Quirites tenerent. During the last year (1828), something more has been found in the Excerpta de Sententiis, edited by Mai, from Dio Cassius, but dreadfully mutilated. I have tried to restore its connection in the Rheinische Museum;[154] of the correctness of its general meaning, I do not entertain the slightest doubt. According to that passage, the tribunes moved the cancelling of the debts (tabulæ novæ) in consequence of the general suffering.[155] Distress and debt are most severely felt in the first years of peace. The tribunes made the motion on the strength of the Lex Publilia,[156] according to which, the resolution of the Plebes was a bill which was to be confirmed by the curies, before whom nothing could be brought but what had passed through the senate, by whom it was to be introduced: the latter might throw out a bill; if it did not, it went on to the curies. The Plebes was now highly delighted at the motion and adopted it; but it had to be brought before the senate, which threw it out. For in those days, we already find the state of things which is so strongly marked under the Gracchi, namely, the feud between the people and the nobles: the plebeian nobility shielded themselves behind the curies, and were very glad when these rejected the motion. The tribunes then brought in another proposition, that, if it thought too much to grant a complete cancelling of the debts, the creditors should fall back to the Licinian law; so that the interests already paid should be deducted from the capital, and the remainder be liquidated in three instalments. It was at that time forbidden to take interest, and money lenders were therefore obliged to screen themselves behind foreigners. When a loan on which interest was charged, was to be negotiated, they went to Præneste and Tibur; and the Tiburtine ostensibly furnished the money, and in his forum also were the litigations decided which might arise from the transaction. Thus the prohibition of usury may be reconciled with the fact that interests were paid after all.
The curies refused to pass the law, even with this modification, and therefore such a bill had every time to be brought in anew in trinum nundinum; the people would indeed have been quite satisfied with the proposition as it now stood, but the curies kept on saying no. The people now became maddened; they marched out of the city, and encamped on the Janiculum: it can scarcely be supposed that any magistrate headed the Plebes, as in the former secessions. The leaders of the democratical party thought to make use of these circumstances for their own ends, and allowed the people to go farther and farther; thus on the Janiculum it hardly could be said to have behaved as harmlessly as in the former secessions. And now, when the crowd there, instead of dispersing, went on strengthening, the rulers of the republic were frightened, and eagerly wished for a compromise. The insurgents, however, would have nothing of the sort; they were ever demanding more and more:—what they wanted, it is impossible for us to say, probably a new division of the land, and a much more considerable diminution of the debts. The popular leaders at last put forth the demand, that, as the opposition of the senate and the curies had shaken the peace, these should give up their veto; and they carried their point. For the last time, the curies met in the Æsculetum, and decreed their own dissolution. An analogous case is the ordinanza della giustizia at Florence, by which a great part of the houses was wholly excluded from all civil offices; and that through their own fault, as they would commit any crime, and not appear before the courts of justice.
The Hortensian law comprehended other objects besides. There was but one dictator Hortensius, down to the time of Cicero, and likewise only one Hortensian law.
This resolution was an extraordinary event, the first step towards the fall and the breaking up of the Roman state. Yet the condition of Rome was so sound, that a hundred and fifty years passed away before the mischief displayed itself. It is one of the disadvantages of a free constitution, that what has once been neglected, cannot be so easily made up. The Veto could not have continued as it was; but what ought to have been done, and was not done, because it was not done at the right time, was this: the curies should have been filled up from the plebeian nobles, and by a number of clans from the allies. The senate could not have the same weight as a strong aristocratical body; the sincera plebes, the good old country folk, gradually dwindled away, and the factio forensis got the upperhand; the elements which had rendered the Roman commonalty so excellent, died off by degrees, and ought to have been replaced. This must have struck many a person at that time; for instance, that wise man Fabius, if he was still alive. Sp. Carvilius, a son or grandson of him who conquered the Samnites, brought forward a motion in the war of Hannibal, to receive two members from each senate of the allies into the Roman one; just like Scipio Maffei, who made a similar proposition in Venice. The former was all but torn to pieces in the senate; as for the latter, it is quite a wonder that he got off unpunished. Sallust says, that between the second and the third Punic war, there had been the strongest feeling of respect for the laws of Rome; yet this was merely the peaceful state just before the outbreak of a revolution. Single cases of evil consequences had not been wanting already; one was, that from henceforth the admission of the Italians to the full right of citizenship became more and more difficult, as this would lessen the influence of the ancient citizens. This afterwards gave rise to a coalition between the allies and the nobles; but unhappily the nobility did not form a corporation. The patrician body crumbled to pieces, and there was nothing to take its place.
Even as the French revolution was very much hastened by the absurd regulation of old Marshal Ségur, that only nobles were to hold commissions, which exasperated all the soldiers; thus in Rome also, a like provocation was given by L. Postumius, an odd character, who—what at that time was not common—had thrice been consul, and was also employed in the decisive embassy to Tarentum: he must therefore have been a man of consequence; but he behaved on this occasion like a madman. During his consulship, he insulted old Q. Fabius, who was with the army as proconsul, by driving him away. There is party hatred in this: Fabius was an aristocrat, but free from all oligarchical spirit. After the war, Postumius had possessed himself of immense tracts of land, and had set two thousand soldiers to work at clearing a forest. For this accumulated insolence, he was impeached by the tribunes, and condemned to pay a fine of five hundred thousand asses. Circumstances of this kind gave greater offence than anything else, and the more bitter it became as the oligarchical party fell off in numbers.
In this period is to be placed the appointment of the triumviri capitales. The form triumviri is indeed a solecism, a proof that even so early as this the casus obliqui were prevalent, as in the modern Romanesque languages. From triumvirorum, which was often heard, a nominative, triumviri, was made; and this form was already generally current in the times of Cicero.—The triumviri capitales correspond to the Athenian ἕνδεκα; they had the superintendence of the gaols; beyond this, we are altogether in the dark as to what their office was. They entered upon the functions which had passed from the old Quæstores parricidii to the ædiles curules. There were many cases in which there was no further investigation to be made, namely, those of delicta manifesta: but to inquire in every instance whether a person was reus manifestus, the prætor had not time, and there must have been an authority which informed him that there was a delictum manifestum: this must formerly have been the quæstors, and now the tresviri capitales. Besides this, they were judges in cases of which the prætor did not take cognisance, in those of foreigners, slaves, and so forth; and they likewise watched over their punishment, as these persons were not under the protection of the tribunes: when, however, there was a doubt, a judex was to be granted. Thus this office had the mingled powers of a police and of a criminal jurisdiction.