Niebuhr's lectures on Roman history, Vol. 1 (of 3)

by Barthold Georg Niebuhr

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

Immediately after this gleam of light, the same darkness comes upon us as before, for some time only the Fasti remain to us. In Livy here follows the story of Coriolanus.

If in a book a sheet is misplaced, it ought to be set right unless we would have the writer talk nonsense. The case is the same when an historical fact is placed in a wrong time. I see no reason why I should not believe that a Siceliote king in a famine had sent corn to Rome; yet the tyrants of Sicily first make their appearance some Olympiads later than the period assigned for the story of Coriolanus. I believe that Coriolanus was first of all brought to trial by the Plebes; yet the latter would not indeed have ventured upon such a thing before the Publilian law. The Romans also could not have quarrelled under Sp. Cassius about the distribution of the ager publicus, if the Volscians had advanced as far as Lavinium. I believe moreover, that a L. Junius Brutus established the heavy penalties against the interruption of the tribunes when they addressed the people; but he who placed this history in the year 262, could not have believed any thing of all this. For this reason I maintain that it does not belong to this epoch, but that it can only have happened after the passing of the Publilian law. Cn. or C. Marcius may perhaps have stood his ground in the war against the Antiates; but he cannot have conquered Corioli, as it takes part that very same year in the league of the Latin towns. We must either reject the whole story as a romance, or date it from quite a different period. A further combination was attempted with regard to it. The temple of Fortuna muliebris in the Via Latina, between the fourth and the fifth milestones, happened to be on the same spot where Coriolanus encamped as an exile, and the reconciliation took place. Now the supplication of the mother and the matrons, which may be historical, was connected with the name of the Fortuna muliebris; and it was believed that this temple, the time of the building of which was known, had been erected in consequence of that event. Yet Fortuna muliebris corresponds with Fortuna virilis, who had a temple in Rome, a male and a female deity, as Tellus and Tellumo. The same contraposition is also exhibited in animus and anima.[93]

Livy says that he would not be astonished if his readers felt tired of the wars of the Volscians and Æquians. And indeed every one has this feeling from the time when he first became acquainted with Livy. The narrative spoils the elegance of the first decade. What has made these wars so peculiarly troublesome to him, is the circumstance that he does not distinguish between them, nor divide them into periods. With the exception of what remains in Dionysius on the subject, he is the only source we have, and so it is difficult for us to get a general view of the events. The first period reaches down to the last years of the decennium from 280 to 290. Its beginning is shrouded in great darkness; the conquests of Tarquin the Proud are very vague. Afterwards we find the Volscians under the name of Auruncians invading the Latin territory; then follow a number of petty wars to about 290; in the last years we see the Volscians in possession of Antium, though they soon lose it again. In the second period the tables are turned: the Æquians take an energetic part in the war of the Volscians; Latium is entirely crushed; the war takes a very unfortunate turn for the Romans, Latins and Hernicans. This lasts to about 296, when the Romans make peace with the Volscians properly so called, and the danger is warded off. In the third period, the Romans carry on the war singlehanded against the Æquians: it has lost its dangerous character, and is on both sides carried on very languidly. Then follows another Volscian war against the Ecetrans, leagued with the Æquians. This fourth period is ushered in by the great victory of A. Postumius Tubertus (324); from which time the Romans keep advancing until the war with the Gauls, conquering many Volscian towns, and weakening the Æquians. In the Gallic war the Æquians also may have suffered much. Afterwards,—and this is the fifth period,—the wars begin anew, but their character is quite different. The Æquians are insignificant foes, and the Volscians amalgamated with the Latins, fighting like them for their own independence.

I will not go through these wars. No memory is capable of retaining them; and they are also deficient in authenticity, and that because the historian, weary of them, has read and written them in too great a hurry. After the Latin league, the enemy make a fierce onslaught, without, however, conquering much. Circeii in the time of Sp. Cassius is still a Latin town.

An event of relatively great importance for the Romans was the league with the Hernicans (267). Isopolity must already have existed early, if it be true, that under Tarquin the Proud these had a share in the festival of Jupiter Latiaris. A Roman tradition even mentions them as allies of Tullus Hostilius. After the humiliation of Rome by the Etruscans, they must, like the Latins, and the Tyrrhenian towns on the sea coast, have set themselves free. The league restored the relations in a manner very advantageous for them. Romans, Latins, and Hernicans were to be quite on the same footing; the booty, as well in money as in land, was divided in equal shares; if a colony were sent out, the colonists were taken from all the three. Whether the annalists have rightly understood the matter,—Livy and Dionysius differ very much from each other,—or whether they merely took it for granted that whenever a peace is concluded, it must have been preceded by a war, cannot be decided. Yet I am inclined to believe that the league was brought about by mutual necessity, as both were hemmed in by the Volscians and Æquians, and the fortified towns of the Hernicans were of great consequence to the Romans: a war would at least have been very absurd. The Hernicans dwelt in five towns, Anagnia, Alatrum, Ferentina, Frusino, and Verulæ, remarkable for their Cyclopian fortifications, and extending from the West to the East. According to the statements in Servius and the Veronese scholiast on Virgil, whom Mai has incorrectly edited, the Hernicans were a people sprung from the Marsians and Sabines; their name is said to be derived from hernæ, which in the Sabine language meant a rock, (Arndt compares to it the German Firn[94]), so that they were mountaineers. But it is strange that a people should in its own language have borne a mere epithet as its name, especially as the Marsians, Marrucinians, and Pelignians dwelt on much higher mountains. The Sabine descent of the Hernicans is therefore somewhat suspicious; it might, however, be maintained, even if the derivation of the name were a mere subtlety. Another difficulty is this: if they have come forth from the Marsians, they must have broken through the Æquians, which is altogether unlikely; and besides, in the sequel they have no connexion whatever with the Marsians. Julius Hyginus declares them to have been Pelasgians.

The Hernicans are remarkable in history. They kept off the Romans with brilliant courage; the alliance with them is historically certain. It was a joint league with the Romans and Latins, and therefore they received the third part of the booty. Nevertheless Roman antiquaries would have it, and Dionysius has allowed himself to be deceived by them, that the Romans had exclusively the supremacy; that therefore they had had two-thirds, and the Latins one-third of the booty; and that of those two-thirds the Romans had generously given half to the Hernicans. Yet when Romans and Latins conclude together an alliance with that brave people, it is no more than reasonable that each of them should have given up a sixth. Rome, according to Dionysius’ own version, had by no means the supremacy over the Latins. These relations must afterwards have been dissolved by some compromise. At a later period, by insisting upon their privileges the Hernicans brought on their own ruin.

Spurius Cassius is by far the most distinguished man of that age. In the times which are now quite dark, the most remarkable events are connected with his name; first the alliance with the Sabines (252),—without doubt accompanied by isopolity, to judge from the rolls of the census,—then this league with the Hernicans. In this alliance, Rome is placed in quite a different position from what it had been in the former one; just as the relations of Athens to its allies are changed about Ol. 100, after the battle at Naxos. When Athens established its second naval supremacy, the towns were far from being as dependent as formerly; and Demosthenes, when he founded his great league, with all the wisdom of an enlightened statesman no more demands that Athens should have the rule, but merely that it should be the life and the soul of the confederacy. For this, traitors to their country like Æschines, taxed him with having degraded it, inasmuch as the messenger of Athens was of no more weight than that of an Eubœan town. They wanted, so they falsely said, to see the sovereignty of Athens. Yet the question at that time was merely this, to preserve their freedom against Philip; and therefore Demosthenes readily concluded peace with any town that wished for it, and took the lead only by the power of his intellect. The same position is gained for Rome by Cassius; and this very fact shows him to have been a great man, with a clear head and a sound judgment. The Etruscan war had crushed the dominion of Rome on the right bank of the Tiber; the Volscians and Æquians were both of them advancing; the towns on the coasts were lost; it was necessary to arrange matters, not as one wished, but as one could. This the so-called historians of later days wanted to disguise from themselves, owing to their blinded partiality for their own native country. Livy—and the writers in whose wake Dionysius followed, were full of senseless veneration for the greatness of their forefathers. Rome, they thought, could never have been small. Indeed at that time also, there may have been people like Æschines, and fools, who thought Cassius a traitor, because he accommodated himself to circumstances.

Cassius in his third consulship, after the league with the Hernicans, wished to be just to the Plebes also. This leads us to the important agrarian law.