Notwithstanding the general peace with the Latins, the Tiburtines were at enmity with the Romans; they seem to have formed a distinct state, and they took the Gallic armies in their pay. A war against the people of Tarquinii brought the Roman arms along the coast to Etruria. It was carried on with great exasperation. The Etruscans advanced even against Rome; but the plebeian consul C. Marcius utterly routed them, and compelled them to make a long truce.
At home, there was continual distress in consequence of debt. One commission after the other was appointed; respites were granted; and the state again took the matter in hand. The latter, owing to the tithes which came in from the public fields, was now so well off that it could effect a general arrangement. The debts were inquired into by a commission; and all those who owed money, but were able to give security, received an advance from the treasury to enable them to discharge their liabilities. This was a wise measure; as by the paying off of principals the rate of interest was lowered, so that money became exceedingly plentiful, and it was requisite to find out where to place it. On the other hand, it was ordered that those who had property, should not be obliged to sell it, as in that case the price of estates would have fallen; but that they should be allowed to give it up for the debt, according to a fair valuation. By this means, the value of landed property must have risen, and the rate of interest have been lowered; a most prudent and judicious financial calculation. It had lasting and excellent consequences, although fresh misery was caused soon afterwards by new disasters. If the misfortune of an age is once made decisive by extraordinary events, the wisest of rulers cannot ward off a state of pressure and distress. Such a calamity, which befell Rome at that time, was the third Gallic invasion in the year 405, a much more frightful one than the second. The Gauls appeared before the city, the Romans did not venture to give them battle; for though their military science had been brought to a high perfection, yet it was well judged to confine themselves to the defence of the town: the consequence of this, however, was the devastation of the open country. The Gauls, that time, remained long in Latium, even throughout the winter. If we may believe the account of the Romans, they were then in the same plight as the barbarians under Radagaise, whom Stilicho pushed on to the Apennines not far from Fiesole;—even now the name which the peasants have given to those heights, still refers to that period:—[129] they must have retired to the Alban hills, that is to say, the Monte Cavo. It is possible, but inconceivable, that they should have gone of their own accord to mountains covered with snow. Certain it is, that L. Furius Camillus, a nephew, not a son of the great Camillus, marched against the Gauls as a distinguished general: he was in other respects a headstrong patrician who broke the peace between the two orders, yet bono publico natus. It is manifest that the Romans and Latins combined sent a large force into the field; they formed ten legions, a number which could have never been raised by the Romans alone. A very clever campaign was carried on against the barbarians. The Romans fought no battles, but brought them into great straits by their entrenched lines. To this perhaps refers the notice of a grammarian, that the Gauls concluded a treaty with the Romans. They were allowed to march off; on which they spread over Campania, and ravaged the country, still going lower down.
Many important changes date from the beginning of the fifth century. As early as 397, we meet with an account of the tribes deciding on war. This right we found belonging at first to the curies, then to the centuries, and now to the tribes. It was natural that when the nation had grown into more vigorous life, the old customs were no longer kept, according to which, for instance, the deliberations were to be stopped because there was a flash of lightning, or because a bird of evil omen was flying past, and the like; so that no army could then be levied, and, in short, no resolution of the centuries be passed. Very properly then was recourse had to the assembly of the tribes, which from the very first was an institution based on a practical plan, and adapted to the real wants of the commonwealth.
The enlargement of the plebeian rights is linked to the name of C. Marcius Rutilus, the first plebeian censor and dictator. He preserved the peace of the two orders; and we remark in his case a change in the mode of electing the dictator, which Zonaras also mentions, but which Livy has entirely overlooked. Down to that time, the patricians had always had the actual choice of the dictator; that is to say, they had to select one out of candidates proposed to them. We have a passage in Livy which expressly states this. Sulpicius was the last dictator nominated by the curies; there would otherwise have been no occasion for particularly mentioning it. Livy has merely copied it in a heedless manner: he has many more notices of the same kind, which appear superfluous, when one does not know how to explain them from any other circumstances. Three years later, we find a plebeian dictator, whom the curies would never have confirmed. Only the senate now decided the election, and the consul proclaimed it. This is also recorded in the statement of Dionysius, which has been transferred to an earlier age, that the nomination of the dictator had been restricted for some time to the discretion of the consul; I have discussed this in the first volume of the new edition of my Roman History. The more, therefore, the curies lose, the more does a power grow up in the senate, which it had not before. Of very violent commotions which then took place, the traces have been much obliterated: a mention of it occurs in Cicero, where he tells us how Popilius Lænas when consul had repressed the seditio plebis, for which he had got a cognomen. This consulship I place immediately before the election of the plebeian dictator. Thus in the year 400, the patricians had succeeded in hindering the Licinian law from being kept, and this lasted for a few years. Another great change was this: that the nomination of a number of military tribunes was given to the tribes.
In Etruria, it is said that the town of Cære was obliged to give up part of its territory in consequence of a truce; so that, what never happened before, a war must have been waged with Cære. There is generally a great deal of declamation against this, as a piece of ingratitude; for Cære had, in the Gallic war, given shelter to the sacred things of Rome. We do not, however, know any thing positive about it.
THE FIRST WAR WITH THE SAMNITES. PROGRESS OF LEGISLATION.
Majora hinc bella narranda sunt, says Livy. We now arrive at a period in which great masses come into collision; when Rome struggles with a great people, which displayed heroic stedfastness, which possessed great generals and an excellent system of arms (which the Romans even adopted from them), and which had all the political virtues that give greatness to a nation in the eyes of posterity. The war for life and death lasted seventy years, interrupted only by treaties of peace, or rather, armistices. In the Samnites we have a proof how much is gained for future generations by heroic perseverance, even though one be overpowered in the strife; for, their lot was always much more tolerable than that of many other nations conquered by Rome. Had their descendants brought down their wishes to the standard of things as they were; had they not aimed, though in a high and noble spirit, at impossibilities; had they not intoxicated themselves with feelings, the season for which was long since gone by; they would not have perished in the days of Sylla. And indeed, theirs was then a terrible fate, because they had no longer regard to the circumstances in which they were placed.
The great event by which Rome emerged from childhood, is the reception of Capua under her protection. It is involved, however, in obscurity, and is falsified besides by the Romans.
When we read in the ancients of a colony which turns in hostility against its mother state, we always think of disloyalty and ingratitude: the ancients themselves, that is to say, our authors, look upon such a defection as a domestic feud of the daughter against the mother. In some detached cases, this may be true; but in most instances, especially in Italian history, the relation is quite a different one. We must bear in mind the origin of the colonies; how a portion of the territory was set apart, and allotted to the coloni, while the rest remained to the old inhabitants; and how the colony then became, either the representative of the sovereign state, or, should it get emancipated, itself a sovereign power. The Romans always bound their colonies closely to themselves; the same appears to have been done by the Latins. There is scarcely anything similar to this in the Greek colonies. The Greeks almost always sent their colonies into waste countries, and built themselves new towns in which they afterwards would receive burghers of the pale and foreign residents; but they remained utter strangers to the nations among which they settled. Thus it was in Libya, on the Black Sea, Asia Minor, Thrace, Gaul, Spain. The only peoples akin to them were the Pelasgian nations in Italy and Sicily, and thence arose the rapid increase of the Greek colonies in those parts. Their colonies generally went out from political reasons, from discontent, perhaps also from over-population; and as they immediately emancipated themselves, they owed to the mother state no other feeling than that of reverence. The Roman colonies, on the contrary, stood always in patria potestate, and were bound to the discharge of certain duties.
A different system we meet with among the Samnites, perhaps everywhere among the Sabine states. Just as they had quite a different religion, different fundamental types of division, a different military equipment, so had they likewise a different system of rights in the colonies.—From Strabo we know the tradition of the Samnites concerning their descent; that sprung from the Sabines, they had found the Oscans in the country which they occupied. The Oscans inhabited the whole of that neighbourhood, whilst on the coast there were Pelasgians, who once upon a time, we do not know when, had also spread over the midland country. Probably the Pelasgians dwelt at first from the Tiber to the Garganus: the Oscans from the mountains of Abruzzo, pushed on by the Sabines, overran these districts; and after these the Sabines, the stock from which the Samnites sprang, took possession of them, and advanced into the most southern part of Italy, the most ancient population perishing before them. Their colonisation therefore, unlike that of the Romans, was not undertaken with the view of extending their dominion; but it was merely the overflow of too crowded a state, whence it happens that there is nowhere a trace of connexion between the Sabine colonies and the original race. Thus it was likewise with the Picentines; with the four nations, the Marsians, Marrucinians, Pelignians, and Vestinians; thus also among the Samnites. These consisted of four peoples, which formed a confederation, the Pentrians, Caudinians, Hirpinians, and in all probability, the Frentanians. The Frentanians were afterwards separated from them; and in their place another canton, between Surrentum and the Silarus, was introduced, the inhabitants of which were perhaps called Alfaterians. From the Samnites other tribes came forth; the Lucanians, and by a cross of Lucanians, Oscan-Sabellian adventurers, and freedmen, the Bruttians. When the Sabines had now settled in the middle valley of the Vulturnus, they also spread into Campania, the most favoured land in Italy: here there had existed since 280 an Etruscan colony. The oldest inhabitants of the country were most likely Tyrrhenians, which is the reason why Capua, like Rome, was derived from Troy. The Tyrrhenians were subdued by the Oscans, and these in their turn by the Etruscans: among the latter, Capua is said to have been called Vulturnum. The Oscans must have been a very great mass; for they quite changed the whole of the population. But the greatness of the Etruscans lasted only for a little while: as early as in 320, they began to decline at the Tiber; how much more therefore in Campania? Now it is natural that Capua, which was a mere settlement of an oligarchic nation, should not have been able to hold out against a conquering people: the subjugated Oscans were not very zealous in the defence of their masters. On this account, the Tuscans at Capua agreed to a compromise by which they received ἔποικοι of their enemy, in fact a Samnite colony,—a foolish arrangement which is so often to be met with in ancient history. Thus the Amphipolitans received the Chalcidians, and these drove out the old Athenian colony: Aristotle brings forward many similar examples. Such towns, in which the ruling community was formed of two distinct races, had seldom the good fortune, like Rome, of having them well united. The Samnites conspired against the Tuscans; and with that faithlessness and cruelty for which all the Sabellians and Oscans are so remarkable, they murdered them after some time, and kept the city for themselves. Three years afterwards, the Samnites spread as far as Cumæ, and conquered that town, which had long been one of the most splendid in Italy. And thus at Capua, the ruling class were first Etruscans; then Samnites, and with them a numerous Oscan commonalty. For according to this system of colonisation, the sovereignty in the colony was given to an offshoot of the conquering people: part of the old inhabitants in the towns became clients; another part remained free; while those in the country, on the other hand, were bondmen or serfs, as in the conquests of the Franks and Lombards. Similar also is the condition of the Spanish colonies in Mexico, in which the original population has likewise continued. This was the state of things in Capua. We now find it mentioned in Roman history, that the Campanians asked for the help of the Romans and Latins against the Samnites. But how could the colony have fallen out with the people from which it came? This is only to be thus explained. The commonalty of the Oscans, which had been kept in dependance by the Samnites, gained strength, increased in number, and recovered itself; and whereas the Roman Plebes gradually united with the patricians, these broke out into a revolution, and overthrew the Samnite patricians, Owing to this, Capua and Samnium became enemies; yet the Samnites seem not to have been destroyed at Capua, but only to have lost the rule: it is the equites Campani, mentioned by Livy, to whom the whole body of the citizens pays yearly contributions, either as an indemnity for the Ager Falernus, or because they remained faithful to the Romans. Rome liked oligarchy for dependent peoples.