A great and essentially plebeian legislation by which that of Licinius was completed, manifests itself as the result of this event. Whatever may have been the true history of that commotion, it was certainly of much greater importance than Livy describes it to have been. Whereas until then the Licinian law, according to which there was always to be one plebeian consul, had been violated seven times in thirteen years; from henceforth there are no more infringements of it, notwithstanding some absurd attempts in later times. In the present fermentation, a rule must have been made which precluded the possibility of any such design being successful. Clauses must have been added, perhaps as stringent as those in the lex Valeria Horatia, by which the severest punishments were denounced against any one who hindered the election of the tribunes of the people. Moreover, it is said to have been enacted, that both consuls might also be chosen from the plebeians; but this seems to be a mistake: that this was not carried out, may easily be proved. In the war of Hannibal, there was once a special resolution passed, that both consuls might be taken from the Plebes while the war lasted; yet it was not acted upon. It was not before 580, that the natural proportion first won the day, the patrician nobility having dwindled down to such insignificance, that it became impossible to keep up the law as had been done hitherto. Another ordinance which Livy mentions, is of great importance: it shows that there was no longer a mere question of the opposition of the orders against each other; but that among the plebeian nobility the same oligarchical intrigues had manifested themselves, which until then had been confined to the patricians alone,—a proof, that neither of the two was better than the other. This law comprised two points: in the first place, that no one should hold two curule dignities at the same time; secondly, that whoever had filled a curule office, could only be re-elected to it after ten years. The first point, as far as the prætorship was concerned, could effect the patricians only, it having probably often happened that a patrician consul had caused himself to be elected prætor as well, so that he might get the upperhand over his colleague; but with regard to the ædileship, it would also affect the plebeians in alternate years. Livy says that the law was especially directed against the ambitio novorum hominum. The second point had probably been mooted by the plebeians themselves, as a check upon the overwhelming influence of men who belonged to their own order; as until then we always find the same plebeian names as Popillius Lænas, C. Marcius, C. Poetelius, in the list of consuls. What was wanted, was to keep the honours of the state from becoming the property of a few exclusive families.
With regard to military matters, Livy knows of two laws which date from the time of these disturbances. The first, that whosoever had once been a military tribune, should no more become a centurion, is represented as having been brought forward owing to a certain Salonius, who is said to have been thus reduced to a lower rank out of spite. The consuls had full right to appoint whom they chose as centurions; yet there was a feeling among the soldiers, that when a man had been a tribune, he could no more be a centurion which was no higher than a non-commissioned officer. Among the military tribunes, six places every year were filled by the tribes, the rest by the consuls: one could not, however, be elected two years running by the same party. During the year in which a person could not be tribune, he must have been unemployed. Now Salonius, who had been a tribune, and as such had no doubt opposed the consuls, was therefore made by these a centurion: thus the voice of the public promoted, and the consuls degraded him. It was against this that the law was directed. The organisation of the class of officers is one of the best things in the Roman system. Slow advancement, the right to gradual promotion, and the making provision for officers in old age, were unknown to the Romans: by law, no one held a permanent commission; every officer was required to be efficient. They had no notion either of gradually rising by length of service, or of a standing corps of officers: every military tribune was appointed for one year only; if he did not show himself equal to his duty, he was not chosen again; but whoever was efficient was elected year by year by the people and by the consuls in turn, and this was his calling, and his desire. Moreover, it was not necessary to pass through a whole succession of subordinate steps: the young Roman of rank served as a horseman; the consul had the distinguished ones in his cohort as staff-officers; there they learned a great deal, and in a couple of years the young man, in the full prime of life, might become a military tribune. Regard was had besides to that respectable class of people who, without any calling for a higher command, were well qualified to train the soldiers. These were made centurions, what with us would be sergeants. They were all of them people of humble station; they had good pay and enjoyed consideration, and they also might in some cases become tribunes, if they showed remarkable ability. What is done by the great mass of our subalterns, might be performed as well by an able non-commissioned officer. In all this, the Roman military system is as admirable as in its perfect training of the individual soldier.
The second law may show us how Livy jumbles everything together. The pay of the equites is said by him to have been lowered, because they had not taken a share in the insurrection. If the rebels could carry this through, the state was lost. I believe that this was the period when the equites ceased to be assigned as a burthen of two thousand asses upon the widows and orphans, and it was decreed, that they should have a fixed pay. This was a reasonable change, but a loss for the eques publicus; reasonable, because the state could afford the expense.
In luco Petelino, the curies now voted a complete amnesty for all that had happened: no one was either in jest or in earnest to be reproached with it. Livy takes it for a resolution of the centuries auctoribus patribus; but it is evident from the trial of Manlius, that in the lucus Petelinus the curies alone assembled.
THE WAR AGAINST THE LATINS. THE LAWS OF THE DICTATOR Q. PUBLIUS PHILO. FURTHER EVENTS.
The Romans now decided upon peace with the Samnites. They had already, on account of the past year, received from them an indemnity for pay and keep; or they then received it. The peace was made by the Romans in a selfish and base manner; as the war had been undertaken in conjunction with the Latins. They yielded Capua to the Samnites, and left them at liberty to conquer Teanum. The Sidicines, on the other hand, threw themselves into the arms of the Latins, and concluded with the Volscians, Auruncians, and Campanians, a separate league against the Samnites. The same thing has happened also in modern times; as for instance, the alliance between Prussia and Russia under Frederic the Great and Peter III., in the seven years’ war. The Latins now went on with the war suo Marte, which Livy in his way of viewing things deems an offence in them, as if they had violated the majestas populi Romani. They made war with the Pelignians; from which it may be seen that the Æquians belonged to them, as otherwise they could not have touched the Pelignians. The latter allied themselves with the Samnites, who in their turn applied to the Romans for help or mediation, as the peace had evidently been immediately followed by an alliance. The federal compact of Rome with the Latins and Hernicans had now come to a crisis: the Hernicans were either neutral, or, what is more likely, in a league with the Romans; as Livy and the Capitoline Fasti do not mention them among those over whom Mænius triumphed. Such confederacies may subsist between peoples, none of which is as ambitious and powerful as the Romans then were; but there were now only three ways open. Either they might part from each other and remain friends; or they might enter into a union, like that between Great Britain and Ireland; or lastly, the fortune of arms had to decide, which was to be master of the other: to stand side by side, as hitherto, was impossible. During the last year already, the war had no longer been carried on in common; the Latins had taken the field under their own standards. It was therefore now resolved to negociate. Latium had a more solid constitution than the Samnites; it was governed like Rome. It had two prætors, as Rome had two consuls; and it must have had a senate, as decem primi are mentioned, evidently the deputies of as many towns. These ten leaders betook themselves to Rome, and there they made the most just proposal that the two states should unite; that the senate from three hundred members should be doubled to six hundred; that the popular assembly should be increased,—in which case the seven and twenty Roman tribes would no doubt have been raised to thirty, and the Latin towns have voted as so many tribes; that Rome should be the seat of government, and a Roman and a Latin consul be elected every year. Had the Romans accepted these terms, Rome and Latium would in reality have been equal; but every Roman would have had his privileges lessened. The idea of a Latin consul was odious to the Romans; for, in all the republics, however democratically they may be disposed, there is a spirit of exclusiveness. Of this we find a striking instance in the history of the institutions of Geneva. In that republic there are bourgeois; natifs, that is to say, children of the μέτοικοι or habitans; and lastly, habitans; all of which have one after the other acquired the right of citizenship. Nothing is more oligarchical than the canton of Uri. Patricians as well as plebeians were discontented. If there was to be only one consul, who should it be, a patrician or a plebeian? They would rather have agreed to have four consuls. The embassy of the Latins, as Livy tells us, was received with general indignation; not that they had disguised from themselves that the impending struggle would be a war for life and death; but because vanity and selfishness outweighed this consideration. We are told, that the consul T. Manlius had declared that he would stab with his own hand the first Latin in the Roman senate. The story has besides the poetical addition, that while they were debating in the Capitol, a thunderstorm and a pelting shower came on; and that the Latin prætor, as he was retiring, fell down the centum gradus of the Tarpeian rock, and was taken up lifeless. In later narratives, “lifeless” was prosaically made out to mean “in a swoon.”
The Sabines, renowned as they were of old for uprightness, had been quite asleep, and they had no longer any importance whatever: the northern confederation, the Marsians, Pelignians, Marrucinians, and Vestinians, in spite of their bravery, only wished to be left quiet in their mountains. The Romans passed through their territory, and were in alliance with the Samnites: the latter expected for themselves the conquest of Capua and Teanum as the result of the war. Had the Romans now been afraid of letting their open country be wasted by the Latins, they would have been obliged to keep themselves merely on the defensive, or else to carry on a tedious war of sieges against the Latin towns. But here the Roman generals showed themselves great, and the way in which they dealt with the whole matter, was masterly. Fixing upon the very boldest plan, they armed the reserve at Rome, and abandoned the fields, even to the very gates of the city, to the Latins; then they marched all the way round through the Sabine and the Marsian country, to join the Samnites; and when this was done, they advanced with a combined force against Capua. If the Latins had now left the Campanians to their fate, and had gone beforehand to meet the Romans, while they were still on their march through the country of the Æquians, they might have perhaps defeated them in these impassable regions. This daring enterprise of the Romans is a proof of high strategical talent; and great men were Manlius and Decius, who, like all great men, knew very well how to estimate their foes: it was on the strength of this knowledge that they ventured thus to lead their armies round in a semicircle. The Latins, by a quick movement, might have devastated the whole of the Roman territory; and then, eight days before the Romans could have returned, they might have made their appearance at the gates of Rome, with an easy retreat to their fortresses: but the Roman generals must have well known the want of spirit and the mediocrity of their enemy, and therefore have left the road to Rome open. The Latins listened to the complaints of the Campanians, and may perhaps have thought thus to destroy the whole of the Roman army with one blow, as it could not return. Their force also might have encouraged them in such a hope: a trifle would have turned the scale; they might have conquered, as well as have been conquered. The Romans, no doubt, had sent all that they could muster into the field, and were not even then equal to the Latins. That the Samnites joined them, is certain; but the Roman annalists try to deny it, as if the Samnites had arrived only after the battle. The Latins and their allies, the Volscians, Æquians, Sidicines, Campanians, and Auruncians, had pitched their camp on the eastern side of Vesuvius; whether Veseris, where the battle was fought, is the name of a town or a river, is not certain. Here the two armies stood for a long time over-against each other, anxiously awaiting the decisive day. If the Latins had had an able general, they would, after a defeat, have been far better off than the Romans: they could retreat to Capua, throw themselves behind the Liris, and there collect reinforcements from their own country. Nor were the Romans superior to the Latins in a military point of view. There had always been a Roman and a Latin century combined as a maniple in the legion, so that the organisation of the two armies was the same. Under these circumstances, the consul forbade all single combats on pain of death; and this he did on account of the moral effect,—as slight accidents may easily give birth to a prejudice concerning the issue of the battle,—not on account of the acquaintance with the enemy, as is stated by Livy. Thus it was forbidden in the Russian army to accept the challenge of the Turkish Spahis. The stricter the prohibition was, the louder was the defiance of the Latin knights; and it moreover happened that the Roman cavalry had always been the worst part of the army, worse, for instance, than that of the Ætolians. This gave rise to the duel between the Tusculan Geminius Metius and the son of consul Manlius. Livy has told this incident in a masterly style, with the heart of a Roman, and the soul of a poet: the father, in order to enforce obedience, had his son executed. There is another circumstance connected with it, which Livy mentions only cursorily.[135] In the old legend, it was certainly not the son of Manlius alone, but a centurion besides, who conquers for the pedites as the former did for the equites.
The long time which elapsed before the battle began, is a decisive proof that the Samnites did not stay away altogether. The Romans went into battle with gloomy forebodings; besides which, both of the consuls had had a dream, which announced a dismal issue, that one army and the general of the other were doomed to the infernal gods. On this, the two consuls agreed that the general of whichever wing[136] was hard pressed, should devote himself to the infernal gods. Both of them offered sacrifice; and that of Decius was of evil omen, that of Manlius propitious. It occurs here, as it often does in such cases, that the liver had no caput, which is, what in Italian is still called capo, the place where the liver is grown to the midriff; the seam was wanting. The liver exhibits the most varied features: quite healthy animals may have great differences of formation in their livers. In the heart and the lungs, no handle for divinations is to be found; the liver has nearly always some abnormities. Decius now went into battle with the resolution of sacrificing himself, a resolution which must have been formed already in Rome, as the pontifex accompanied the army in order to devote him.
The Roman legion then consisted of five bodies, hastati, principes, triarii, rorarii, accensi. Of these, there were three battalions of the line mixed up with light troops, and a battalion of light troops, the rorarii with a third of the hastati. Of the latter, nearly two-thirds were from early times armed with spears: the principes had at that time already pila; but the triarii had still lances. These were the troops of the line; but the ferentarii were light troops with slings, and one-third of the hastati, light soldiers with javelins. In the beginning of the battle, these skirmishers were thrown out like the ψιλοί of the Greeks, and afterwards retired through the lines to the rear; yet they always came forth again, as soon as the enemy retreated. These three battalions stood in detached maniples with intervals, as at Zama; but certainly not en échelons, such a large interval, as that stated by Livy, being practically impossible in a line, as the cavalry would have broken through it at once: probably they were drawn up in a quincunx, in which such intervals might exist. As the whole of the Roman array of battle was calculated to keep up the exertion of the individual, not, like the Greek, to form compact masses; the rule was this, that the two first battalions, covered by the skirmishers, approached the enemy as close as possible. Every Roman soldier was perfectly trained for fighting. In the later order of battle, the soldier began the onset with the pilum. The Roman soldiers stood in ten ranks with plenty of room for moving; if these were closed, the first battalion ran forward, halted, and then hurled those terrible pila which pierced through armour, and of which each man had several with him. When they thus halted, all was not yet over after the first throw; but the front ranks, after having discharged their pila, fell back two steps, and the rank close behind them came forward too, and took its place at the side of each, on the same line; the first rank then retired, and formed the tenth rank. Thus the whole ten advanced in their turn to use their pila. This mode of attack, the only possible and true one, was terrible to the enemy. From this quiet rotation it may also be conceived, how it was that the fights lasted a long while, and that the soldiers did not at once come to close quarters: an hour surely was taken up in merely throwing the pila. Then did the fight with swords begin, in which the ranks again relieved each other. The rear ranks were not idle in the meantime. If some of the front ranks fell, or were worn out, they took their places; and thus the Roman battle might last a good while. For this, armies must indeed have been trained and practised, as the Romans were. The dust and the shout of battle were not as confusing as the smoke and thunder of artillery. If the hastati had done fighting, they withdrew to the rear of the principes who now commenced; if the troops were overpowered, they fell back on the triarii, who, at that time, formed a reserve which, however, was always obliged to enter into the fight. Besides those four battalions, the three of the line and one of light troops, there was a fifth, the accensi, without armour, and merely intended to fill up the places of the slain, whose arms they were to take. The accensi and velati were the two centuries which were attached to the fifth class, though below its census.
It is evident that Manlius, in this instance, did a thing which had never been done before: he armed the accensi, used them to strengthen his line, instead of the triarii whom he reserved for the last decision. By this means he saved himself. Not that, as Livy says, the Latins mistook the accensi for triarii; this is not possible, though it may be that the accensi also were armed with spears, and advanced as phalangites. The Latins went on in the old routine; and even then, they had nothing but its common-place elements. In the meantime, at the wing of Decius the fight was disastrous; the Latins were conquering. On this, Decius caused himself to be devoted to death by the pontifex M. Valerius. This devotion had an inspiring effect upon the army, and one which to their ideas was magical; as the consul had atoned for the whole nation, which was now deemed invincible. And thus, according to the legend, the fortune of the battle turned at once; the legions rallied, and won the completest of victories.