Among the Campanians the Romans likewise created divisions: they made a distinction between the Populus and the Plebes, the former being the indemnified knights. The relation with the Hernicans was not changed; or if it were, they had now in the victories of the Romans got an equivalent in money. Capua, Cumæ, Suessula, Atella, Fundi, and Formiæ, receive the free municipium and isopolity; the Romans therefore nominally acknowledge their full equality.
We are hardly able to form a distinct idea of the then state of the Roman commonwealth at home, owing to the insufficiency of the accounts which we have. The war had cost Rome such heavy sacrifices, that although her sway reached from Sutrium and Nepete as far as Campania, she suffered from faintness and loss of blood for a long time after; and thus the calm which ensued is perfectly intelligible. The year after the decision of the war (418), the prætorship was imparted to the plebeian order, under certain conditions; so that from that time, the prætorship, in accordance with the rule laid down, alternated between patricians and plebeians. This may be historically proved: the exceptions are worth remarking, and they help to explain the law. The first plebeian prætor was Q. Publilius Philo; and therefore, perhaps, some connection between this law and three others which go by his name, may be surmised. When the second prætorship, the so-called prætura peregrina was added, one was always a patrician and the other a plebeian; just as afterwards, when there are four in number, two are patricians, and two plebeians. But when afterwards there were six of them, such an equal division could no longer take place, as the patricians had fast dwindled. The completion of the Licinian law was a great step in advance; the equality of the two orders had now become a reality; for the circumstance that the patricians still chose interreges exclusively from among themselves, is of no importance. The recurrence of the interregna at that period, indeed shows that the patricians were still dreaming of evading the law; the gain became the more tempting, as the number lessened of those who laid claim to it. Yet these attempts, as far as we can see, did not call forth any violent reaction: the force of circumstances and the reality of facts turned the scales.
Abroad there was no war of any consequence. The Romans had to carry on a petty warfare which was rather welcome to them, and which had for its object, to make their state a connected whole as far as the Liris and Campania. On both banks of the Liris dwelt the Auruncians (called Ausonians by the Greeks, and also in Livy, when he borrows from Greek sources, namely Fabius, or Dionysius), an Oscan people. These had taken part against the Romans in the Latin war; but had afterwards submitted to them as subjects, and were now under their protection. The Sidicines had been left by the Romans to be conquered by the Samnites, and must have come to terms with them: so that the Samnites allowed them to keep their ground, not wishing the barrier between themselves and the Romans to be pulled down. For this reason, there was now jealousy between the Romans and Samnites. Nor could it have been otherwise. It was especially owing to the Samnite conquests in those parts, that the Volscians had attached themselves to the Latins, and afterwards to the Romans; as the Samnites, at that time, were more dangerous to them than the Romans. The great states would let the small ones make war with each other; for by this means events might be brought about, in which they would find an opportunity for coming forth with all their might: these states, were as it were pour les coups d’épingles qui précèdent les coups de canon. The Sidicines, leagued with the Auruncians of Cales, attacked the other Auruncians; and therefore the Romans marched against them. The Romans carried on the war with much policy: they behaved lukewarmly, as it was far from their interest that the Sidicines should be hard pressed, lest they should throw themselves into the arms of the Samnites. They took Cales, between Teanum and Cassilinum, and occupied it by a strong colony. The system was now, by means of such settlements, to gain a firm footing in the country between the Liris and the Vulturnus, as far as the Samnites did not possess it: this course they pursued with great perseverance and great success. By the colony of Cales, Rome connected Campania, which was ever suspected, with her own empire. A second colony, founded soon afterwards, was Fregellæ, which in the seventh century became so remarkable for its pride and its misfortune: it was situated on the spot where the Liris is crossed by the Latin road, which leads through Tusculum to the Hernican towns, and thence by Teanum to Capua. The planting of this colony was a real usurpation: the Samnites were masters of the country as far as Monte Casino; they had subjected the Volscians there, and destroyed Fregellæ; by the treaty moreover, they were allowed to spread in those parts, and even if they had abandoned them, the Romans were not to take possession of them. The Samnites had also taken Sora, and established themselves there, with views certainly as ambitious as those of Rome. The Romans concluded isopolity with the Caudinians; nevertheless the two nations were convinced that war between them was inevitable. Under these circumstances, the Romans indeed were engaged in as troublous a policy as the interesting one of the sixteenth century was.
It is certainly not the mere result of chance, when we remark in history, that at certain periods, in countries far apart, the very same kind of changes take place, which, owing to the distance of space and time, cannot have been brought about one by the other, and from which a new order of things springs up. In this we trace the hand of Providence, which guides the fortunes of men, and the progress of all nations, as one whole. Such an epoch is the breaking up of the Latin league, and the spread of the power of Rome, quite similar to the state of things towards the end of the fifteenth century. An interesting parallel may be drawn between the two periods. It is as if the events which single nations and countries may work out by their own resources, had been achieved; and as if all the relations of life should now be changed according to new landmarks. Nations which had ever been strangers to each other, are now brought into contact; the states, which had hitherto been the most flourishing, begin to decay, and there only remains the yellow leaf of autumn; the intellectual brilliance of the most gifted races is waning fast, never to blaze forth again; inclinations and tastes take a new turn, as well as the whole of every day life with its animal wants and enjoyments: even the physical nature of man is changed, as new diseases make their appearance. Thus it was at the end of the fifteenth century. The bloom of the Italian towns had withered, even as, at the period of which we are treating, Greece was falling into decay. The cause of the prosperity of Greece, the balance of its many small states, was also that of its decline; for no single one of these was powerful enough to keep up the whole.—The very same were the relations of Italy at that time. Florence and Venice stood side by side with equal power; if Venice had been strong enough to have had the mastery, a new and better order of things would have arisen. The battle of Chæronea and the downfall of the Latins took place in the same year, and this coincidence shows us the hand of Providence working in secret. The Romans and Samnites, to all appearance, faced each other as equals; and it seemed as if the struggle must have ended in the destruction of both, of which foreigners and barbarians would then have reaped the advantage. For in the North, the Gauls already held a great part of Italy; and on the other side, the Carthaginians were threatening. It is true that a short time before, Timoleon had checked the spread of the latter in Sicily; yet sooner or later, they could not fail to take that island as well as Corsica, even as they had already got Sardinia, all but one mountain range. Thus it seemed, that after the Romans and Samnites had mutually ruined each other, these two peoples were to divide Italy between themselves.
As for the relations of Rome to the Greeks, there had been hitherto no political connexion between them. There seems indeed to have been some intercourse with the inhabitants of Magna Græcia and the Siceliotes; and I believe that even the learning and science of Magna Græcia exercised a much greater influence than is generally supposed, and that the knowledge also of the Greek language may not at that time have been anything unusual at Rome. Even though Pythagoras should not have become a Roman citizen, as perhaps he is not even an historical personage, the Pythagorean philosophy was from an early period known and admired by the Romans. In the case of some neighbouring places, communications with Greece are more than once spoken of. Cumæ gave occasion for this; the Sibylline books were also indeed reputed to have been kept at Rome. The first missions to Delphi are fabulous, though in fact the Romans did consult the oracle. What we know besides, is limited to the transactions with Massilia at the time that the city was taken by the Gauls, and with the Lipariotes, the guardians of the Tyrrhenian sea against the pirates. All the rest is grounded on legends. But the first political relation, by which Rome as a state comes at length to be connected with the Greeks, dates from that time; for the treaty with Massilia was in all likelihood nothing more than a treaty of commerce, which I am strongly led to believe from the circumstance of Massilia and Carthage being at enmity, on account of the fisheries, as Justin informs us. By these we are to understand either the coral fisheries on the African, or the tunny fisheries on the Italian coast: the inhabitants of Provence were during the whole of the middle ages in possession of the coral fisheries of Africa. That first connexion was the treaty between Rome and Alexander, king of Epirus;—for, one may indeed call the Epirotes Greeks, although they were of Pelasgian origin, as they were hellenized. Alexander was called over to Italy by the people of Tarentum, in the year of Rome 420, Ol. 112.
About this time, the glory of Magna Græcia had already vanished; most of the places, Posidonia, Pyxus, Caulonia, Hipponium, Terina, and others, had been conquered by the Lucanians and the Bruttians, who had only been able to keep part of them, and had abandoned the rest: a few only still held out, but had to struggle for their existence. Rhegium, Locri, and Croton once so flourishing, had been laid waste by the Dionysii of Syracuse: these indeed had left them alone again; but they lay half in ruins, having only been wretchedly patched up, just as Delhi and Ispahan are now. Thurii and Metapontum had much trouble to defend themselves against the Lucanians; their territory was almost entirely lost, and they were like the Italian towns in the sixth and seventh centuries, when they made head against the Lombards. The only Greek city which, amid the general calamity, was in the full pride of its bloom, was Tarentum. It is true that soon after the expedition of Xerxes, this place had suffered a great defeat from the neighbouring Messapians; yet it had recovered from it, and when the tyrants of Syracuse and the Lucanians threatened the other towns, Tarentum began to flourish. It was undoubtedly increased by the immigration of many Greeks from the other cities, some of which were ruined, and the rest in danger. A parallel to this may be found in the growing prosperity of the Netherlands, and of Switzerland, at the time of the thirty years’ war: the flourishing condition of these countries was chiefly owing to the misery in Germany, as industry and commerce had sought a refuge there. In the same way did Tarentum wax great; and it had the advantage besides, which is always enjoyed by a neutral state between countries at war, to which we are to add the wisdom of its government.
The Tarentines were much enriched by industry and commerce, by wool manufactures, by their skill in dyeing, and also by their salt pastures; and with the exception of Syracuse, none of the Greek cities in those days, not even Rhodes itself, were perhaps so wealthy as Tarentum. This town from its position was perfectly peaceful: its population consisted of excellent seamen. Navigation and fishing in all likelihood was their element then, as it is now: this life of busy laziness is the delight of the Greek and the southern Italian; the Neapolitan is perfectly happy when rocking himself about in his fishing boat. Nature has given everything in plenty to the country of Tarentum. Probably the sea is nowhere in Europe so rich in shell and other fish, as in the bay of Tarentum: the poor Tarentine in his idleness is indeed as happy as a prince; he lives only on bread, salt, and olives, which he can always easily procure. Tarentum had no large tracts of land belonging to it, in which there was room for tillage. The Latin race, the Etruscans, Umbrians, Sabellians, and the rest, are born husbandmen. The Italian peasant is an excellent being as long as he is hereditary owner of the soil: he is honest and respectable, whilst the townspeople are good for nothing. The Italian, unless he be of Greek extraction, is quite unfit for a sea life: the Roman coast is supplied with fish by the southern towns, which were still Greek in the middle ages. The Greek is a bad husbandman, even as in ancient times, and not to be compared to the Italian. Although there is a great deal of agricultural knowledge to be found in Theophrastus’ book, the Greek did not feel happy in this pursuit: he likes to cultivate the olive-tree, the vine, but not corn. The Greek soil is also in many places almost wholly unfit for growing corn, and is far more suited for olives. The Greek is a cheerful, happy fisherman, and a capital sailor.
The Tarentines were a thoroughly democratic people, like the Athenians of the Piræeus, as Aristotle already remarks; owing to the revenue from customs and a variety of other sources, it was a very rich state. With these vast means they were enabled to keep standing armies, like the Dutch in the seventeenth century, as it was also then customary throughout the whole of Greece. General opinion is unfavourable to the Tarentines. At the time when they were engaged in war with the Romans, they were indeed a luxurious, unwarlike people; but the blame which is generally heaped upon them, is in the true spirit of human nature, which when some one, formerly mighty, has fallen, chooses rather to trace to the man himself the causes of his own ruin, than to pity him. I am convinced that in Tarentum, next to Athens, the wisest and most eminently intellectual men have been bred, and that the commonwealth made an excellent use of them. A state, which reared Archytas, the Leibnitz of his age, and which did not look upon him with jealousy, as the Ephesians did upon Hermodorus, but called him seven times to the office of general, cannot be lightly thought of; the Grecian mind in the whole of its fullness must have dwelt there. The wretched anecdotes which Athenæus, for instance, tells of the Tarentines, are refuted by that single fact. They do not deserve censure any more than those great characters reviled in Schiller’s Mary Stuart; a thing which I can never forgive in that fine poem. It is indeed possible, that Archytas and the other statesmen of Tarentum looked too much to the interest of their own town, and were not sufficiently imbued with the spirit of general Greek patriotism. To such a feeling the Athenians alone have raised themselves. Archytas may have kept up a good understanding with the tyrants of Syracuse, having regard rather to the advantage than to the honour of his city; yet this is a course from which, in unhappy times, the most worthy men of all countries, when they were at the helm of the state, have not kept altogether clear. The Tarentines are reproached with having employed foreign soldiers, and that in whole armies; first of all, Archidamus of Sparta; then Alexander of Epirus; then Cleonymus, Agathocles, and at last Pyrrhus. For this, Strabo taxes them with cowardice, charging them besides with having shown themselves unthankful to their protectors. Yet it was a general evil of the times after the Peloponnesian war, that militia soldiers were no longer brought into the field, but that standing armies came into use: this was owing to the circumstance, that wars were on a larger scale, and had become more bloody, so that the old stock of citizens was destroyed. The devastations which had attended them, had now made numbers of men homeless, who, especially in Greece, as in modern times in Switzerland, roved about by thousands, being the greatest of nuisances. There had indeed for a long time existed in Greece the fine custom, that the inhabitants of a town which had been conquered and destroyed, remained free, and were not sold for slaves; but all that they had was taken from them, and thus they were obliged to live by robbery. In the thirty years’ war, it also became more easy every year to find troops, πόλεμος πόλεμον τρέφει. These soldiers, who were always under arms, were far superior to the militia; and when once it was begun to employ them, the militia were soon no more able to stand against them at all. A town like Tarentum could raise no legions. This can only be done where there is a respectable and numerous peasantry; whence it happens that there are countries where no other choice is left but to enlist soldiers, as at Florence when the militia had got out of practice, whilst the same thing is ruinous for others. The people of Tarentum would thus have to employ mercenaries, and to keep a standing army would have been injurious to their freedom; if therefore they could do without troops, they were quite right in contenting themselves with their town militia. But if ever it became necessary to enlist troops, there was in Greece at Tænarus the gathering place of the men without a home (latrones, μισθοφόροι). These, however, were untrustworthy and faithless, as they followed him who paid the most, like the condotti in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and a condottiere was very apt to be guilty of treachery, or he became a tyrant. It was therefore much better to take princes with their well-trained armies into their service, the honour of the prince being a pledge to them. Besides which, why should the Tarentines put themselves out of their way in their trade and business, if they could do otherwise? It might become dangerous; but they wisely took care of themselves, as long as they could. In their dealings with Alexander, they were gainers; with Pyrrhus, however, this was not the case. The English system of enlistment also has been blamed without any insight into the merits of it.
The Tarentines got into a quarrel with the Lucanians, by whom Heraclea and Metapontum, which were in a manner under their protection, had been attacked. The Lucanians had at that time already lost again that part of Calabria which was afterwards called Bruttium: the population there, which was made up of the Pelasgian serfs of the Greek towns, had collected into a people, and had renounced their allegiance; on which the former had wisely recognised them, and made them their friends. In order to indemnify themselves, the Lucanians turned their arms against Tarentum, and tried to conquer Heraclea. In this strait, the Tarentines had sent for Archidamus of Sparta, who, with the unfortunate Phocian refugees, had engaged himself in the service of Crete; but he was killed on the very day that the battle of Chæronea was lost. After some years, they called in Alexander the Molossian, of Epirus, brother to Olympias, the queen of Philip, who also had given him his daughter Cleopatra in marriage. He had been an appanaged prince, and his dominions were very small. At first, he had been presented by Philip with three little towns in Cassopia on the Thesprotian coast; afterwards the latter, who spread his rule in Epirus, and everywhere took the strong places, raised him to the throne of the Molossians; yet Alexander, as king of that people, found that he was hardly able to do any thing. Philip followed the same line of policy with his relations, which Napoleon did with his brothers; they were to be kings, but without power; for which reason, Philip kept a stronghold like Ambracia for himself. In the times of Alexander of Macedon, our Alexander had to obey the commands of that old, insolent Antipater; he was not on good terms with Alexander, and according to the account of the ancients, it was jealousy of the glory of his nephew which moved him to go to Italy: he is said to have bitterly complained, that it had been his fate to fight against men, whilst the other had only women to withstand him. He went to Italy with views quite different from those of the Tarentines when they called him in. These had engaged him as a petty prince with a well trained army, for their protection; but Alexander went over with the intention of conquering for himself a kingdom, and thus there could not of course be any good understanding long kept up between them. He was successful: he overcame the Sallentines; made a diversion to Posidonia; freed the Greek towns, and united them in a confederacy of which he naturally became the στρατηγός and ἡγεμών. He was of course never at a loss for subsidies from the Tarentines, any more than the belligerent nations of the last century, who had them from England under Walpole; but the memory of his achievements has almost entirely past away: we find but a few stray notices in Tzetzes. His success was brilliant as long as he was on good terms with the Tarentines; but he betrayed his ambitious views and wanted to assume the title of a king of Italy (no doubt in the strict sense of the word). This stirred up the Tarentines, and caused a breach between the two parties. Whether they concluded a separate peace with the Lucanians, is uncertain; but as the assembly of the Greek towns was now held at Heraclea, although Tarentum was the most powerful and distinguished among them, it would seem that this change was made by Alexander, which clearly shows a quarrel with the Tarentines. As, however, the power of Alexander was now too inconsiderable, he seems to have carried on the war as an adventurer, like Charles XII.: he made roving expeditions. Pandosia, in the heart of Lucania, where he was surrounded by Lucanians and Bruttians, became his Pultawa: his army was divided, both divisions of it annihilated, and he himself slain. He had before that concluded a treaty with the Romans, which Livy mentions cursorily, but certainly from Roman annals. This is a proof how the Romans calculated circumstances; they had nothing to fear from him, and wanted to unite with him for no other reason than to overawe the Samnites, who had made a treaty with Tarentum. Real alliance between Rome and Alexander, there was none; for the treaty with the Samnites was still in force. As far as we can get an insight into these matters, we must blame the Romans for having taken the part of foreigners against a native and kindred people. The Samnites are not mentioned among those who at last made war against Alexander; but he had come into collision with them by his excursions: at Posidonia they fought against each other.
What would have been the consequence, had Alexander founded a kingdom of Italy, is a very interesting speculation. Probably it would only have made the victories of the Romans more easy; and therefore, also, their treaty with him was an act of farsighted policy.