Roman History, Books I-III

by Livy

Immediately after this victory, that involved a most ruinous precedent, a levy was proclaimed; and, the tribunes being now overawed, the consuls accomplished their object without any opposition. Then indeed the commons became enraged more at the inactivity of the tribunes than at the authority of the consuls: they declared there was an end of their liberty: that things had returned to their old condition: that the tribunician power had died along with Genucius and was buried with him; that other means must be devised and adopted, by which the patricians might be resisted: and that the only means to that end was for the people to defend themselves, since they had no other help: that four-and-twenty lictors waited on the consuls, and they men of the common people: that nothing could be more despicable, or weaker, if only there were persons to despise them; that each person magnified those things and made them objects of terror to himself. When they had excited one another by these words, a lictor was despatched by the consuls to Volero Publilius, a man belonging to the commons, because he declared that, having been a centurion, he ought not to be made a common soldier. Volero appealed to the tribunes. When no one came to his assistance, the consuls ordered the man to be stripped and the rods to be got ready. "I appeal to the people," said Volero, "since the tribunes prefer to see a Roman citizen scourged before their eyes, than themselves to be butchered by you each in his bed." The more vehemently he cried out, the more violently did the lictor tear off his clothes and strip him. Then Volero, being both himself a man of great bodily strength, and aided by his partisans, having thrust back the lictor, retired into the thickest part of the crowd, where the outcry of those who expressed their indignation was loudest, crying out: "I appeal, and implore the protection of the commons; assist me, fellow-citizens: assist me, fellow-soldiers: it is no use to wait for the tribunes, who themselves stand in need of your aid." The men, excited, made ready as if for battle: and it was clear that a general crisis was at hand, that no one would have respect for anything, either public or private right. When the consuls had faced this violent storm, they soon found out that authority unsupported by strength had but little security; the lictors being maltreated, and the fasces broken, they were driven from the forum into the senate-house, uncertain how far Volero would follow up his victory. After that, the disturbance subsiding, having ordered the members to be summoned to the senate, they complained of the insults offered to themselves, of the violence of the people, of the daring conduct of Volero. After many violent measures had been proposed, the older members prevailed, who did not approve of the rash behaviour of the commons being met by the resentment of the patricians.

The commons having warmly espoused the cause of Volero, at the next meeting, secured his election as tribune of the people for that year, in which Lucius Pinarius and Publics Furius were consuls: and, contrary to the opinion of all, who thought that he would make free use of his tribuneship to harass the consuls of the preceding year, postponing private resentment to the public interest, without the consuls being attacked even by a single word, he brought a bill before the people that plebeian magistrates should be elected at the comitia tributa.[73] A measure of no small importance was now proposed, under an aspect at first sight by no means alarming; but one of such a nature that it really deprived the patricians of all power of electing whatever tribunes they pleased by the suffrage of their clients. The patricians resisted to the utmost this proposal, which met with the greatest approval of the commons: and though none of the college[74] could be induced by the influence either of the consuls or of the chief members of the senate to enter a protest against it, which was the only means of effectual resistance, yet the matter, a weighty one from its own importance, was spun out by party struggles for a whole year. The commons re-elected Volero as tribune. The senators, considering that the matter would end in a desperate struggle, elected as Consul Appius Claudius, the son of Appius, who was both hated by and had hated the commons, ever since the contests between them and his father. Titus Quinctius was assigned to him as his colleague. Immediately, at the beginning of the year,[75]no other question took precedence of that regarding the law. But like Volero, the originator of it, so his colleague, Lætorius, was both a more recent, as well as a more energetic, supporter of it. His great renown in war made him overbearing, because, in the age in which he lived, no one was more prompt in action. He, while Volero confined himself to the discussion of the law, avoiding all abuse of the consuls, broke out into accusations against Appius and his family, as having ever been most overbearing and cruel toward the Roman commons, contending that he had been elected by the senators, not as consul, but as executioner, to harass and torture the people: his tongue, unskilled in speech, as was natural in a soldier, was unable to give adequate expression to the freedom of his sentiments. When, therefore, language failed him, he said: "Romans, since I do not speak with as much readiness as I make good what I have spoken, attend here to-morrow. I will either die before your eyes, or will carry the law." On the following day the tribunes took possession of the platform: the consuls and the nobles took their places together in the assembly to obstruct the law. Lætorius ordered all persons to be removed, except those going to vote. The young nobles kept their places, paying no regard to the officer; then Lætorius ordered some of them to be seized. The consul Appius insisted that the tribune had no jurisdiction over any one except a plebeian; for that he was not a magistrate of the people in general, but only of the commons; and that even he himself could not, according to the usage of their ancestors, by virtue of his authority remove any person, because the words were as follows: "If ye think proper, depart, Quirites." He was easily able to disconcert Lætorius by discussing his right thus contemptuously. The tribune, therefore, burning with rage, sent his officer to the consul; the consul sent his lictor to the tribune, exclaiming that he was a private individual, without military office and without civil authority: and the tribune would have been roughly handled, had not both the entire assembly risen up with great warmth in behalf of the tribune against the consul, and a crowd of people belonging to the excited multitude, rushed from all parts of the city into the forum. Appius, however, withstood this great storm with obstinacy, and the contest would have ended in a battle, not without bloodshed, had not Quinctius, the other consul, having intrusted the men of consular rank with the task of removing his colleague from the forum by force, if they could not do so in any other way, himself now assuaged the raging people by entreaties, now implored the tribunes to dismiss the assembly. Let them, said he, give their passion time to cool: delay would not in any respect deprive them of their power, but would add prudence to strength; and the senators would be under the control of the people, and the consul under that of the senators.

The people were with difficulty pacified by Quinctius; the other consul with much more difficulty by the patricians. The assembly of the people having been at length dismissed, the consuls convened the senate; in which, though fear and resentment by turns had produced a diversity of opinions, the more their minds were called off, by lapse of time, from passion to reflection, the more adverse did they become to contentiousness, so that they returned thanks to Quinctius, because it was owing to his exertions that the disturbance had been quieted. Appius was requested to give his consent that the consular dignity should be merely so great as it could be in a state if it was to be united: it was declared that, as long as the tribunes and consuls claimed all power, each for his own side, no strength was left between: that the commonwealth was distracted and torn asunder: that the object aimed at was rather to whom it should belong, than that it should be safe. Appius, on the contrary, called gods and men to witness that the commonwealth was being betrayed and abandoned through cowardice; that it was not the consul who had failed to support the senate, but the senate the consul: that more oppressive conditions were now being submitted to than had been submitted to on the Sacred Mount. Overcome, however, by the unanimous feeling of the senators, he desisted: the law was carried without opposition.

Then for the first time the tribunes were elected in the comita tributa. Piso is the authority for the statement that three were added to the number, as if there had been only two before. He also gives the names of the tribunes, Gnæus Siccius, Lucius Numitorius, Marcus Duellius, Spurius Icilius, Lucius Mecilius. During the disturbance at Rome, a war broke out with the Volscians and Æquans, who had laid waste the country, so that, if any secession of the people took place, they might find a refuge with them. Afterward, when matters were settled, they moved back their camp. Appius Claudius was sent against the Volscians; the Æquans fell to Quinctius as his province. Appius exhibited the same severity in war as at home, only more unrestrained, because it was free from the control of the tribunes. He hated the commons with a hatred greater than that inherited from his father: he had been defeated by them: when he had been chosen consul as the only man able to oppose the influence of the tribunes, a law had been passed, which former consuls had obstructed with less effect, amid hopes of the senators by no means so great as those now placed in him. His resentment and indignation at this stirred his imperious temper to harass the army by the severity of his command; it could not, however, be subdued by any exercise of authority, with such a spirit of opposition were the soldiers filled. They carried out all orders slowly, indolently, carelessly, and stubbornly: neither shame nor fear restrained them. If he wished the march to be accelerated, they designedly went more slowly: if he came up to them to encourage them in their work, they all relaxed the energy which they had before exerted of their own accord: they cast down their eyes in his presence, they silently cursed him as he passed by; so that that spirit, unconquered by plebeian hatred, was sometimes moved. Every kind of severity having been tried without effect, he no longer held any intercourse with the soldiers; he said the army was corrupted by the centurions; he sometimes gibingly called them tribunes of the people and Voleros.

None of these circumstances were unknown to the Volscians, and they pressed on with so much the more vigour, hoping that the Roman soldiers would entertain the same spirit of opposition against Appius as they had formerly exhibited against the consul Fabius. However, they showed themselves still more embittered against Appius than against Fabius. For they were not only unwilling to conquer, like the army of Fabius, but even wished to be conquered. When led forth into the field, they made for their camp in ignominious flight, and did not stand their ground until they saw the Volscians advancing against their fortifications, and the dreadful havoc in the rear of their army. Then they were compelled to put forth their strength for battle, in order that the now victorious enemy might be dislodged from their lines; while, however, it was sufficiently clear that the Roman soldiers were only unwilling that the camp should be taken, in regard to all else they gloried in their own defeat and disgrace. When the haughty spirit of Appius, in no wise broken by this behaviour of the soldiers, purposed to act with still greater severity, and summoned a meeting, the lieutenants and tribunes flocked around him, recommending him by no means to decide to put his authority to the proof, the entire strength of which lay in unanimous obedience, saying that the soldiers generally refused to come to the assembly, and that their voices were heard on all sides, demanding that the camp should be removed from the Volscian territory: that the victorious enemy were but a little time ago almost at the very gates and rampart, and that not merely a suspicion but the visible form of a grievous disaster presented itself to their eyes. Yielding at last—since they gained nothing save a respite from punishment—having prorogued the assembly, and given orders that their march should be proclaimed for the following day, at daybreak he gave the signal for departure by sound of trumpet. At the very moment when the army, having got clear of the camp, was forming itself, the Volscians, as if they had been aroused by the same signal, fell upon those in the rear: from these the alarm spreading to the van, threw both the battalions and companies into such a state of consternation, that neither could the general's orders be distinctly heard, nor the lines drawn up. No one thought of anything but flight. In such loose order did they make their way through heaps of dead bodies and arms, that the enemy ceased their pursuit sooner than the Romans their flight. The soldiers having at length rallied from their disordered flight, the consul, after he had in vain followed his men, bidding them return, pitched his camp in a peaceful part of the country; and having convened an assembly, after inveighing not without good reason against the army, as traitors to military discipline, deserters of their posts, asking them, one by one where were their standards, where their arms, he first beat with rods and then beheaded those soldiers who had thrown down their arms, the standard-bearers who had lost their standards, and also the centurions, and those who received double allowance,[76] who had deserted their ranks. With respect to the rest of the rank and file, every tenth man was drawn by lot for punishment.

On the other hand, the consul and soldiers among the Æquans vied with each other in courtesy and acts of kindness: Quinctius was naturally milder in disposition, and the ill-fated severity of his colleague had caused him to give freer vent to his own good temper. This remarkable agreement between the general and his army the Æquans did not venture to meet, but suffered the enemy to go through their country committing devastations in every direction. Nor were depredations committed more extensively in that quarter in any preceding war. The whole of the booty was given to the soldiers. In addition, they received praise, in which the minds of soldiers find no less pleasure than in rewards. The army returned more reconciled both to their general, and also, thanks to the general, to the patricians, declaring that a parent had been given to them, a tyrant to the other army by the senate. The year which had passed with varied success in war, and violent dissensions at home and abroad, was rendered memorable chiefly by the elections of tribes, a matter which was more important from the victory in the contest[77] that was undertaken than from any real advantage; for more dignity was withdrawn from the elections themselves by the fact that the patricians were excluded from the council, than influence either added to the commons or taken from the patricians.[78]

A still more stormy year followed, when Lucius Valerius and Titus Æmilius were consuls, both by reason of the struggles between the different orders concerning the agrarian law, as well as on account of the trial of Appius Claudius, for whom Marcus Duilius and Gnæus Siccius appointed a day of trial, as a most active opposer of the law, and one who supported the cause of the possessors of the public land, as if he were a third consul [79]. Never before was an accused person so hateful to the commons brought to trial before the people, overwhelmed with their resentment against himself and also against his father. The patricians too seldom made equal exertions so readily on one's behalf: they declared that the champion of the senate, and the upholder of their dignity, set up as a barrier against all the storms of the tribunes and commons, was exposed to the resentment of the commons, although he had only exceeded the bounds of moderation in the contest. Appius Claudius himself was the only one of the patricians who made light both of the tribunes and commons and his own trial. Neither the threats of the commons, nor the entreaties of the senate, could ever persuade him even to change his garb, or accost persons as a suppliant, or even to soften or moderate his usual harshness of speech in the least degree, when his cause was to be pleaded before the people. The expression of his countenance was the same; the same stubbornness in his looks, the same spirit of pride in his language: so that a great part of the commons felt no less awe of Appius when on his trial than they had felt for him when consul. He pleaded his cause only once, and in the same haughty style of an accuser which he had been accustomed to adopt on all occasions: and he so astounded both the tribunes and the commons by his intrepidity, that, of their own accord, they postponed the day of trial, and then allowed the matter to die out. No long interval elapsed: before, however, the appointed day came, he died of some disease; and when the tribunes of the people endeavoured to put a stop to his funeral panegyric, the commons would not allow the burial day of so great a man to be defrauded of the customary honours: and they listened to his eulogy when dead as patiently as they had listened to the charges brought against him when living, and attended his obsequies in vast numbers.

In the same year the consul Valerius, having marched with an army against the Aequans, and being unable to draw out the enemy to an engagement, proceeded to attack their camp. A dreadful storm coming down from heaven accompanied by thunder and hail prevented him. Then, on a signal for a retreat being given, their surprise was excited by the return of such fair weather, that they felt scruples about attacking a second time a camp which was defended as it were by some divine power: all the violence of the war was directed to plundering the country. The other consul, Aemilius, conducted the war in Sabine territory. There also, because the enemy confined themselves within their walls, the lands were laid waste. Then the Sabines, roused by the burning not only of the farms, but of the villages also, which were thickly inhabited, after they had fallen in with the raiders retired from an engagement the issue of which was left undecided, and on the following day removed their camp into a safer situation. This seemed a sufficient reason to the consul why he should leave the enemy as conquered, and depart thence, although the war was as yet unfinished.

During these wars, while dissensions still continued at home, Titus Numicius Priscus and Aulus Verginius were elected consuls. The commons appeared determined no longer to brook the delay in accepting the agrarian law, and extreme violence was on the point of being resorted to, when it became known by the smoke from the burning farms and the flight of the peasants that the Volscians were at hand; this circumstance checked the sedition that was now ripe and on the point of breaking out. The consuls, under the immediate compulsion of the senate, led forth the youth from the city to war, and thereby rendered the rest of the commons more quiet. And the enemy indeed, having merely filled the Romans with fear that proved groundless, departed in great haste. Numicius marched to Antium against the Volscians, Verginius against the Aequans. There, after they had nearly met with a great disaster in an attack from an ambuscade, the bravery of the soldiers restored their fortunes, which had been endangered through the carelessness of the consul. Affairs were conducted better in the case of the Volscians. The enemy were routed in the first engagement, and driven in flight into the city of Antium, a very wealthy place, considering the times: the consul, not venturing to attack it, took from the people of Antium another town, Caeno,[80] which was by no means so wealthy While the Aequans and Volscians engaged the attention of the Roman armies, the Sabines advanced in their depredations even to the gates of the city: then they themselves, a few days later, sustained from the two armies heavier losses than they had inflicted, both the consuls having entered their territories under the influence of exasperation.

At the close of the year to some extent there was peace, but, as frequently at other times, a peace disturbed by contests between the patricians and commons. The exasperated commons refused to attend the consular elections: Titus Quinctius and Quintus Servilius were elected consuls through the influence of the patricians and their dependents: the consuls had a year similar to the preceding, disturbed at the beginning, and afterward tranquil by reason of war abroad. The Sabines crossing the plains of Crustumerium by forced marches, after carrying fire and sword along the banks of the Anio, being repulsed when they had nearly come up to the Colline gate and the walls, drove off, however, great booty of men and cattle: the consul Servilius, having pursued them with an army bent on attacking them, was unable to overtake the main body itself in the level country: he, however, extended his devastations over such a wide area, that he left nothing unmolested by war, and returned after having obtained booty many times greater than that carried off by the enemy. The public cause was also extremely well supported among the Volscians by the exertions both of the general and the soldiers. First a pitched battle was fought, on level ground, with great slaughter and much bloodshed on both sides: and the Romans, because their small numbers caused their loss to be more keenly felt, would have given way, had not the consul, by a well-timed fiction, reanimated the army, by crying out that the enemy was in flight on the other wing; having charged, they, by believing themselves victorious, became so. The consul, fearing lest, by pressing on too far, he might renew the contest, gave the signal for retreat. A few days intervened, both sides resting as if by tacit suspension of hostilities: during these days a vast number of persons from all the states of the Volscians and Equans came to the camp, feeling no doubt that the Romans would depart during the night, if they perceived them. Accordingly, about the third watch [81], they came to attack the camp. Quinctius having allayed the confusion which the sudden panic had occasioned, and ordered the soldiers to remain quiet in their tents, led out a cohort of the Hernicans for an advance guard: the trumpeters and horn blowers he mounted on horseback, and commanded them to sound their trumpets before the rampart, and to keep the enemy in suspense till daylight: during the rest of the night everything was so quiet in the camp, that the Romans had even the opportunity of sleeping.[82] The sight of the armed infantry, whom they both considered to be more numerous than they were, and at the same time Romans, the bustle and neighing of the horses, which became restless, both from the fact of strange riders being mounted on them, and moreover from the sound of the trumpets frightening them, kept the Volscians intently awaiting an attack of the enemy.