The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 05

by Unknown

Roman Catapult

The first rank among the allies of Rome belonged to the tribes of the Latin confederation; their treaties with the republic contained generally more favourable conditions than were acquired by the other Italian communities. Thus, for instance, the Latins preserved their territory, their laws, their alliances, under the paramount control of Rome; they were placed, as regarded the payment of tribute, upon a footing of almost complete equality with the citizens of the republic; nor could they justly complain of being required to furnish a military contingent to fight side by side with the legions themselves. They could acquire the rights of Roman citizenship by the exercise of certain magistracies in their own state, or by the transfer of their domicile to Rome, provided they left children behind them in their native place, or by the successful impeachment of a Roman officer for political offences. In respect of property they enjoyed a portion of the Roman privileges. But they were excluded from the rights of Roman matrimony, and of paternal authority; from the faculty of willing in favour of a Roman citizen, or inheriting from one; nor could they claim the immunity from stripes and capital punishment, which was counted the most precious of all privileges by a people who invested their highest magistrate with the terrors of the axe and the rod. The condition of the Latin was far better than that of any other subjects of the republic, but it was decidedly inferior to that of the citizen; its most engaging feature was the capacity it conferred of acquiring completer rights, and changing the first foretaste of freedom into its full enjoyment.

This mass of privileges, peculiar, in the first instance, to the Latin cities, and flowing from the rights conceded to them by treaty, became extended in due time, under the general name of jus Latii, or Latinitas, both to individuals and to communities which had no connection with Latium at all. As the Roman law admitted, by a fiction, the existence of Romans without the city itself, so it allowed the name and rights of Latium to be claimed by more distant foreigners. These foreign Latins, under the name of New Latins, became, in process of time, a distinct class of citizens, a special subdivision of the second rank of the republic’s favoured children.

Among the allies of the republic, the Italians occupied a rank next to the Latins. The name of Italy was confined at this period to the peninsula, extending from the rivers Isère and Rubicon on the north to the promontories of Rhegium and Iapygia. The Etruscans, the Umbrians, the Samnites, the Marsians, the Greek communities of Campania and Apulia, in submitting to the Roman arms, had generally made treaties with the republic, but had failed to secure for themselves the advantageous terms extorted by the Latins in the period of her greater weakness or moderation. Yet in transferring their swords to the service of their conquerors, they had merited on many a battle-field the amelioration of their political lot. Accordingly the Italians were allowed, for the most part, to preserve their domestic independence, their laws, magistracies, and tribunals, while they were forbidden to form political alliances among one another; and, though free in outward appearance, they received the commands of Rome, which claimed to decide upon their mutual disputes. Together with domestic liberty they enjoyed, like the Latins, immunity from personal and territorial tribute, and shared with them the same guarantees for the acquisition and enjoyment of property. The chief point in which the Italian was inferior to the Latin was his not possessing the same capacity of becoming a Roman. In the natural order of things, it was requisite for the Italian to pass through the stage of Latinitas, or Latium, to obtain Roman civitas; nevertheless the privileges peculiarly his own were justly regarded as a boon in comparison with mere provinciality; for even within the barrier of the Alps the Gauls and Ligurians hardly escaped the character of enemies of the republic, and were subjected to military control and the severest exactions under the plenary authority of imperators and proconsuls. Accordingly these privileges became an object of desire to the less fortunate subjects of the empire, and, as in the case of the jus Latii, so also the jus Italicum became extended, in many instances, to individuals and communities beyond the limits of Italy.

The development of this political organisation, logical and methodical as it appears, was in fact the result of no theoretical legislation, but the gradual and almost fortuitous effect of a series of revolutions. Up to the moment of its complete accomplishment, even the wisest of the Roman statesmen neither counselled nor foresaw it. But thereupon Italy presented, under the supremacy of the metropolitan city, a hierarchy of communities, of which one was already completely Roman; the others more or less nearly prepared to become so; the whole machine, in all its parts and subordinations, seemed to gravitate with a slow and regular movement towards the central point—the franchise of the republic. But this movement was arrested by domestic jealousies and selfish prejudices. The same spirit of isolation and monopoly which had striven, in the time of the kings, to shut the gates of the city against the Latins and Etruscans, which had conceded so slowly and reluctantly the inferior grades of privilege to the Italians themselves, still arrayed itself against the natural tendency of the principle of assimilation. The jealousy of the Roman commons was blind and ignorant; that of the nobles, who came forward to marshal and direct it, was more consciously selfish and interested. All classes, with few and honourable exceptions of individual statesmen, wished to hinder, as far as they could, the Latins from becoming Romans, the Italians from becoming Latins.

The struggle for these privileges had commenced almost from the period of the first conquest of Latium and Italy; but it was not till after the overthrow of Carthage, and the commencement of a brief period of domestic repose, that it attained force and consistency, and succeeded in enlisting in its favour the leaders of Roman parties. With the extension of her conquests in the rich provinces of the East, the citizenship of Rome became more precious; and amidst the degradation of so many subject nations, the allies who had fought and bled for the republic felt themselves entitled to rise to a higher level. The Latins claimed with urgency and vehemence a perfect equality with the Romans, the Italians pretended to succeed, at least, to the privileges of the Latins; but to make the first concession was clearly no less than to open the door to the abolition of all existing distinctions. The Romans were not unnaturally alarmed at the shape in which the question now presented itself to them. The idea of sacrificing to the conquered the nationality of the conquerors was so new in the history of antiquity that we cannot wonder at the reluctance, the pious horror, with which it was generally regarded. Moreover, practical statesmen, who might soar above the scruples of a mere sentiment, were still perplexed and terrified at the prospect of the administrative difficulties which such a change would introduce. They beheld in their imagination the roads of the peninsula crowded with troops of foreigners hastening to Rome at every recurring election, to swamp the votes of the urban population; or taking up their abode within its walls, and conquering, as it were, the citadel of their conquerors. In the amalgamation of Rome with Italy they could only foresee the annihilation of Rome itself.

Meanwhile the allies, repulsed in every overt attempt to scale the fortress of the constitution, contrived to glide surreptitiously within the sacred pale. As early as the year 286 the censors discovered no less than twelve thousand Latins settled in the city, and pretending to the rank of genuine citizens. The intruders were indignantly expelled. Ten years later a new fraud was exposed. The foreigners sold their children to actual citizens, with the understanding that they should be immediately enfranchised. The stroke of the prætor’s wand conferred upon them the full franchise of the city. The precautions and prohibitions of the senate would have been of little avail, had they not been seconded, in a great measure, by the magistrates of the Italian cities themselves, who regarded with jealousy the flight of their own people to Rome, whereby the burden of their domestic dues were enhanced. The Samnites and Pelignians reclaimed four thousand of their own countrymen who had thus established themselves in the Latin town of Fregellæ, there acquiring the Latin privileges and preparing to sue for the Roman. For half a century, however, these fraudulent acquisitions of the Roman franchise were only partial or individual. The agitation of the Sempronian reforms raised a general ferment in the minds of the Italians, and gave force and volume to the tide of their ambition.

It would seem that while the great Roman nobles pretended to detain vast tracts of public domain, they cultivated and even occupied only small portions. The conquered communities, though nominally dispossessed of their lands, were allowed, by abuse and connivance, to enjoy the use of a large part of them. But when the state should resume her rights over these estates, and actually redistribute them among her poorer citizens, the claims of the intruding natives would meet with no consideration; they would be dispossessed of them a second time, and absolutely excluded from their enjoyment. Accordingly, upon the first mooting of the Agrarian laws of Tiberius, all the Italians found themselves united by the same pressing interest, and they had no other alternative than either to defeat the passing of these laws by combining with the faction opposed to them in Rome itself, or, by obtaining the rights of the city, to acquire a legal title to share with the actual citizens. They hesitated and balanced as to their course; but upon the whole the wish to obtain Roman privileges and Roman exemptions, to escape the tyranny of Roman magistrates and enjoy the fruits of Roman conquest, combined with the legitimate ambition of their soldiers and statesmen to enter upon the noble field of Roman employments, determined them to press their claims to admission. For a hundred and fifty years the various races inhabiting the peninsula, distinct as they were in origin and language, had been arrayed together under the same discipline and a common yoke. The Romans had unconsciously formed their subjects into one nation, and the time was arrived when a common sentiment could arm the whole mighty mass in a combination against them. Italy had at last become a cry and a sentiment not less powerful than Rome herself.