 CHAPTER XIX. The laws of the Twelve Tables were not intended to be a reform of the Constitution. They referred to the private rights of the citizens alone, especially to the civil law. The Constitution of the Republic was not touched by them and was left entirely what it had been before. But the violent commotions which accompanied the downfall of the decimveral legislators, and which at one time threatened a dissolution of the Commonwealth, involved a formal restoration of the old order of things, which was accompanied by a few slight modifications and new legal guarantees. In the first place, the annual consulship was re-established, but the functions of Treasurer or Paymaster, Quistor, which had hitherto been discharged by a nominee of the consul, were now entrusted to an annual officer elected by popular suffrage. By this means a check was imposed on the disposal of the public money by the consul. The Quistor, though still acting under the authority of the consul, and looked upon as his subordinate, had to superintend the military expenditure and to account for the disposal of booty taken in war. He had to lay his accounts, before the Senate, the body which had the chief control of the public finances. The consulship was restored, subject to the old restrictions. The right of appeal from the consul's decisions to the popular assembly was guaranteed by his special enactment, which provided that no magistrate whatever should be elected unrestrained by this safeguard of popular liberty. As by the Decomviral legislation the private rights of the plebeians and patricians had been equalized, the right of appeal was now probably extended to the plebeians. The tribunship and ideal ship were also restored with their privilege of inviolability and the right of intercession. Special precautions were taken to secure the uninterrupted succession of tribunes so that the people might never be in want of their legal protectors. Finally, a law passed by the consul's valerious and heracious acknowledged the plebeian assembly of tribes as a sovereign assembly of the Roman people. It laid down the rule that the whole Roman people should be legally bound by the decisions of the tribes. Whether this important law was an enactment entirely new in substance or only the formal acknowledgment of an existing plebeian right and as such part of the general restoration of the old constitution we are not informed. The latter, however, seems the most probable hypothesis, for in reality the plebeians must have been acknowledged as possessing the right of legally binding the whole Roman people by their decisions from the moment when the tribunes elected by them were invested with a public authority to which the consul's themselves had to bow. The legislative sovereignty of the plebeian tribes was now extended more and more. It superseded gradually the legislation of the older Comitia Cantorriata, which preserved only their rights of electing consuls and afterwards the praetors and censors, the right of deciding on peace and war, and the supreme criminal legislation in cases of appeal. The assembly of tribes, on the other hand, became now the only engine for legislative enactments, and was even empowered to elect those inferior magistrates who were subsequently appointed, such as quaistores and idilis. Again, questions of foreign as well as domestic policy were henceforth submitted to the decision of the plebeian assembly of tribes, so that the center of gravity which had originally lain in the patrician assembly of Curiees, and then in the mixed assembly of centuries, was finally shifted entirely to the plebeian committee of tribes. But this change was not effected at once. It was the slow result of a gradual abolition of all political privileges attaching to the patrician body. When the old consular constitution was restored after the decumvirate, these privileges still existed entire, though the time was come when they were destined to fall one after another. First of all, the law against intermarriage between the two classes of citizens was abolished on the motion of a tribune of the people called Gaius Canuleus in 445 B.C. This law which seems to have caused so much heart burning, and to have been a bone of contention in the second year of the decumvirate, was really no advantage to the patricians, but on the contrary a cause of weakness, as it prevented the aristocracy from gaining strength by the infusion of new blood. It can have been nothing but a narrow-minded religious scruple which opposed mixed marriages under the impression that only a certain number of families enjoyed that special favor of the gods which secured divine protection to the state administered by them. That they alone could approach the gods by augury, and possess the Auspicia, be as it were the mediators between gods and men, a priesthood by birth, propagated only by purity of blood and intermarriage among themselves alone. How much these religious scruples were affected and supported by self-interest we have no internal evidence to decide, but it is not at all improbable that they were strengthened by the fact that political power and material advantages were bound up with the exclusive religious sanctity claimed by the patrician houses. This exclusive possession of political power by the patricians was the tower of strength against which the plebeians henceforth directed their attacks. Hitherto, as we have seen, they had only claimed equality of private rights and protection from wrong. They had obtained the latter in their tribunes and the former in the decumviral legislation to which the cannulaean law of marriage must be looked upon as an appendix. In the very same year, 445 B.C., the tribunes brought in a bill to sanction the election of plebeian consuls. The patricians resisted with all their might, but they were only able to alter the form and not the substance of the proposal. They objected to plebeian consuls, but consented to the election of chief magistrates with consular power, to be called military tribunes, three in number, and eligible promiscuously from the two orders of citizens. What they proposed to gain or did gain by this change in title is not quite clear. They cannot have been so childish as to fight a political battle for a mere name. It is probable that the military tribunes were considered in rank inferior to the consuls, and that they lacked some of the attributes and rights which the consuls possessed. At the same time the increase in the number of chief magistrates implies that one of the three was intended to discharge the duties of chief judge, for which afterwards a praetor was elected, and that the patricians reserved to themselves the right of filling this office with one of their own number. The other two military tribunes whose principal duty was the command of the army were to be elected indiscriminately from patricians and plebeians, and the important reservation was made that the government of the republic should be entrusted to consuls whenever the senate should deem it advisable. The consuls, of course, could be taken from the patrician body alone, and it was therefore left to the decision of the senate whether the new law was to be applied or not. Even with these restrictions and modifications the apparent gain of the plebeians was very important, but unfortunately for them their opponents did not act with good faith, and succeeded in making their concessions almost nougatari. As the law now stood, the policy of the patricians was directed to two points, first to obtain a decree of the senate for the election of consuls, and if this could not be carried, to make such good use of their influence in the comitia of centuries as to secure the election of patricians for the office of military tribunes to the exclusion of plebeians. For a considerable time the patricians were entirely successful. During the period between 444 BC and 409 BC, that is, for 35 years, they managed to prevent the election of military tribunes and to substitute consuls not less than twenty times, and up to the year 400 BC, that is, for twenty-three years, in which they were compelled to yield to the demands of the plebeians and to allow the election of military tribunes instead of consuls, they frustrated the success of plebeian candidates. For nearly half a century, therefore, from 445 to 400, the victory which the plebeians had gained turned out to be really barren of results. Neither consuls or military tribunes directed the government they were always taken from the patrician order, although the law sanctioned the election of plebeians, at least for one of these offices. The explanation of this curious circumstance seems at first sight very difficult. How could the plebeians rest satisfied with an apparent victory, with a mere change in the law, without following it up practically by enforcing the law? If they were strong enough to compel their opponents to surrender a privilege after a stubborn contest, could they lack the strength to appropriate the spoils? The truth seems to be that a reaction took place after the great constitutional struggle in the time of the deconvirate, and that the equalization and codification of the law which were affected at that period removed many of the grievances of the plebeian body. For over the party in possession of the government, with all the influence of nobility, wealth, political experience and organization, was not easily beaten at elections if it chose to exert the whole of its power. This the Roman patricians were determined to do. In the Senate they were all powerful, in fact the Senate was as yet unpolluted by plebeian members. In the Comedia Cantorriata they must have possessed a working majority, either by their own votes, or by the votes of their dependents and adherents. If these could not be trusted the patricians had it in their power to influence the elections through a presiding magistrate of their own order, who might refuse to accept the votes of an opposition candidate, or might adjourn the election if he feared it would go against his party. He might even refuse to declare a plebeian duly elected on the pretext of some irregularity. The auspices might be made use of as a political weapon. The gods might declare through the mouth of a patrician auger that they were not satisfied with the result of an election. The Senate might withhold the patrim auctoritas, or finally the patrician Comedia Cantorriata might object to confer upon a plebeian magistrate the imperium, without which he could not lawfully take the command of the army. Such a copious store of political weapons explained sufficiently the continued ascendancy of the patrician body, in spite of the temporary success gained by the plebeians at a time of great political excitement. CHAPTER XIX Nevertheless there are indications of very severe struggles during this period. It seems that the patricians did not scruple to resort to violent measures when opposed by plebeian candidates of more than average ability or determination. On such occasions they did not shrink even from murder as we learn from the fate of Spurrius Mylius. Ten years after the decomvirate in 439 BC, dearth and famine desolated the land. The people suffered grievously, though a special commissioner of markets Prifectus Anoni was appointed to buy up corn for the supply of the people. In this emergency Spurrius Mylius, a rich plebeian, came forward as a benefactor of the poor, distributed corn gratis or at very low prices, and made himself so popular that the people appeared inclined to raise him to the consulship if he desired that honor. The patricians suspected him of even greater ambition, at least they pretended to fear that he was planning the overthrow of the Republic and the establishment of a monarchy. Upon information given by the commissioner of markets, that secret meetings were held at the house of Mylius and that arms were being collected, a dictator was appointed as in times of imminent danger to save the Republic. Sincenatus, the conqueror of the Ichaeans, was the man selected. He set up his tribunal in the Forum and sent Servilius Ahala, his master of the horse, to summon Mylius before him. Mylius, foreseeing the danger which threatened him, implored the protection of the people, whereupon Ahala drew a dagger and stabbed him to death, and Sincenatus, as dictator, justified the deed. The people were terrified and cowed for the moment, but they soon recovered confidence and Servilius Ahala was driven into exile and his property confiscated. The violent proceeding against such a popular man as Spurrius Mylius was perhaps not isolated. It shows that party spirit ran high in Rome at this time and that the patricians were still strong enough to thwart the endeavors of the plebeians and to keep them out of offices which they had a legal right to hold. Meanwhile, an important modification was made in the organization of the government by the creation of the kensorship in 443 B.C. From the first establishment of the Comedia Cantoriana it had been necessary to classify the citizens of Rome according to their property. The assessments necessary for this purpose were made by the chief magistrates from time to time, as necessity or expediency seemed to require. It is probable that these duties were imperfectly discharged by the consuls, who had so much other work on hand, and that the senses which ought to have taken place at regular periods was often postponed under the pressure of war or internal disputes. It was but natural that with an increasing tendency to organize the different branches of the administration as separate magistracies, the duties of the kensorship should at last be assigned to an officer elected for that special purpose just as the coistership and afterwards the pridership were established as distinct from the consulship. The establishment of the kensorship in 443 B.C. is only one feature of that general tendency to multiply magistracies by which the simplicity of the original republic was expanded into the elaborate organization of a more advanced period. Why the year 443 was chosen for the creation of the kensorship is not recorded, but probably we shall not err if we look upon the reform as a result of the changes consequent upon the deconveral legislation, and in particular of the law which substituted military tribunes eligible from patricians and plebeians alike for the original patrician consuls. The patricians naturally wished to keep the management of public affairs as much as possible in their own hands, and they reserved to their own order the eligibility to the new office of kensor. They succeeded in keeping exclusive possession of it for nearly one hundred years. In 351 B.C. the first plebeian kensor was elected, and not until 339 B.C. was a formal law passed to secure the regular election of one plebeian to the office. In creating the new office of kensors, the Romans followed the practice established for the consuls and questors of electing not one but two magistrates to act as colleagues. The motive must have been, as in the older case, the wish to allow one kensor by his intercession to control the action of the other, a motive amply justified by experience. As the census could not be taken every year, the kensorship differed from the other republican offices in point of duration. It was made to extend over five years, the intention being that once in that period which, from the religious ceremony of lustration, that is purification of the people, the Romans call the lustrum, a new valuation of property should take place and that every Roman citizen should have the place assigned according to which he had to vote and to contribute to the burdens of the state. The lists of citizens drawn up by the kensors thus became the authentic registers recognized by the state. No man could claim the rights of a Roman citizen whose name was not on their lists and the constitutional privileges possessed by Roman magistrates were such that on the occasion of the census the kensors acting with the discretion almost despotic were allowed to transfer citizens to other classes or tribes and even to exclude them altogether and to admit freedmen to the rank of citizens. In fact to remodel the community, to alter even the principles on which the census was based and thus to adapt the old institutions to the varying conditions of the times. It was natural that the original sums fixed as the census of different classes should not remain a correct standard for a long period and that the mode of assessment had to be modified as the habits of life and the views held on the value of personal or real property were changed. Thus the kensors were, in point of fact, the agents for periodical reforms and prevented the necessity of a sweeping reform bill such as that which was passed in England in 1832 to reconcile the principle of representation which suited the 15th century to the altered economical and social conditions of the 19th. But the kensors were not confined to drawing up the lists of private citizens alone. A duty if not more important, certainly more calculated to give them weight with a nobility, was the periodical renewal of the Senate. The members of that body as we have seen were not elected by the people, like those of the House of Commons, nor were they hereditary, like those of the House of Lords. They were nominated by the Executive, that is, by the Kings in the early period which we call regal, and by the Consuls after the establishment of the Republic. Upon the establishment of the kensorship this nomination was made to devolve on the kensors. They had to draw up a list of the Senators and it was left to their discretion to add new members in the place of those deceased and also to strike out the names of men whom they considered unworthy of the great honor and responsibility of a seat in that August Assembly. As a rule the Senators were nominated for life, but the law by sanctioning a periodical revision of the senatorial list enabled the kensors to exclude men notoriously unworthy. If this important duty had been exercised in a reckless party spirit so that the kensors had ejected the members of what we should call the opposition, the Roman Senate would inevitably have lost that character of a fixed and settled institution which enabled it in the good old times to control all parties and to direct the public policy with a view only to the national interest. Every election of kensors would have become a test of the strength of parties and the victorious party would each time have excluded its opponents from a share in the government. A periodical oscillation would have been the result in the policy of Rome such as we are accustomed to see in modern constitutional governments, but the evils of such an oscillation would have been much greater in Rome than they are in a state where the crown represents the permanent national interests which are above the interests of conflicting parties. Besides the general list of Roman citizens and the list of senators, the kensors had to draw up a list of the knights. The centuries of knights formed a part of that organization known as the Constitution of Centuries generally attributed to Servius Tullius. Originally, the centuries of knights or horsemen, eighteen in number, were intended to contain the young men fit for cavalry service in the army, and the cavalry of the legions continued to be made up chiefly of the men thus selected by the kensors. But as the assembly of centuries gradually lost its military character and became a purely political body, the centuries of knights assumed more and more the character of a select body of citizens distinct from the great mass by wealth and connection. Knighthood began to be looked upon as a preliminary stage to the senatorial rank and as constituting an intermediate class. It comprised the young men of the noble houses, though as far as we know no property qualification was exacted for membership before the time of the grocchi. It was more and more considered an honor to belong to the centuries of knights, and as they counted eighteen votes in the conturiate assembly and also enjoyed the right of voting before the others, they possessed great influence. Hence older men who had served their time in the army and even senators found it desirable to retain their votes in the centuries of knights, and the kensorial discretion in drawing up these lists was one of great importance. From the exercise of these knights the kensors acquired in course of time a power much coveted and highly valued, the power of sitting in judgment on the civic virtue of all Roman citizens, of punishing misconduct by exclusion from public rights and honors. They acquired what was called the kensura morum, the censorship of morals which supplied a defect in the code of laws, and in that code of public decency and social propriety which in our own time is successfully enforced by public opinion aided by the press. As the full exercise of this moral judicature of the kensors belongs to a later period we need not here dwell upon it any longer. In the kensorial functions of classifying the citizens according to their property was contained the germ of their financial duties. They obtained in course of time the control of the public income and expenditure especially with regard to the revenue from domain lands and to the outlay on public works. The full development of these financial duties however belongs to a later period. When the kensoreship had been tried for two lustral periods it was found necessary in 434 BC to modify the tenure of office and to limit its duration to one year and a half. But probably the motive for this change was not the wish to limit the legitimate power and authority of the office. It is quite evident that such a process as a census ought always to be accomplished in the shortest possible period. If the kensores took full five years before they completed their lists of citizens, knights, and senators and assessed the property of each they not only held the whole community and suspense for all this long period and thereby produced the feeling of insecurity but they ran the risk of publishing statistical data not in accordance with actual facts. In the year 421 the principle of multiplying the number of chief magistrates in the interest of the public service and in that of the plebeians received a further illustration by the doubling of the number of questors. It was arranged that both patricians and plebeians should be eligible. No doubt the patricians expected to get their own candidate selected as regularly for this office as for the military tribunship. But in this expectation they were deceived. The election took place not like that of military tribunes and consuls in the assemblies of centuries but in that of the tribes and in these patricians had not the same influence as in the other assembly. Consequently we find that as early as 410 BC three questors out of four were plebeians. This was the first triumph of the plebeians. Soon after in 499 and 396 BC they carried the election of several plebeian military tribunes and thus for the first time realized the privilege which they had won about half a century before. They never again lost the ground thus gained and in less than ten years more in 388 BC they reached at last the long desired end of political equality by the Lysinian laws which gave them a share in the consulship. However before this great constitutional change took place the commonwealth of Rome passed through a series of dangers from foreign enemies which more than any internal disturbances threatened it with dissolution. End of section 25. Section 26 of early Rome by Wilhelm Ena. This Librivox recording is in the public domain recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 20. The foreign relations of Rome down to the conquest of Veyi. While in the constitutional struggles of the people of Rome political rights were more and more equally distributed among all her citizens, while the republic was being consolidated and the administration improved and developed through a succession of reforms, the relations of Rome with her neighbors remained substantially unaltered and her influence in Italy was not perceptibly increased. She continued to be one of the Latin cities, the largest of them it is true and the most powerful, but still her voice was probably never heard beyond the confines of Latium and the territories of her immediate neighbors. All her energies were required to maintain the ground she already occupied and to ward off the hereditary enemies who year after year assailed her and her allies and sometimes succeeded in penetrating to her very walls. The League with the Latins and hernicans subsisted in form and substance, though the allies of Rome were no longer the unbroken people they had been when the League was concluded. Some of the Latin cities such as Corioli lay in ruins. Others had fallen into the hands of the Vultians. Tuscalum was kept in a state of almost perpetual alarm by the Ichaeans who had established a footing on Mount Algodus, one of the spurs of the Albin Mount overlooking the plain of Latium. Prineste, probably the strongest Latin town after Rome, had become virtually an independent town and detached from the League. It is clear that this League was in a state of gradual dissolution and that Rome became more and more isolated and exposed. Fortunately this progress of destruction was arrested. In the second half of the fifth century, from 450 to 400 BC, the attacks of the Ichaeans and Vultians became by degrees feebler. Whether it was that their strength was spent or that they themselves were now exposed in their rear to the attack of a fiercer mountain tribe, the Samnites, Rome and her allies obtained breathing time, and as the internal dissensions between patricians and plebeians had been to some extent allayed by the Decom Viro legislation and the reforms which followed, the attention of the Republic could be successfully turned abroad, and Rome was able to profit by the favourable change. It was natural that the calamities of war should press more heavily on the Latin cities which surrounded Rome like so many outlying bulwarks than on Rome itself. Had the tide of war not been stemmed, Rome would in the end have been swept away herself. But now she actually profited by the losses of her allies, for her preponderance increased so greatly that she became in fact the head and mistress of those who had previously been in reality and still were in name her allies on equal terms. It does not seem that Rome made a very generous use of this altered position. At least if we can judge a for general policy from an isolated instance we shall not be inclined to rate the public morality of Rome very high. The city of Corioli was one of those ancient members of the League which had been utterly destroyed in the Vulsion Wars. The land which had formed the territory of Corioli lay between the two cities of Ardea and Arichia, and these cities actually fought for the possession of the deserted land. At last in 446 B.C. they applied to Rome to settle the dispute, and the result was that Rome claimed and occupied the disputed land for herself. This was not a very honorable transaction, and the Roman historians themselves who report it seem heartily ashamed of it. Livy does not hesitate to call it a monument of public shame. It shows what Rome could now venture to do, and it is interesting to note that this acquisition of the territory of Corioli was the first extension of the Roman dominions after the establishment of the Republic of which we know. It was the iniquitous beginning of a national policy which throughout retained the same character of rapacity and bad faith with which it was begun. The next acquisitions were made on the eastern side of Rome. In 418 B.C. the town of Labiki, which had been originally Latin and a member of the League, but which had been for some time in the hands of the Ichaeans, was at length retaken. The same success attended the Roman arms four years later in 414 B.C., when Boli, a town still further east, was taken from the Ichaeans. About the same time the Vulsians seemed to have lost several of the towns which they had previously conquered in Latium, and it is even related that a Roman army marched southward right through the land of the Vulsians, and took the maritime town of Angsur, which was afterwards called Terakina. Even more significant than these signs of returning strength in the wars with their eastern and southern foes, the Ichaeans and Vulsians, was the spirit shown by the Romans in a conflict which now broke out with the Etruscans, and which led, after a severe and protracted struggle, to the first great conquest of a large fortified town that could rival Rome itself in extent, population, and power, the great Etruscan city of Veyi. Even before the important conquest of Labiki had been made in 418 B.C., the Romans had succeeded in clearing away, on the left bank of the Tiber, the last remnant of the old ascendancy of the Etruscans by the conquest and destruction in 426 of the small town of Fidenai. In this war, Aulus Cornelius Cossus, the Roman master of the horse, slew it is said with his own hand, Lars Columnius, the Veyentine king, who had come to the aid of Fidenai. And as was customary in Rome, he dedicated the spoils in the temple of Jupiter Ferratrius on the capital. The spoils of Lars Columnius were the first Spolia opima, that is, spoils of a hostile commander slain by a Roman commander, since Romulus had slain Akron, the king of Antemnai. They were still in existence in the time of Augustus, whose attention was drawn to them when he caused the temple of Jupiter for Retrius to be repaired. We are told by Livy that it was Augustus himself who informed him that the inscription upon the coat of arms of Columnius designated Cornelius Cossus as consul, and not as master of the horse. It appears therefore that if the said inscription was genuine and correctly read, the war with Fidenai must have taken place, not in 426 B.C. when Aulus Cornelius Cossus was master of the horse, but in 428 when he was consul. Whatever we may think of the chronological doubts thus created, it is at any rate certain that about this time Fidenai was taken by the Romans. It seems to have been utterly destroyed, and it was never rebuilt, for in the age of Horus and Juvenile Fidenai was alluded to as the picture of desolation and loneliness. The conquest of Fidenai was in itself important enough as it delivered Rome from a very troublesome neighbor in its immediate vicinity, but it proved only the first step to a far more valuable acquisition on the side of Etruria. At a distance of about ten miles to the north of Rome was situated the large and powerful city of Veii, strongly fortified by nature and art. Veii was decidedly the leading town in southern Etruria, and probably occupied a position similar to that which Rome held in Latium. She was far superior to Roman wealth and arts and perhaps not inferior in public spirit and military organization. Her architects, sculptors, and artisans found employment in Rome, and first familiarized the ruder inhabitants of Latium with the more refined enjoyments and tastes of civilized life. In spite of this peaceful intercourse, the geographical proximity of the two towns made a hostile collision in the long run inevitable, and a serious war could end only in the destruction of one of the two, since the difference of their nationality and language made a peaceful amalgamation difficult or impossible. In the war which led to the destruction of Fidani, the Veiantines, as we have seen, had taken apart. Peace was concluded between the two states, and the Veiantines seemed to have kept quiet, while Rome secured her ascendancy in Latium by the conquest of La Bicchia and Boli, and by successful war with evulsions. This peace lasted until 406 B.C. Of the causes which led to a renewal of hostilities we know nothing. It is not unlikely that Rome engaged in the war as the ally and protector of some of the towns adjacent to Veii, especially Sutrium and Nepete, for we find that these towns were, after the destruction of Veii, the allies of Rome, and it is quite consistent with the spirit of Roman policy to interfere in the internal disputes of her neighbors and to act the popular part of the protector of innocence against oppression, that is, of the weaker against the stronger, provided a material advantage could be obtained. About the same time the northern towns of Etruria were alarmed by the approach of the Gauls, who had recently crossed the Alps, invaded the north of Italy, and after having overrun the plain of the Poe, gradually fought their way southwards to the more genial and fertile regions of central and southern Italy. Owing to this fatal circumstance, Veii was left destitute of the support of her allies in the north, and being thus isolated offered a tempting prize to the cupidity of the Romans. Whatever may have been the origin and cause of the war, the Romans, once engaged in it, carried it on with a perseverance and a singleness of purpose never shown before on such a scale, but which was eminently characteristic of their nation. Feeling that their military organization was deficient, they set about reforming it, and availed themselves of the services of a man who rose at the right moment to direct the energies of his countrymen. This was Marcus Furria's Camillus, a hero destined to accomplish the victory over the mightiest enemy which Rome had as yet encountered, to be fondly called by his countrymen the second founder of Rome, and to close a long and glorious life by aiding in the great work of establishing concord between the hostile ranks of citizens. The Roman legions, as we know, did not consist of mercenaries serving for pay, nor of volunteers induced to take arms by their own free patriotic impulse. They consisted of citizens, who in defending their country were performing the primary and most important civic duty. For the discharge of this duty they received no remuneration. The burdens connected with it they had themselves to pay from their own means. The richer citizens were called upon to provide themselves with the more costly armor required by the men in the front ranks, and of course they had to bear the brunt of battle. As compensation for these services they had a greater number of votes in the popular assembly. It was evident that with such a military organization the lowest ranks of the citizens could not have been called upon to take any part in the national defense, or else that their service must have been very subordinate. In progress of time the military duties were found to press too heavily upon the rich, and a more equal distribution was necessary. The old division of classes and the old difference of arms were modified. The soldiers of the legions were divided into two classes only, the heavy armed and the light armed. The arms were furnished by the state, and consequently the committia of centuries which continued to be a political body ceased to be a military organization. Up to the Valentine war however the soldier received no regular pay, and in consequence it was unfair and impossible to keep men for a long time away from their domestic pursuits, from their fields, and workshops. The campaigns could not be extended beyond a few weeks or months in summer. No military operation therefore could be undertaken, which required a long period of service. On the approach of winter, if not before, the men had to be dismissed to their homes, and new armies had to be formed on the return of spring. Now such a procedure might suit the desultory warfare which consisted in making occasional inroads for the sake of plunder. But a serious war with a powerful state, especially the siege of a large town, required armies of a more permanent character. Armies that were not disbanded in the autumn were disbanded only to be immediately replaced by newly levy forces. To accomplish this it was necessary to provide the soldiers with the means of bearing the burden of military service, and consequently to pay them from the public treasury. This was done in the last war with Veyi by the advice of Camillus. It was a measure calculated to work a great change in the military system of the Romans, and to exercise great influence also on political affairs and on the state of parties. It served to equalize the rich and the poor, and it acted therefore as a powerful stimulus in bringing to a final settlement the long continued struggle of the patricians and the plebeians. If their newly organized armies, the Romans laid siege to the city of Veyi and kept it blockaded summer and winter. But the fortune of war was variable. More than once the Veyintines broke through the Visijing army and carried the war into the vicinity of Rome. We hear of defeats sustained by the Roman legions. The war was protracted to the tenth year. At length, Furious Camillus was appointed dictator, and he soon led the legions to victory. That Veyi was taken by the Romans under Camillus is a fact beyond dispute. But the mode of its conquest is hidden in a cloud of fables. We are told that in the course of the war the Albin Lake rose miraculously to such a height that it threatened to flood the whole plain of Latium. The Romans looking upon this phenomenon as a sign sent from the gods were informed by an Etruscan soothsayer and also by the Delphian Oracle that if they constructed a channel to draw off the water of the lake they would obtain possession of the hostile town. They immediately set to work, constructed a channel in the side of the hill, and thus permanently lowered the level of the lake, making the water at the same time available for irrigating the plain below. While this work was in progress they continued to see Javei. Here also they availed themselves of tunneling. Camillus caused an underground passage to be constructed from his camp right into the citadel of Javei. When this was finished he caused the attention of the besieged to be divested by sham attacks on the walls whilst with a chosen band he penetrated through the tunnel into the town and came out in the very temple of Juno, the protecting deity of Javei at the moment when the king was in the act of offering up sacrifice and when the priest had just exclaimed that this sacrifice was a pledge of victory. At that auspicious moment Camillus we are told broke into the temple, snatched the offering from the hands of the king and flung it into the fire on the altar. The Romans issuing from the tunnel fell upon the rear of the Veiantines, opened the gates, led in their comrades and obtained possession of the town. Javei was taken and sacked. The people who did not fall in battle were led away as captives and sold as slaves. The victorious army returned the laden with spoils and Camillus mounted on a car drawn by white horses and dressed in the garments of Jupiter celebrated a triumph such as had never been witnessed before. But a great reverse was in store both for the victorious leader and for his people. In vain had Camillus in the moment of victory attempted to avert the jealousy of the gods by a fervent prayer that if they thought him guilty of overweening pride they should inflict the merciful punishment. Whilst he uttered his prayer he had his head veiled as was customary, and turning round on his feet he stumbled and fell to the ground. This slight mishap he fondly hoped had conciliated the gods, but he soon found out his error. Instead of gratitude he reaped hatred and persecution. He was charged with having unjustly appropriated a part of the spoils, with having exhibited impious pride and presumption because of the pomp displayed in his triumph, and with depriving the people of the fruits of their victory by inducing the senate to pass a decree that the tenth part of all the spoils should be dedicated as an offering to the Delphi and Apollo. So great was the animosity of the people against him that he was compelled to leave Rome and go into exile. Such is the wonderful account of the capture of Veii and of the exploits and the fate of Camillus, that it is fictitious in all its details needs no proof. It was evidently made up at a time when the actual facts were forgotten, and it was made up by men who had more talent for dramatic composition than for historical research, men who were not even familiar with the laws and habits of the Roman people. The charge, for instance, that Camillus committed sacrilege by assuming the garb of Jupiter when he entered Roman triumph, is utterly futile. We know that this was the habit of all the Roman triomphatoris. By personating as it were, Jupiter, they were far from any sinful arrogance or impiety. On the contrary, they intended thereby to imply that it was Jupiter himself who triumphed over the enemies of Rome. The idea of Veii being taken by a tunnel driven through the rocky hill into the midst of the town is simply ridiculous, and was perhaps suggested by the notion that the channel for the water of the Albin Lake was the cause of the fall of Veii. Whether this channel was actually constructed or only repaired at that time we have no means of knowing. It certainly did exist, and exists even now, but except in the superstition of an ignorant age it could have no connection with the capture of a distant town. The message to the Oracle of Delphi is no doubt only a late version of the older story, which attributes the prophecy to an Etruscan soothsayer, nor does the statement deserve credit that the tenth part of the Veii and Tynes spoils were sent as a present to the Delphi and Shrine, although it is adorned with detail intended to make it plausible. At the period in question the Romans had perhaps not even heard of the Delphi and Apollo, and certainly never dreamt of consulting him nor of sending him golden offerings. Thus nothing can be really ascertained but the bare fact that in the year 396 BC the city of Veii was after a protracted siege taken by the Romans. We do not even know certainly whether Rome was aided in this magnificent conquest by any other Etruscan towns, but as we hear that Sutrium and Nepete to the north of Veii were afterwards the allies of Rome we may at any rate conjecture that they had a part in the subversion of Veii. Other cities of Etruria may have taken a part in the war. Tarquiniii and Kyrie appear to have been neutral, but Capena and Falleriii are mentioned as allies of the Veii and Tynes. Falleriii after the fall of Veii was implicated in hostilities with Rome, a story better known than it deserves to be as related of this war. Camillus it is said, laid siege to the town. During this siege a schoolmaster of Falleriii treacherously delivered into his hands a number of noble children as hostages, but was ignominiously sent back into the town to be punished for his intended treason. The Faliscans, overcome not by the arms, but by the generosity of their foes surrendered. This story is condemned as a silly fiction, not only by its intrinsic improbability, but by the undoubted fact that Falleriii continued for a long time afterwards to be an independent town. The territory acquired by the conquest of Veii was about equal to the old possessions of Rome and extant infertility. It offered a magnificent field to Roman colonists, for according to the custom of ancient warfare it was entirely at the disposal of the conquerors, who could appropriate as much of it as they thought expedient. A part was actually distributed in equal lots of seven Eugera to Roman settlers. The majority of the Veientine citizens who were not killed or sold or left until the soil were transported as slaves to Rome, and may have proved a valuable accession of skilled workmen. Rome was evidently on the road to a rapid development when the nemesis of the gods, whom Camillus had in vain attempted to propitiate, brought upon her a reverse which seemed hardly less terrible than the fate of Veii. Six years after the triumph of Camillus Rome was a heap of ruins, and the Roman people, a homeless herd of exiles, were seeking shelter and refuge in the city of their late enemies. The large and fruitful plain in the north of Italy, extending on both sides of the Poe, from the Alps to the Adriatic and the Caponines, had been for some time in possession of the Etruscans, who had built and fortified twelve cities and lived in a sort of confederacy similar to that which loosely bound together the towns of Etruria proper. Long before the rise of Rome, the power of the Etruscans was at its height. Their settlements extended from the Alps to Campania, and their ships swept the sea, which after them was called the Turinian. When Rome rose to independence and preponderance in Latium, the Etruscan power gradually declined. They lost Campania on the advance of the Sibelian races into that fertile plain. They were driven out of Latium by Rome and her Latin allies, and at the same time, when even the soil of Etruria proper was assailed, and Veii, the most powerful Etruscan town in the south of that region, fell prey to Rome, their settlements in the north were invaded by a more ruthless conqueror, and all the vestiges of Etruscan civilization in that beautiful plain of the Poe were stamped out by the Gauls. It is most probable that the inhabitants of Transalpine Gaul, the country which has now for centuries borne the name of France, had been accustomed in very early ages to cross the mountain ranges which separated them from Spain and Italy for the purpose of plunder or permanent settlements in the more southern regions. In Spain they amalgamated with the native Iberian tribes and formed the mixed race known as Kelty Iberians. In Italy they expelled the former inhabitants from the country which after them was called Cisalpine Gaul. These migrations and settlements were in all probability not affected by one wholesale exodus, but like the Teutonic conquest of Britain were the work of a long period of time, during which tribe after tribe followed the impulse given by the first adventurers. At length, when the greater part of Cisalpine Gaul was filled by the newcomers, the flood of migration was turned southwards. It filled the plain between the Apennines and the Adriatic, where the old Umbrian population gave way to the Galecs and Ones. It mounted the passes of the Apennines, and at length came pouring down into the fertile valleys of Atruria proper. Five years after the capture of Veii by Camillus a barbaric host appeared before the city of Clusium a few days march north of Rome. The danger had approached sufficiently near to rouse the attention of the Romans, even if they had been indifferent to the fate of their neighbors. Livy relates that the people of Clusium in their extreme danger sent ambassadors to implore the aid of Rome, and that the senate dispatched three men of the noble house of the Fabii to expostulate with the Gauls and to request them not to molest the allies of the Roman people. It is further related that the Gauls, not heeding the interference of a people of whom they had not even heard, attacked Clusium, and that the Fabii, forgetful of their sacred character of ambassadors, took part in the battle and fought foremost in the ranks of the Etruscans, that upon this breach of the law of nations the Gauls demanded the surrender of the ambassadors, and when this was refused by the Romans, forthwith abandoned the prosecution of hostilities against Clusium and marched straight upon Rome. This story, if not altogether fictitious, seems dressed up to flatter the vanity of the Roman patriots. The language put in the mouth of the ambassadors savors of the arrogance which at a later time dictated the language of Roman diplomacy, when the power of Rome disdained the decencies of international politeness and everywhere exhibited itself in its naked brutality. We prefer, therefore, the account of Deodorus, who tells us that the Romans did not send ambassadors, but spies. If this account is more correct, it follows that all about the participation of the Fabii in the fight and their distinguished bravery, about the offense taken by the Gauls and their message of expostulation to Rome, in short, about all that is represented as a consequence of the breach of international law, falls to the ground. Nor in truth is it necessary to search for a particular reason why the Gauls should have marched upon Rome. They were on a plundering expedition. It was surely a sufficient inducement for them to attack the Romans if they could hope to obtain their ends, and they were probably not too scrupulous in requiring a legitimate cause of war. At any rate, the Romans were not taken unawares. They had drawn out their whole strength and were joined by their allies. Thus they marched out, forty thousand strong to meet the invaders who were advancing seventy thousand strong along the left bank of the Tiber. Near the small river Alie the two armies met, about ten miles from Rome, on the fatal eighteenth of July, three ninety B.C. The encounter was sharp, short, and decisive. The impetuous onset of the barbarians, their wild battle cry, and their fierce uncouth appearance dismayed the Romans, who seized with a panic fled almost without offering resistance. It was a slaughter more than a battle. Thousands rushed into the river to save themselves by swimming to the opposite bank, and many met their death in the waves. The consular tribune Aesolpecius, with a remnant of the army, made good his retreat to Rome, while the greater part of the fugitives collected in Veii, the late rival of Rome, which although overthrown, dismantled, and deserted, was now the only place of refuge for what remained of the Roman legions. The Roman people never forgot the terrible day of Alia. The eighteenth of July was marked as a black day in the Roman calendar and was held unpropitious for any public undertaking. The terrible defeat and its more terrible consequences made such an impression on the public mind that the Gaul was ever afterwards dreaded as the most terrible of enemies. On the third day after the fatal battle the victorious barbarians appeared before the city. The Romans, instead of availing themselves of the respite thus given them, and of taking measures for the defense of the walls, thought of nothing but flight. They poured out of the city carrying with them their most precious and easily transportable possessions and sought refuge in the neighboring towns. It is related that some of the sacred objects of the temples were secretly buried, and that the Vestal Virgins, carrying with them the eternal flame from their sanctuary, hurried along with the crowd, across the wooden bridge and up the geniculus, until a plebeian citizen bade the mount a wagon on which he was conveying his wife and children from the general wreck. When the Gauls found the walls, destitute of defenders, they at first feared an ambush and hesitated for a while before breaking open the gates and penetrating into the deserted streets. They were appalled by the stillness which reigned as in a city of the dead. On advancing as far as the marketplace they observed a number of venerable gray bearded men sitting motionless like statues dressed in robes of office. They were senators who had determined not to survive the downfall of their country and who had devoted themselves to death. A Gaul doubtful what to think of these figures plucked one by the beard. A blow on his head from the offended senator convinced him that he had a living Roman before him, and a general massacre of all the devoted band was the consequence. But besides these few defenseless old men other Romans had stayed behind. The capital had not been abandoned like the remainder of the city. It was garrisoned by a number of stout-hearted warriors determined to conquer or fall in the defense of the sanctuary of Jupiter capital Linus, the symbol and center of the Roman power. They repelled an attack of the Gauls and compelled them to trust to the slow effect of a regular siege if they wished to reduce the place. Meanwhile the city was sacked by the barbarians and reduced to ashes. It is said that only a few houses on the Palatine escaped the general conflagration. In this sad calamity perished all or almost all the monuments of antiquity in the records of the past. The Gauls persisted in pressing the siege with a constancy hardly natural to such a restless and impatient race. The garrison on the capital seemed to be hopelessly lost, when one night a young man called Pontius Cominius, sent from the Roman fugitives at Veii, made his way by swimming to a spot near the foot of the capital and frustrating the watchfulness of the Gauls, scaled the rock at a place known to him as accessible to a nimble climber. He reported to the military tribune in command that the Roman force collected at Veii was about to come to the rescue of the besieged and that they only wanted the banished Camillus to be their leader. The decree recalling Camillus from banishment and appointing him dictator was made immediately and Cominius hastened back the same way he had come. This exploit however nearly proved fatal to the defenders of the capital. The Gauls had noticed his footsteps on the rock and following in the same track succeeded on a dark night in reaching the top unobserved by the Roman sentinels. Even the dogs were remiss in their watchfulness. Only the geese kept in the temple of Juno as bird sacred to the goddess set up a loud cackling and thus roused Marcus Manlius one of the officers in charge. He immediately gave the alarm and rushing to the spot where the foremost Gauls had already reached the top of the rock he hurled them down upon their companions and thus saved the citadel. This danger was luckily averted, but the siege continued and the garrison on the capital was sorely pressed. Provisions began to fail as month after month elapsed and no rescue appeared. The blockade had now lasted six months. The Gauls too began to suffer from want of provisions. They were obliged to detach parts of their army for the purpose of collecting supplies. One of these bodies was set upon by the people of Ardia under the command of Camillus and routed with great slaughter. At length Brennis the leader of the Gauls was feigned to make an agreement with the Romans on the capital and to promise to retire upon payment of a sum of money. One thousand pounds of gold was the ransom to be paid by the Roman people. The money was procured by borrowing the treasures from the temples and the ornaments of the Roman matrons. When the Roman commissioners were in the act of paying the gold to Brennis in the forum, just at the foot of the capital, and went upon their complaints of the false weight used by the Gauls, Brennis had just thrown his sword into the balance with the insulting words Woe to the Concord. Camillus suddenly appeared on the spot and declaring that the agreement was null and void because it had been concluded without the dictator's consent, drove the Gauls off the forum and out of the city. On the next day he encountered them outside the gates and routed them so signally that not a man escaped. Brennis himself fell under the sword of the conqueror who shouted into his ears the terrible words he himself had first used in the insolence of victory Woe to the Concord. Thus Rome was saved not only from her foes but also from the disgrace of owing her deliverance to the payment of gold rather than to the sword, and Camillus restored to his country became the second founder of the city. We have related the story of the capture and delivery of Rome in the form which it had assumed in Livy's time under the influence of patriotic tradition. We need hardly say that it is colored by national and family pride and that some of its features resemble more a theatrical catastrophe than sober reality. Fortunately in the narratives of Deodorus and Polybius some traces of an older and less falsified tradition have been preserved by the help of which we can clear away some at least of the fictions of the later analysts. It is, at any rate, certain that the Gauls, after their victory on the Alea, entered Rome and destroyed the city with the exception of the capital. But we may doubt whether the destruction was so systematic and complete as it is generally represented. Whether all the stone buildings and the walls of the city were pulled down after the combustible matter had been consumed by the flames. A regular destruction of solid masonry is a work of time and great labour, such as would not be likely to be undertaken by invaders like the Gauls who had no object in view but rapine and plunder. We know from Deodorus and Justin that the Gauls penetrated as far as Iapigia in the extreme south of Italy, and that some of them entered as mercenaries into the service of Dionysius of Syracuse then at war with the Greek towns in Italy. Being bent on such distant enterprises from which ample gain and booty were to be expected, how should they have been induced to waste their time and energy in pulling down what remained of the houses, temples, monuments, or walls after they had ransacked them for treasures and committed them to the flames? Besides the walls and temples, Rome contained at that time very few solid structures. The majority of the private houses were mere straw-thatched or shingle-covered huts. Yet even among the private buildings some may have been built at least in part of stone, and most of these may have survived the conflagration. Thus it is possible that even outside the capital a few monuments of antiquity were preserved, and that the ancient records were not so completely destroyed as the later analysts have reported. We are the more fully justified in adopting this view, as we can hardly believe the statement that the Gauls encamped on the site of the ruins of Rome for seven months to press the siege of the capital. They could hardly have done so without exposing themselves to the most destructive effects of a climate not merely unhealthy but deadly to a northern people. In fact, they would not have been barbarians but madmen, if with the prospect of a protracted siege before them, they had deliberately destroyed the shelter of which they would have felt such urgent need. We refer again to the testimony of Deodorus and Justin, who speak of the extension of the Gallic invasion to southern Italy, with such a march southwards the blockade of the capital for seven months is incompatible and cannot therefore be admitted as historical. The oldest stories of the part played by Camillus seem to presuppose that the Gauls did not stay a very long time in the ruins of Rome. They represent Camillus as elected dictator and as in command of a Roman force outside the city. Surely they could not look upon him as inactive for many months, or as engaged only in hovering on the outskirts of the territory occupied by the invaders. The story of Camillus is essentially dramatic in character. It brings the hero on the scene of action in a manner nothing short of marvellous, like a deus ex machina, and it would not have resulted to the honor of such a hero to wait seven months and let his countrymen undergo the agonies of despair and famine before he came to their rescue. But after all, the story of Camillus appears to be only a fiction invented for the glory of the Furrian house to which Camillus belonged. Not to dwell on other points, we will simply quote the testimony of Polybius, who said, that the Gauls withdrew unmolested with their booty, having voluntarily and on their own terms restored the town to the Romans. After this explicit statement what becomes of the heroic deeds of Camillus, or of the unjust scales with the sword of Brennus, and of his expulsion from the Forum, which was so ignominious and yet less ignominious than wonderful? It is clear that all the various and conflicting stories which relate the utter discomforture of the Gauls and the recovery of the booty or ransom are fictions calculated to soothe the wounded pride of the Romans and to glorify the family of Camillus. Hardly less suspicious is the story of the Capitoline Geese and of Marcus Manlius the savior of the capital. They both belong to the class of legends called etiological, that is, invented to account for an existing custom or a name. The goose was a bird sacred to Juno and it acquired dishonor not by the achievement of the watchful defenders of the capital, for the fact of Geese being kept in the sanctuary of Juno at the time of the siege shows that the custom was older than that date. There was an annual festival in honor of Juno celebrated with a public procession in which Geese were carried to the town on soft cushions and festively adorned, whilst dogs were nailed on boards. The story of the neglect of the dogs and the watchfulness of the Geese was probably invented to account for this ancient custom. The share of Manlius in the saving of the capital may have been inferred from his name Capitolinus, a name derived more probably from his residence on the Capitoline hill. Whatever may have been the duration of the occupation of Rome by the Gauls and however extensive the destruction caused by the invasion, it is certain that the injury done to the republic was not vital. On the contrary, the material losses seemed to have been soon repaired. The city was rebuilt in a very short time. The ascendancy of Rome over her dependent allies, if it was weakened momentarily, was soon fully re-established, and what is more important than all this, the framework of the Constitution bore the strain of disastrous war without giving way in any part. When the storm had passed over and the damage which it had caused was repaired, Rome continued her career of internal reform and foreign conquests. Not merely with unimpaired, but with invigorated energy. Only fourteen years after the Battle of Alia, Lachinius and Sextius began the agitation for the equal division of the consular power between patricians and plebeians, which ten years later led to the Lachinian laws in 366 BC. In the year 387 BC, only three years after the Gallic catastrophe, the first great addition was made to the Roman Territory. Four new tribes were formed out of the conquered Vientine land, and added to the original 21 tribes to which the Republic had been limited for 120 years. 29 years later, in 358 BC, two more tribes were added from acquisitions in Latium, and at the same time the League with the Latins was renewed on a fresh basis, which made Latium, practically a dependency of Rome. A few years later, in 354 BC, the spreading influence and increasing power of Rome appears in the conclusion of a treaty of friendship with the great nation of the Samnites. In 348 BC a commercial treaty was concluded with Carthage, and in 343 BC, not half a century after the invasion of the Gauls, Rome was powerful enough to enter on that long continued struggle with the Samnites, which resulted in the acquisition of undoubted supremacy in Italy. It may be doubted whether the Gauls had done more harm or more good to the Roman people by their invasion of Italy. If Rome was paralyzed for a moment by the blow on the Alia, perhaps the neighbors of Rome were more vitally injured, and thus the relative strength of Rome increased. Besides, the Gauls were now looked upon as the natural enemies of all the native races of Italy, and as they continued their periodical invasions for a considerable time, Rome acquired by degrees the position of a defender of the common soil, and the right to unite the Italians into a large confederation. This confederation under the Roman leadership was the mighty state which in the succeeding generations overthrew Carthage, the kingdoms of Macedonia and Syria, the commonwealths of Greece, the barbarians of northern Italy and Spain, and which, when it had outgrown the forms of federal and republican institutions, was changed into an absolute military monarchy which completed the work of conquest. End of Section 27 Recording by Pamela Nagami Md in Encino, California, July 2019 End of Early Rome From the Foundation of the City to its Destruction by the Gauls by Vilhelm Ina