Part 2 — CHAPTER IV. Concerning the infallible teaching of the Roman Pontiff: (continued 14)

H. G. Liddell, History of Rome, book 2, chapter 14 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 2, chapter 4.

A. J. Church, Stories from Livy, chapters 13-14.

ROME: B. C. 376-367. The Licinian Laws.

"C. Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius … being Tribunes of the Plebs together in the year 376 B. C. promulgated the three bills which have ever since borne the name of the Licinian Rogations. These were:

I. That of all debts on which interest had been paid, the sum of the interest paid should be deducted from the principal, and the remainder paid off in three successive years.

II. That no citizen should hold more than 500 jugera (nearly 320 acres) of the Public Land, nor should feed on the public pastures more than 100 head of larger cattle and 500 of smaller, under penalty of a heavy fine.

III. That henceforth Consuls, not Consular Tribunes, should always be elected, and that one of the two Consuls must be a Plebeian."

The patricians made a desperate resistance to the adoption of these proposed enactments for ten years, during most of which long period the operations of government were nearly paralyzed by the obstinate tribunes, who inflexibly employed their formidable power of veto to compel submission to the popular demand. In the end they prevailed, and the Licinian rogations became Laws.

H. G. Liddell, History of Rome, book 2, chapter 15 (volume 1).

"Licinius evidently designed reuniting the divided members of the plebeian body. Not one of them, whether rich or poor, but seems called back by these bills to stand with his own order from that time on. If this supposition was true, then Licinius was the greatest leader whom the plebeians ever had up to the time of Cæsar. But from the first he was disappointed. The plebeians who most wanted relief cared so little for having the consulship opened to the richer men of their estate that they would readily have dropped the bill concerning it, lest a demand should endanger their own desires. In the same temper the more eminent men of the order, themselves among the creditors of the poor and the tenants of the domain, would have quashed the proceedings of the tribunes respecting the discharge of debt and the distribution of land, so that they carried the third bill only, which would make them consuls without disturbing their possessions. While the plebeians continued severed from one another, the patricians drew together in resistance to the bills. Licinius stood forth demanding, at once, all that it had cost his predecessors their utmost energy to demand, singly and at long intervals, from the patricians. … The very comprehensiveness of his measures proved the safeguard of Licinius. Had he preferred but one of these demands, he would have been unhesitatingly opposed by the great majority of the patricians. On the other hand he would have had comparatively doubtful support from the plebs." In the end, after a struggle of ten years duration, Licinius and Sextius carried their three bills, together with a fourth, brought forward later, which opened to the plebeians the office of the duumvirs, who consulted the Sibyline books. {2670} "It takes all the subsequent history of Rome to measure the consequences of the Revolution achieved by Licinius and Sextius; but the immediate working of their laws could have been nothing but a disappointment to their originators and upholders. … For some ten years the law regarding the consulship was observed, after which it was occasionally violated, but can still be called a success. The laws of relief, as may be supposed of all such sumptuary enactments, were violated from the first. No general recovery of the public land from those occupying more than five hundred jugera ever took place. Consequently there was no general division of land among the lack-land class. Conflicting claims and jealousy on the part of the poor must have done much to embarrass and prevent the execution of the law. No system of land survey to distinguish between 'ager publicus' and 'ager privatus' existed. Licinius Stolo himself was afterwards convicted of violating his own law. The law respecting debts met with much the same obstacles. The causes of embarrassment and poverty being much the same and undisturbed, soon reproduced the effects which no reduction of interest or installment of principal could effectually remove. … These laws, then, had little or no effect upon the domain question or the re-distribution of land. They did not fulfil the evident expectation of their author in uniting the plebeians into one political body. This was impossible. What they did do was to break up and practically abolish the patriciate. Henceforth were the Roman people divided into rich and poor on]y."

A. Stephenson, Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic (Johns Hopkins University Studies, 9th series, numbers 7-8).

ALSO IN: T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 2, chapter 3 (volume 1).

S. Eliot, The Liberty of Rome, book 2, chapter 7 (volume 1).

ROME: B. C. 366. Institution of the Prætorship.

"By the establishment of the prætorship (366 B. C.) the office of chief judge was separated as a distinct magistracy from the consulship. … The prætor was always looked upon as the colleague of the consuls. He was elected in the same manner as the consuls by centuriate comitia, and, moreover, under the same auspices. He was furnished with the imperium, had lictors and fasces. He represented the consuls in town by assembling the senate, conducting its proceedings, executing its decrees. … Up to the time of the first Punic war one prætor only was annually elected. Then a second was added to conduct the jurisdiction between citizens and foreigners. A distinction was now made between the city prætor (prætor urbanus), who was always looked upon as having a higher dignity, and the foreign prætor (prætor peregrinus). On the final establishment of the two provinces of Sicily and Sardinia, probably 227 B. C., two new prætors were appointed to superintend the regular government of those provinces, and still later on two more were added for the two provinces of Spain. The number of annual prætors now amounted to six, and so it remained until the legislation of Sulla."

W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 6, chapter 5.

See, also, CONSUL, ROMAN.

ROME: B. C. 343-290. The Samnite Wars.

When the Romans had made themselves dominant in middle Italy, and the Samnites [see SAMNITES] in southern Italy, the question which of the two peoples should be masters of the peninsula at large was sure to demand settlement. About the middle of the fourth century, B. C., it began to urge the two rivals into collision, and the next two generations of Romans were busied chiefly with Samnite Wars, of which they fought three, with brief intervals to divide them, and at the end of which the Samnite name had been practically erased from history. The first hostilities grew out of a quarrel between the Samnites of the mountains and their degenerate countrymen of Capua and Campania. The latter sought help from the Romans, and, according to the Romans, surrendered their city to them in order to secure it; but this is obviously untrue. The First Samnite War, which followed this (B. C. 343-341), had no definite result, and seems to have been brought to an end rather abruptly by a mutiny in the Roman army and by trouble between Rome and her Latin allies. According to the Roman annals there were three great battles fought in this war, one on Mount Gaurus, and two elsewhere; but Mommsen and other historians entirely distrust the historic details as handed down. The Second or Great Samnite War occurred after an interval of fifteen years, during which time the Romans had conquered all Latium, reducing their Latin kinsmen from confederates to subjects. That accomplished, the Romans were quite ready to measure swords again with their more important rivals in the south. The long, desperate and doubtful war which ensued was of twenty-two years duration (B. C. 326-304). In the first years of this war victory was with the Romans and the Samnites sued for peace; but the terms offered were too hard fur them and they fought on. Then Fortune smiled on them and gave them an opportunity to inflict on their haughty enemy one of the greatest humiliations that Rome in all her history ever suffered. The entire Roman army, commanded by the two consuls of the year, was caught in a mountain defile (B. C. 321), at a place called the Caudine Forks, and compelled to surrender to the Samnite genera], C. Pontius. The consuls and other officers of the Romans signed a treaty of peace with Pontius, and all were then set free, after giving up their armor and their cloaks and passing "under the yoke." But the Roman senate refused to ratify the treaty, and gave up those who had signed it to the Samnites. The latter refused to receive the offered prisoners and vainly demanded a fulfilment of the treaty. Their great victory had been thrown away, and, although they won another important success at Lautulæ, the final result of the war which they were forced to resume was disastrous to them. After twenty-two years of obstinate fighting they accepted terms (B. C. 304) which stripped them of all their territory on the sea-coast, and required them to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. The peace so purchased lasted less than six years. The Samnites were tempted (B. C. 298) while the Romans had a war with Etruscans and Gauls on their hands, to attempt the avenging of their humiliations. Their fate was decided at the battle of Sentinum (B. C. 295), won by the old consul, Q. Fabius Maximus, against the allied Samnites and Gauls, through the heroic self-sacrifice of his colleague, P. Decius Mus [imitating his father, of the same name.]

See ROME: B. C. 339-338.

{2671}

The Samnites struggled hopelessly on some five years longer and submitted finally in 290 B. C. Their great leader, Pontius, was put to death in the dungeons of the state prison under the Capitoline.

J. Michelet, History of the Roman Republic, book 2, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: H. G. Liddell, History of Rome, book 2, chapters 19, and 21-24.

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 2, chapter 6.

ROME: B. C. 340. The Publilian Laws.

"In the second year of the Latin war (340 B. C.) the Plebeian Consul, Q. Publilius Philo, being named Dictator by his Patrician colleague for some purpose now unknown, proposed and carried three laws still further abridging the few remaining privileges of the Patrician Lords. The first Publilian law enacted that one of the Censors, as one of the Consuls, must be a Plebeian. … The second gave fuller sanction to the principle already established, that the Resolutions of the Plebeian Assembly should have the force of law. The third provided that all laws passed at the Comitia of the Centuries or of the Tribes should receive beforehand the sanction of the Curies."

G. Liddell, History of Rome, book 3, chapter 20 (volume 1).

See a discussion of these laws in their relation to the preceding Valerio-Horatian law, and the subsequent Hortensian laws.

ROME: B. C. 286.

ROME: B. C. 339-338. Subjugation of the Latins. Grant of pseudo-citizenship. The real concession of the next century and its effects.

A league between the Romans and their kinsmen and neighbors, the Latins, of Tibur, Præneste, Lanuvium, Aricia, Velitræ, and other towns, as well as with the Hernicans, existed during a century and a half, from the treaty of Sp. Cassius, B. C. 493, according to the Roman annals. At first, the members of the league stood together on fairly equal terms fighting successful wars with the Volscians, the Æquians and the Etruscans. But all the time the Romans contrived to be the greater gainers by the alliance, and as their power grew their arrogance increased, until the Latin allies were denied almost all share in the conquests and the spoils which they helped to win. The discontent which this caused fermented to an outbreak after the first of the Samnite wars. The Latins demanded to be admitted to Roman citizenship and to a share in the government of the state. Their demand was haughtily and even insultingly refused, and a fierce, deadly war between the kindred peoples ensued (B. C. 339-338). The decisive battle of the war was fought under Mount Vesuvius, and the Romans were said to have owed their victory to the self-sacrifice of the plebeian consul, P. Decius Mus, who, by a solemn ceremony, devoted himself and the army of the enemy to the infernal gods, and then threw himself into the thick of the fight, to be slain. The Latin towns were all reduced to dependence upon Rome,—some with a certain autonomy left to them, some with none. "Thus, isolated, politically powerless, socially dependent on Rome, the old towns of the Latins, once so proud and so free, became gradually provincial towns of the Roman territory. … The old Latium disappeared and a new Latium took its place, which, by means of Latin colonies, carried the Roman institutions, in the course of two centuries, over the whole peninsula."

W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 3, chapter 6 (volume 1).

"The Latins, being conquered, surrendered,—that is to say, they gave up to the Romans their cities, their worships, their laws, and their lands. Their position was cruel. A consul said in the senate that, if they did not wish Rome to be surrounded by a vast desert, the fate of the Latins should be settled with some regard to clemency. Livy does not clearly explain what was done. If we are to trust him, the Latins obtained the right of Roman citizenship without including in the political privileges the right of suffrage, or in the civil the right of marriage. We may also note, that these new citizens were not counted in the census. It is clear that the senate deceived the Latins in giving them the name of Roman citizens. This title disguised a real subjection, since the men who bore it had the obligations of citizens without the rights. So true is this, that several Latin cities revolted, in order that this pretended citizenship might be withdrawn. A century passed, and, without Livy's notice of the fact, we might easily discover that Rome had changed her policy. The condition of the Latins having the rights of citizens, without suffrage and without connubium, no longer existed. Rome had withdrawn from them the title of citizens, or, rather, had done away with this falsehood, and had decided to restore to the different cities their municipal governments, their laws, and their magistracies. But by a skilful device Rome opened a door which, narrow as it was, permitted subjects to enter the Roman city. It granted to every Latin who had been a magistrate in his native city the right to become a Roman citizen at the expiration of his term of office. This time the gift of this right was complete and without reserve; suffrage, magistracies, census, marriage, private law, all were included. … By being a citizen of Rome, a man gained honor, wealth, and security. The Latins, therefore, became eager to obtain this title, and used all sorts of means to acquire it. One day, when Rome wished to appear a little severe, she found that 12,000 of them had obtained it through fraud. Ordinarily, Rome shut her eyes, knowing that by this means her population increased, and that the losses of war were thus repaired. But the Latin cities suffered; their richest inhabitants became Roman citizens, and Latium was impoverished. The taxes, from which the richest were exempt as Roman citizens, became more and more burdensome, and the contingent of soldiers that had to be furnished to Rome was every year more difficult to fill up."

N. D. Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City, book 5, chapter 2.

ROME: B. C. 326-304? Abolition of personal slavery for debt.

See DEBT, ROMAN LAW CONCERNING.

ROME: B. C. 312. The censorship of Appius Claudius. His admission of the freedmen to the Tribes. The building of the Appian Way.

"Appius Claudius, … afterwards known as Appius the Blind, … was elected Censor [B. C. 312], … and, as was usual, entered, with his colleague, Plautius Decianus, upon the charge of filling the vacancies which had occurred within the Senate since the last nominations to that body by the preceding Censors. The new elections were always made, it appears, from certain lists of citizens who had either borne great offices or possessed high rank; but Appius, determined from the beginning to secure his authority, either for his own sake or for that of his faction, through any support he could command, now named several of the lowest men in Rome as Senators, amongst whom he even admitted some sons of freedmen, who, as such, were scarcely to be considered to be absolutely free, much less to be worthy of any political advancement. {2672} The nomination, backed by a powerful party, out of rather than in the Senate, and vainly, if not feebly, opposed by Plautius Decianus, who resigned his office in disgust at his colleague, was carried, but was set aside in the following year by the Consuls, who could call such Senators as they pleased, and those only, as it seems, to their sessions. Appius, still keeping his place, was soon after assailed by some of the Tribunes, now the representatives, as must be remembered, of the moderate party, rather than of the Plebeian estate. At this the Censor admitted all the freedmen in Rome to the Tribes, amongst which he distributed them in such a manner as promised him the most effectual support. Appius, however, was not wholly absorbed in mere political intrigues. A large portion of his energy and his ambition was spent upon the Way [Appian Way] and the Aqueduct which have borne his name to our day, and which, in his own time, were undertakings so vast as to obtain for him the name of 'the Hundred-handed.' He was an author, a jurist, a philosopher, and a poet, besides. … Cneius Flavius, the son of a freedman, one, therefore, of the partisans on whom the Censor and his faction were willing to lavish pretended favor in return for unstinted support, was employed by Appius near his person, in the capacity of private secretary. Appius, who, as already mentioned, was a jurist and an author, appears to have compiled a sort of manual concerning the business-days of the Calendar and the forms of instituting or conducting a suit before the courts; both these subjects being kept in profound concealment from the mass of the people, who were therefore obliged, in case of any legal proceeding, to resort first to the Pontiff to learn on what day, and next to the Patrician jurist to inquire in what form, they could lawfully manage their affairs before the judicial tribunals. This manual was very likely given to Flavius to copy; but it could scarcely have been with the knowledge, much less with the desire, of his employer, that it was published. … But Flavius stood in a position which tempted him, whether he were generous or designing, to divulge the secrets of the manual he had obtained; and it may very well have been from a desire to conciliate the real party of the Plebeians, which ranked above him, as a freedman, that he published his discoveries. He did not go unrewarded, but was raised to various offices, amongst them to the tribuneship of the Plebeians, and finally to the curule ædileship, in which his disclosures are sometimes represented as having been made. … The predominance of the popular party is plainly attested in the same year by the censorship of Fabius Rullianus and Decius Mus, the two great generals, who, succeeding to Appius Claudius, removed the freedmen he had enrolled amongst all the Tribes into four Tribes by themselves."

S. Eliot, The Liberty of Rome: Rome, book 2, chapter 8 (volume 2).

ROME: B. C. 300. The Ogulnian Law.

In the year 300 B. C., "Quintus and Cneius Ogulnius appear in the tribuneship, as zealous champions of the popular party against the combination of the highest and the lowest classes. Instead, however, of making any wild attack upon their adversaries, the Tribunes seem to have exerted themselves in the wiser view of detaching the populace from its Patrician leaders, in order to unite the severed forces of the Plebeians upon a common ground. … A bill to increase the number of the Pontiffs by four, and that of the Augurs by five new incumbents, who should then, and, as was probably added, thenceforward, be chosen from the Plebeians, was proposed by the Tribunes. … Though some strenuous opposition was made to its passage, it became a law. The highest places of the priesthood, as well as of the civil magistracies, were opened to the Plebeians, whose name will no longer serve us as it has done, so entirely have the old distinctions of their estate from that of the Patricians been obliterated. The Ogulnii did not follow up the success they had gained, and the alliance between the lower Plebeians and the higher Patricians was rather cemented than loosened by a law professedly devised to the advantage of the upper classes of the Plebeians."

S. Eliot, Liberty of Rome: Rome, book 2, chapter 9 (volume 2).

ROME: B. C. 295-191. Conquest of the Cisalpine Gauls.

Early in the 3d century B. C. the Gauls on the southern side of the Alps, being reinforced from Transalpine Gaul, again entered Roman territory, encouraged and assisted by the Samnites, who were then just engaging in their third war with Rome. A Roman legion which first encountered them in Etruria, under Scipio Barbatus, was annihilated, B. C. 295. But the vengeance of Rome overtook them before that year closed, at Sentinum, where the consuls Fabius and Decius ended the war at one blow. The Gauls were quiet after this for ten years; but in 285 B. C. the Senonian tribes invaded Etruria again and inflicted an alarming defeat on the Romans at Arretium. They also put to death some Roman ambassadors who were sent to negotiate an exchange of prisoners; after which the war of Rome against them was pushed to extermination. The whole race was destroyed or reduced to slavery and Roman colonies were established on its lands. The Boian Gauls, between the Apennines and the Po, now resented this intrusion on Gallic territory, but were terribly defeated at the Vadimonian Lake and sued for peace. This peace was maintained for nearly sixty years, during which time the Romans were strengthening themselves beyond the Apennines, with a strong colony at Ariminum (modern Rimini) on the Adriatic Sea, with thick settlements in the Senonian country, and with a great road—the Via Flaminia—in process of construction from Rome northwards across the Apennines, through Umbria and along the Adriatic coast to Ariminum. The Boians saw that the yoke was being prepared for them, and in 225 B. C. they made a great effort to break it. In the first encounter with them the Romans were beaten, as in previous wars, but at the great battle of Telamon, fought soon afterwards, the Gallic hosts were almost totally destroyed. The next year the Boians were completely subjugated, and in 223 and 222 B. C. the Insubrians were likewise conquered, their capital Mediolanum (Milan) occupied, and all north Italy to the Alps brought under Roman rule, except as the Ligurians in the mountains were still unsubdued and the Cenomanians and the Veneti retained a nominal independence as allies of Rome. {2673} But Hannibal's invasion of Italy, occurring soon after, interrupted the settlement and pacification of the Gallic country and made a reconquest necessary after the war with the Carthaginians had been ended. The new Roman fortified colony of Placentia was taken by the Gauls and most of the inhabitants slain. The sister colony of Cremona was besieged, but resisted until relieved. Among the battles fought, that of Comum, B. C. 196, appears to have been the most important. The war was prolonged until 191 B. C., after which there appears to have been no more resistance to Roman rule among the Cisalpine Gauls.

W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 3, chapters 12-13; book 4. chapter 5; book 5, chapter 7.

ROME: B. C. 286. The last Secession of the Plebs. The Hortensian Laws.

"About the year 286 B. C. the mass of the poorer citizens [of Rome], consisting (as may be guessed) chiefly of those who had lately been enfranchised by Appius, left the city and encamped in an oak-wood upon the Janiculum. To appease this last Secession, Q. Hortensius was named Dictator, and he succeeded in bringing back the people by allowing them to enact several laws upon the spot. One of these Hortensian laws was probably an extension of the Agrarian law of Curius, granting not seven but fourteen jugera (about 9 acres) to each of the poorer citizens. Another provided for the reduction of debt. But that which is best known as the Hortensian law was one enacting that all Resolutions of the Tribes should be law for the whole Roman people. This was nearly in the same terms as the law passed by Valerius and Horatius at the close of the Decemvirate, and that passed by Publilius Philo the Dictator, after the conquest of Latium. Hortensius died in his Dictatorship,—an unparalleled event, which was considered ominous. Yet with his death ended the last Secession of the People."

H. G. Liddell, History of Rome, book 3, chapter 25 (volume 1).

"It is impossible to suppose that the assembly of the plebs advanced at a single step from the meeting of a private corporation to be the delegated alter ego of the sovereign populus Romanus. We may be sure that the right of the plebs to legislate for the nation was accorded under checks and qualifications, long before they were invested with this absolute authority. We find, in fact, two occasions prior to the Hortensian law, on which the legislative competency of the plebs is said to have been recognised. The first of these is the Valerio-Horatian Law of B. C. 449 [see ROME: B. C. 449], the year after the decemvirate, the second the law of the dictator Publilius Philo, B. C. 339 [see ROME: B. C. 340]. Unfortunately the historians describe these laws in words which merely repeat the contents of the Hortensian law. … Some modern writers have been disposed to get over the difficulty by the conjecture that the laws of Publilius Philo and Hortensius were only re-enactments of that of Valerius and Horatius, and that the full powers of the plebs date back to the year B. C. 449. Mommsen's arguments against this view appear to me conclusive. Why should the jurists universally refer the powers exercised by the plebs to a mere re-enactment, rather than to the original source of their authority? … Niebuhr believes that the law of Valerius and Horatius gave the plebs legislative authority, subject to the consent of a sort of upper house, the general assembly of the patrician body; he identifies this assembly with the 'comitia curiata.' … Mommsen's method of dealing with the question" is to strike out the Valerio-Horatian law and that of Publilius Philo from the series of enactments relating to the plebs. "He believes that both these laws regulated the proceedings of the 'comitia populi tributa,' and are transferred by a mere blunder of our authorities to the 'concilium plebis tributum.' … But the supposition of a possible blunder is too small a foundation on which to establish such an explanation. … I believe that, for the purpose of showing how the legislative power of the plebs may gradually have established itself, the known powers of the sovereign 'populus,' of the magistrates of the Roman people, and of the senate, will supply us with sufficient material; and that the assumptions of the German historians are therefore unnecessary. … I imagine … that the law of Valerius and Horatius simply recognised de jure the power which Icilius [see ROME: B. C. 456] had exercised de facto: that is to say, it ordered the consul to bring any petition of the plebs at once to the notice of the senate, and empowered the tribune to plead his cause before the senate; perhaps it went further and deprived the consul of his right of arbitrarily refusing to accede to the recommendation of the senate, if such were given, and directed that he should in such case convene the comitia and submit the proposal to its vote. If this restriction of the power of the consul removed the first obstacle in the way of tribunician bills supported by the vote of the plebs, another facility still remained to be given. The consul might be deprived of the opportunity of sheltering himself behind the moral responsibility of the senate. Does it not suggest itself as a plausible conjecture that the law of Publilius Philo struck out the intervening senatorial deliberation and compelled the consul to bring the petition of the plebs immediately before the 'comitia populi Romani'? If such were the tenor of the Publilian law, it would be only a very slight inaccuracy to describe it as conferring legislative power on the plebs. … The Hortensian law which formally transferred the sovereign power to the plebs would thus be a change greater de jure than de facto. … This power, if the theory put forward in these pages be correct, was placed within the reach of the plebeians by the law of Valerius and Horatius, and was fully secured to them by the law of Publilius Philo."

J. L. Strachan-Davidson, The Growth of Plebeian Privilege at Rome (English Historical Review, April, 1886).

"With the passing of the Lex Hortensia the long struggle between the orders came to an end. The ancient patrician gentes remained, but the exclusive privileges of the patriciate as a ruling order were gone. For the great offices of state and for seats in the senate the plebeians were by law equally eligible with patricians. The assemblies, whether of people or plebs, were independent of patrician control. In private life inter-marriages between patricians and plebeians were recognised as lawful, and entailed no disabilities on the children. Finally, great as continued to be the prestige attaching to patrician birth, and prominent as was the part played in the subsequent history by individual patricians and by some of the patrician houses, the plebs were now in numbers and even in wealth the preponderant section of the people. {2674} Whatever struggles might arise in the future, a second struggle between patricians and plebeians was an impossibility. Such being the case, it might have been expected that the separate organisation, to which the victory of the plebs was largely due, would, now that the reason for its existence was gone, have disappeared. Had this happened, the history of the republic might have been different. As it was, this plebeian machinery—the plebeian tribunes, assemblies, and resolutions—survived untouched, and lived to play a decisive part in a new conflict, not between patricians and plebeians, but between a governing class, itself mainly plebeian, and the mass of the people, and finally to place at the head of the state a patrician Cæsar. Nor was the promise of a genuine democracy, offered by the opening of the magistracies and the Hortensian law, fulfilled. For one hundred and fifty years afterwards the drift of events was in the opposite direction, and when the popular leaders of the first century B. C. endeavoured to make government by the people a reality, it was already too late."

H. F. Pelham, Outlines of Roman History, book 2, chapter 1.

ROME: B. C. 282-275. War with Tarentum and Pyrrhus.

The conquest of the Samnites by the Romans, which was completed in 290 B. C., extended the power of the latter to the very gates of the Greek cities on the Tarentine gulf, of which Tarentum was the chief. At once there arose a party in Tarentum which foresaw the hopelessness of resistance to Roman aggression and favored a spontaneous submission to the supremacy of the formidable city on the Tiber. The patriotic party which opposed this humiliation looked abroad for aid, and found an eager ally in the Molossian king of Epirus, the adventurous and warlike Pyrrhus (see EPIRUS), who sprang from the family of Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great. In the autumn of 282 B. C., the inevitable war between Rome and Tarentum broke out, and early in 280 B. C. Pyrrhus landed a powerful army in Italy, comprising 20,000 heavy-armed foot-soldiers, 3,000 horse, 2,000 archers and 20 elephants. The Romans met him soon after at Heraclea, on the coast. It was the first collision of the Roman legion and the Macedonian phalanx, and the first encounter of the Latin soldier with the huge war-beast of the Asiatics. Pyrrhus won a bloody victory, but won it at such cost that it terrified him. He tried at once to arrange a peace, but the proud Romans made no terms with an invader. Next year he inflicted another great defeat upon them near Asculum, in Apulia; but nothing seemed to come of it, and the indomitable Romans were as little conquered as ever. Then the restless Epirot king took his much shaken army over to Sicily and joined the Greeks there in their war with the Carthaginians. The latter were driven out of all parts of the island except Lilybæum; but failing, after a long siege, to reduce Lilybæum, Pyrrhus lost the whole fruits of his success. The autumn of 276 B. C. found him back again in Italy, where the Romans, during his absence of three years, had recovered much ground. Next year, in the valley of Beneventum, they had their revenge upon him for Heraclea and Asculum, and he was glad to take the shattered remains of his army back to Greece. His career of ambition and adventure was ended three years afterwards, under the walls of Argos, by a tile which a woman flung down upon his head.

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 277-244.

In due time all Magna Græcia succumbed to the dominion of Rome, and the commerce and wealth of Tarentum passed over under Roman auspices to the new port of Brundisium, on the Adriatic side of the same promontory.

T. Arnold, History of Rome, chapters 36-37 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 3, chapters 14-17.

ROME: B. C. 275. Union of Italy under the sovereignty of the republic. Differing relations of the subject communities to the sovereign state. Roman citizenship as variously qualified.

"For the first time Italy was united into one state under the sovereignty of the Roman community. What political privileges the Roman community on this occasion withdrew from the various other Italian communities and took into its own sole keeping, or in other words, what conception of political power is to be associated with this sovereignty of Rome, we are nowhere expressly informed. … The only privileges that demonstrably belonged to it were the right of making war, of concluding treaties, and of coining money. No Italian community could declare war against any foreign state, or even negotiate with it, or coin money for circulation. On the other hand, every war and every state-treaty resolved upon by the Roman people were binding in law on all the other Italian communities, and the silver money of Rome was legally current throughout all Italy. It is probable that formerly the general rights of the leading community extended no further. But to these rights there was necessarily attached a prerogative of sovereignty that practically went far beyond them. The relations, which the Italians sustained to the leading community, exhibited in detail great inequalities. In this point of view, in addition to the full burgesses of Rome, there were three different classes of subjects to be distinguished. The full franchise itself, in the first place, was extended as far as was possible, without wholly abandoning the idea of an urban commonwealth in the case of the Roman commune. Not only was the old burgess-domain extended by individual assignation far into Etruria on the one hand and into Campania on the other, but, after the example was first set in the case of Tusculum, a great number of communities more or less remote were gradually incorporated with the Roman state and merged in it completely. … Accordingly the Roman burgess-body probably extended northward as far as the neighbourhood of Caere, eastward to the Apennines, and southward as far as, or beyond, Formiae. In its case, however, we cannot use the term 'boundaries' in a strict sense. Isolated communities within this region, such as Tibur, Praeneste, Signia, and Norba, had not the Roman franchise; others beyond its bounds, such as Sena, possessed it; and it is probable that families of Roman farmers were already dispersed throughout all Italy, either altogether isolated or associated in villages. Among the subject communities the most privileged and most important class was that of the Latin towns, which now embraced but few of the original participants in the Alban festival (and these, with the exception of Tibur and Praeneste, altogether insignificant communities), but on the other hand obtained accessions equally numerous and important in the autonomous communities founded by Rome in and even beyond Italy —the Latin colonies, as they were called—and was always increasing in consequence of new settlements of the same nature. {2675} These new urban communities of Roman origin, but with Latin rights, became more and more the real buttresses of the Roman rule. These Latins, however, were by no means those with whom the battles of the lake Regillus and Trifanum had been fought. … The Latins of the later times of the republic, on the contrary, consisted almost exclusively of communities, which from the beginning had honoured Rome as their capital and parent city; which, settled amidst peoples of alien language and of alien habits, were attached to Rome by community of language, of law, and of manners; which, as the petty tyrants of the surrounding districts, were obliged doubtless to lean on Rome for their very existence, like advanced posts leaning upon the main army. … The main advantage enjoyed by them, as compared with other subjects, consisted in their equalization with burgesses of the Roman community so far as regarded private rights—those of traffic and barter as well as those of inheritance. The Roman franchise was in future conferred only on such citizens of these townships as had filled a public magistracy in them: in that case, however, it was, apparently from the first, conferred without any limitation of rights. … The two other classes of Roman subjects, the subject Roman burgesses and the non-Latin allied communities, were in a far inferior position. The communities having the Roman franchise without the privilege of electing or being elected (civitas sine suffragio), approached nearer in form to the full Roman burgesses than the Latin communities that were legally autonomous. Their members were, as Roman burgesses, liable to all the burdens of citizenship, especially to the levy and taxation, and were subject to the Roman census; whereas, as their very designation indicates, they had no claim to its honorary rights. They lived under Roman laws, and had justice administered by Roman judges; but the hardship was lessened by the fact that their former common law was, after undergoing revision by Rome, restored to them as Roman local law, and a 'deputy' (praefectus) annually nominated by the Roman praetor was sent to them to conduct its administration. In other respects these communities retained their own administration, and chose for that purpose their own chief magistrates. … Lastly, the relations of the non-Latin allied communities were subject, as a matter of course, to very various rules, just as each particular treaty of alliance had defined them. Many of these perpetual treaties of alliance, such as that with the Hernican communities and those with Neapolis, Nola, and Heraclea, granted rights comparatively comprehensive, while others, such as the Tarentine and Samnite treaties, probably approximated to despotism. … The central administration at Rome solved the difficult problem of preserving its supervision and control over the mass of the Italian communities liable to furnish contingents, partly by means of the four Italian quaestors, partly by the extension of the Roman censorship over the whole of the dependent communities. The quaestors of the fleet, along with their more immediate duty, had to raise the revenues from the newly acquired domains and to control the contingents of the new allies; they were the first Roman functionaries to whom a residence and district out of Rome were assigned by law, and they formed the necessary intermediate authority between the Roman senate and the Italian communities. … Lastly, with this military administrative union of the whole peoples dwelling to the south of the Apennines, as far as the Iapygian promontory and the straits of Rhegium, was connected the rise of a new name common to them all—that of 'the men of the toga' (togati), which was their oldest designation in Roman state law, or that of the 'Italians,' which was the appellation originally in use among the Greeks and thence became universally current. … As the Gallic territory down to a late period stood contrasted in law with the Italian, so the 'men of the toga' were thus named in contrast to the Celtic 'men of the hose' (braccati); and it is probable that the repelling of the Celtic invasions played an important diplomatic part as a reason or pretext for centralizing the military resources of Italy in the hands of the Romans. … The name Italia, which originally and even in the Greek authors of the 5th century—in Aristotle for instance—pertained only to the modern Calabria, was transferred to the whole land of these wearers of the toga. The earliest boundaries of this great armed confederacy led by Rome, or of the new Italy, reached on the western coast as far as the district of Leghorn south of the Arnus, on the east as far as the Aesis north of Ancona. …The new Italy had thus become a political unity; it was also in the course of becoming a national unity."

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 2, chapter 7 (volume 1).

ROME: B. C. 264-241. The first Punic War. Conquest of Sicily.

"The ten years preceding the First Punic War were probably a time of the greatest physical prosperity which the mass of the Roman people ever knew. Within twenty years two agrarian laws had been passed on a most extensive scale, and the poorer citizens had received besides what may be called a large dividend in money out of the lands which the state had conquered. In addition to this, the farming of the state domains, or of their produce, furnished those who had money with abundant opportunities of profitable adventure. … No wonder, then, that war was at this time popular. … But our 'pleasant vices' are ever made instruments to scourge us; and the First Punic War, into which the Roman people forced the senate to enter, not only in its long course bore most heavily upon the poorer citizens, but, from the feelings of enmity which it excited in the breast of Hamilcar, led most surely to that fearful visitation of Hannibal's sixteen years' invasion of Italy, which destroyed for ever, not indeed the pride of the Roman dominion, but the well-being of the Roman people."

T. Arnold, History of Rome, pages 538-540.

"The occasion of the First Punic War was dishonourable to Rome. Certain mercenary soldiers had seized Messana in Sicily, destroyed the citizens, and held possession against the Syracusans, 284 B. C. They were beaten in the field, and blockaded in Messana by Hiero, king of Syracuse, and then, driven to extremity, sent a deputation to Rome, praying that 'the Romans, the sovereigns of Italy, would not suffer an Italian people to be destroyed by Greeks and Carthaginians,' 264 B. C. It was singular that such a request should be made to the Romans, who only six years before had chastised the military revolt of their brethren Mamertines in Rhegium, taking the city by storm, scourging and beheading the defenders, and then restoring the old inhabitants (270 B. C.). {2676} The senate was opposed to the request of the Messana deputation; but the consuls and the people of Rome, already jealous of Carthaginian influence in Sicily and the Mediterranean, resolved to protect the Mamertine buccaneers and to receive them as their friends and allies. Thus dishonestly and disgracefully did the Romans depart from their purely Italian and continental policy, which had so well succeeded, to enter upon another system, the results of which no one then could foresee. Some excuse may be found in the fact that the Carthaginians had been placed by their partisans in Messana in possession of the citadel, and this great rival power of Carthage was thus brought unpleasantly near to the recent conquered territory of Rome. The fear of Carthaginian influence overcame the natural reluctance to an alliance with traitors false to their military oath, the murderers and plunderers of a city which they were bound to protect. Thus began 'the First Punic War, which lasted, without intermission, 22 years, a longer space of time than the whole period occupied by the wars of the French Revolution.' In this war Duilius won the first naval battle near Mylæ (Melarro). Regulus invaded Africa proper, the territory of Carthage, with great success, until beaten and taken prisoner at Zama, 256-255 B. C. The war was carried on in Sicily and on the sea until 241 B. C., when peace was made on conditions that the Carthaginians should evacuate Sicily and make no war upon Hiero, king of Sicily (the ally of the Romans), that they should pay 3,200 Euboic talents (about £110,000) within ten years, 241 B. C. The effects of an exhausting war were soon overcome by ancient nations, so that both Rome and Carthage rapidly recovered, 'because wars in those days were not maintained at the expense of posterity.' Rome had to check the Illyrian pirates and to complete the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul and the Ligurians 238-221 B. C. Meanwhile the Carthaginians, hampered by a three years' rebellion of its mercenary troops, quietly permitted the Romans to take possession of Corsica and Sardinia, and agreed to pay 1,200 talents as compensation to Roman merchants. On the other hand, measures were in process to re-establish the Carthaginian power; the patriotic party, the Barcine family, under Hamilcar, commenced the carrying out of the extensions and consolidations of the territories in Spain."

W. B. Boyce, Introduction to the Study of History, period 4, section 4.

ALSO IN: Polybius, Histories, book 1.

R. B. Smith, Carthage, chapters 4-7.

A. J. Church, The Story of Carthage, part 4, chapters 1-3.

See, also, PUNIC WAR, THE FIRST.

ROME: B. C. 218-211. The Second Punic War; Hannibal in Italy. Cannæ.

"Twenty-three years passed between the end of the first Punic War and the beginning of the second. But in the meanwhile the Romans got possession, rather unfairly, of the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, which Carthage had kept by the peace. On the other hand a Carthaginian dominion was growing up in Spain under Hamilcar Barkas, one of the greatest men that Carthage ever reared, his son-in-law Hasdrubal, and his son Hannibal, the greatest man of all, and probably the greatest general that the world ever saw. Another quarrel arose between Carthage and Rome, when Hannibal took the Spanish town of Saguntum, which the Romans claimed as an ally. War began in 218, and Hannibal carried it on by invading Italy by land. This was one of the most famous enterprises in all history. Never was Rome so near destruction as in the war with Hannibal. He crossed the Alps and defeated the Romans in four battles, the greatest of which was that of Cannae in B. C. 216."

E. A. Freeman, Outlines of History (or General Sketch of European History), chapter 3.

"The first battle was fought (218) on the river Ticinus, which runs into the Padus from the north. The Romans were driven back, and Hannibal passed the Padus. Meanwhile another Roman army had come up, and its general, the consul, Tiberius Sempronius Longus, wanted to fight at once. The little river of the Trebbia lay between the two armies, and on a cold morning the Roman general marched his soldiers through the water against Hannibal. The Romans were entirely beaten, and driven out of Gaul. All northern Italy had thus passed under Hannibal's power, and its people were his friends; so next year, 217, Hannibal went into Etruria, and marched south towards Rome itself, plundering as he went. The Roman consul, Caius Flaminius Nepos, went to meet him, and a battle was fought on the shores of the Lake Trasimenus. It was a misty day, and the Romans, who were marching after Hannibal, were surrounded by him and taken by surprise: they were entirely beaten, and the consul was killed in battle. Then the Romans were in great distress, and elected a dictator, Quintus Fabius Maximus. He saw that it was no use to fight battles with Hannibal, so he followed him about, and watched him, and did little things against him when he could; so he was called 'Cunctator,' or 'the Delayer.' But, although this plan of waiting was very useful, the Romans did not like it, for Hannibal was left to plunder as he thought fit, and there was always danger that the other Italians would join him against Rome. So next year, 216, the Romans made a great attempt to get rid of him. They sent both the consuls with an army twice as large as Hannibal's, but again they were defeated at Cannæ. They lost 70,000 men, while Hannibal only lost 6,000; all their best soldiers were killed, and it seemed as though they had no hope left. But nations are not conquered only by the loss of battles. Hannibal hoped, after the battle of Cannæ, that the Italians would all come to his side, and leave Rome. Some did so, but all the Latin cities, and all the Roman colonies held by Rome. So long as this was the case, Rome was not yet conquered. Hannibal could win battles very quickly, but it would take him a long time to besiege all the cities that still held to Rome, and for that he must have a larger army. But he could not get more soldiers,—the Romans had sent an army into Spain, and Hannibal's brother, Hasdrubal, was busy fighting the Romans there, and could not send any troops to Italy. The Carthaginians also would not send any, for they were becoming afraid of Hannibal, and they did not know anything about Italy. So they answered his letters, asking for more men, by saying, that if he had won such great battles, he ought not to want any more troops. {2677} At Cannæ, then, Hannibal had struck his greatest blow: he could do no more. The Romans had learned to wait, and be careful: so they fought no more great battles, but every year they grew stronger and Hannibal grew weaker. The chief town that had gone over to Hannibal's side was Capua, but in 211 the Romans took it again, and Hannibal was not strong enough to prevent them. The chief men of Capua were so afraid of falling into the hands of the Romans that they all poisoned themselves. After this all the Italian cities that had joined Hannibal began to leave him again."

M. Creighton, History of Rome, chapter 3.

ALSO IN: T. A. Dodge, Hannibal, chapters 11-39.

T. Arnold, History of Rome, chapters 43-47.

See, also, PUNIC WAR, THE SECOND.

ROME: B. C. 214-146. The Macedonian Wars. Conquest of Greece.

See GREECE: B. C. 214-146; also 280-146.

ROME: B. C. 211. The Second Punic War: Hannibal at the gates.

In the eighth year of the Second Punic War (B. C. 211), when fortune had begun to desert the arms of Hannibal—when Capua, his ally and mainstay in Italy was under siege by the Romans and he was powerless to relieve the doomed senators and citizens—the Carthaginian commander made a sudden march upon Rome. He moved his army to the gates of his great enemy, "not with any hope of taking the city, but with the hope that the Romans, panic-stricken at the realization of a fear they had felt for five years past, would summon the consuls from the walls of Capua. But the cool head of Fabius, who was in Rome, guessed the meaning of that manœuvre, and would only permit one of the consuls, Flaccus, to be recalled. Thus the leaguer of the rebel city was not broken. Hannibal failed in his purpose, but he left an indelible impression of his terrible presence upon the Roman mind. Looming through a mist of romantic fable, unconquerable, pitiless, he was actually seen touching the walls of Rome, hurling with his own hand a spear into the sacred Pomoerium. He had marched along the Via Latina, driving crowds of fugitives before him, who sought refuge in the city. … He had fixed his camp on the Anio, within three miles of the Esquiline. To realize the state of feeling in Rome during those days of panic would be to get at the very heart of the Hannibalic war. The Senate left the Curia and sat in the Forum, to reassure, by their calm composure, the excited crowds. Fabius noticed from the battlements that the ravagers spared his property. It was a cunning attempt on the part of Hannibal to bring suspicion on him; but he forthwith offered the property for sale; and such was the effect of his quiet confidence that the market price even of the land on which the camp of the enemy was drawn never fell an 'as.' … Hannibal marched away into the Sabine country, and made his way back to Tarentum, Rome unsacked, Capua unrelieved."

R. F. Horton, History of the Romans, chapter 12.

ALSO IN: T. Arnold, History of Rome, chapter 44.

T. A. Dodge, Hannibal, chapter 34.

ROME: B. C. 211-202. The Second Punic War: Defeat of Hasdrubal at the Metaurus. The war in Africa. The end at Zama. Acquisition of Spain.

"The conquest of Capua was the turning point in the war. Hannibal lost his stronghold in Campania and was obliged to retire to the southern part of Italy. Rome was gaining everywhere. The Italians who had joined Hannibal began to lose confidence. Salapia and many towns in Samnium were betrayed to the Romans. But when Fulvius, the proconsul who commanded in Apulia, appeared before Herdonea, which he hoped to gain possession of by treachery, Hannibal marched from Bruttium, attacked the Roman army, and gained a brilliant victory. In the following year the Romans recovered several places in Lucania and Bruttium, and Fabius Maximus crowned his long military career with the recapture of Tarentum (B. C. 209). The inhabitants were sold as slaves; the town was plundered and the works of art were sent to Rome. The next year Marcellus, for the fifth time elected to the consulship, was surprised near Venusia and killed. … The war had lasted ten years, yet its favorable conclusion seemed far off. There were increasing symptoms of discontent among the allies, while the news from Spain left little doubt that the long prepared expedition of Hasdrubal over the Alps to join his brother in Italy was at last to be realized. Rome strained every nerve to meet the impending danger. The number of legions was increased from twenty-one to twenty-three. The preparations were incomplete, when the news came that Hasdrubal was crossing the Alps by the same route which his brother had taken eleven years before. The consuls for the new year were M. Livius Salinator and G. Claudius Nero. Hannibal, at the beginning of spring, after reorganizing his force in Bruttium, advanced northward, encountered the consul Nero at Grumentum, whence, after a bloody but indecisive battle, he continued his march to Canusium. Here he waited for news from his brother. The expected despatch was intercepted by Nero, who formed the bold resolution of joining his colleague in the north, and with their united armies crushing Hasdrubal while Hannibal was waiting for the expected despatch. Hasdrubal had appointed a rendezvous with his brother in Umbria, whence with their united armies they were both to advance on Narnia and Rome. Nero, selecting from his army 7,000 of the best soldiers and 1,000 cavalry, left his camp so quietly that Hannibal knew nothing of his departure. Near Sena he found his colleague Livius, and in the night entered his camp that his arrival might not be known to the Carthaginians. Hasdrubal, when he heard the trumpet sound twice from the Roman camp and saw the increased numbers, was no longer ignorant that both consuls were in front of him. Thinking that his brother had been defeated, he resolved to retire across the Metaurus and wait for accurate information. Missing his way, wandering up and down the river to find a ford, pursued and attacked by the Romans, he was compelled to accept battle. Although in an unfavorable position, a deep river in his rear, his troops exhausted by marching all night, still the victory long hung in suspense. Hasdrubal displayed all the qualities of a great general, and when he saw that all was lost, he plunged into the thickest of the battle and was slain. The consul returned to Apulia with the same rapidity with which he had come. He announced to Hannibal the defeat and death of his brother by casting Hasdrubal's head within the outposts and by sending two Carthaginian captives to give him an account of the disastrous battle. {2678} 'I foresee the doom of Carthage,' said Hannibal sadly, when he recognized the bloody head of his brother. This battle decided the war in Italy. Hannibal withdrew his garrisons from the towns in southern Italy, retired to the peninsula of Bruttium, where for four long years, in that wild and mountainous country, with unabated courage and astounding tenacity, the dying lion clung to the land that had been so long the theatre of his glory. … The time had come to carry into execution that expedition to Africa which Sempronius had attempted in the beginning of the war. Publius Scipio, on his return from Spain, offered himself for the consulship and was unanimously elected. His design was to carry the war into Africa and in this way compel Carthage to recall Hannibal. … The senate finally consented that he should cross from his province of Sicily to Africa, but they voted no adequate means for such an expedition. Scipio called for volunteers. The whole of the year B. C. 205 passed away before he completed his preparations. Meanwhile the Carthaginians made one last effort to help Hannibal. Mago, Hannibal's youngest brother, was sent to Liguria with 14,000 men to rouse the Ligurians and Gauls to renew the war on Rome; but having met a Roman army under Quintilius Varus, and being wounded in the engagement which followed, his movements were so crippled that nothing of importance was accomplished. In the spring of B. C. 204 Scipio had completed his preparations. He embarked his army from Lilybæum, and after three days landed at the Fair Promontory near Utica. After laying siege to Utica all summer, he was compelled to fall back and entrench himself on the promontory. Masinissa had joined him immediately on his arrival. By his advice Scipio planned a night attack on Hasdrubal, the son of Gisgo, and Syphax, who were encamped near Utica. This enterprise was completely successful. A short time afterwards Hasdrubal and Syphax were again defeated. Syphax fled to Numidia, where he was followed by Lælius and Masinissa and compelled to surrender. These successes convinced the Carthaginians that with the existing forces the Roman invasion could not long be resisted. Therefore they opened negotiations for peace with Scipio, in order probably to gain time to recall their generals from Italy. The desire of Scipio to bring the war to a conclusion induced him to agree upon preliminaries of peace, subject to the approval of the Roman senate and people. … Meanwhile the arrival of Hannibal at Hadrumetum had so encouraged the Carthaginians that the armistice had been broken before the return of the ambassadors from Rome. All hopes of peace by negotiation vanished, and Scipio prepared to renew the war, which, since the arrival of Hannibal, had assumed a more serious character. The details of the operations which ended in the battle of Zama are but imperfectly known. The decisive battle was fought on the river Bagradas, near Zama, on the 19th of October, B. C. 202. Hannibal managed the battle with his usual skill. His veterans fought like the men who had so often conquered in Italy, but his army was annihilated. The elephants were rendered unavailing by Scipio's skillful management. Instead of the three lines of battle, with the usual intervals, Scipio arranged his companies behind each other like the rounds of a ladder. Through these openings the elephants could pass without breaking the line. This battle terminated the long struggle. … Hannibal himself advised peace."

R. F. Leighton, History of Rome, chapters 23-24.

"Scipio prepared as though he would besiege the city, but his heart also inclined to peace. … The terms which he offered were severe enough, and had the Carthaginians only realised what they involved, they would surely have asked to be allowed to meet their fate at once. They were to retain indeed their own laws and their home domain in Africa; but they were to give up all the deserters and prisoners of war, all their elephants, and all their ships of the line but ten. They were not to wage war, either in Africa or outside of it, without the sanction of the Roman Senate. They were to recognise Massinissa as the king of Numidia, and, with it, the prescriptive right which he would enjoy of plundering and annoying them at his pleasure, while they looked on with their hands tied, not daring to make reprisals. Finally, they were to give up all claim to the rich islands of the Mediterranean and to the Spanish kingdom, the creation of the Barcides, of which the fortune of war had already robbed them; and thus shorn of the sources of their wealth, they were to pay within a given term of seven years a crushing war contribution! Henceforward, in fact, they would exist on sufferance only, and that the sufferance of the Romans. … The conclusion of the peace was celebrated at Carthage by a cruel sight, the most cruel which the citizens could have beheld, except the destruction of the city itself—the destruction of their fleet. Five hundred vessels, the pride and glory of the Phœnician race, the symbol and the seal of the commerce, the colonisation, and the conquests of this most imperial of Phœnician cities, were towed out of the harbour and were deliberately burned in the sight of the citizens."

R. B. Smith, Rome and Carthage: the Punic Wars, chapter 17.

ALSO IN: H. G. Liddell, History of Rome, chapters 31-34.

See, also. PUNIC WAR: THE SECOND.

ROME: B. C. 2d Century. Greek influences.

See HELLENIC GENIUS AND INFLUENCE.

ROME: B. C. 191. War with Antiochus the Great of Syria. First conquests in Asia Minor bestowed on the king of Pergamum and the Republic of Rhodes.

See SELEUCIDÆ: B. U. 224-187.

ROME: B. C. 189-139. Wars with the Lusitanians.

See PORTUGAL: EARLY HISTORY; and LUSITANIA.

ROME: B. C. 184-149. The Spoils of Conquest and the Corruption they wrought.

"The victories of the last half-century seemed to promise ease and wealth to Rome. She was to live on the spoils and revenue from the conquered countries. Not only did they pay a fixed tax to her exchequer, but the rich lands of Capua, the royal domain lands of the kings of Syracuse and of Macedonia, became public property, and produced a large annual rent. It was found possible in 167 to relieve citizens from the property tax or tributum, which was not collected again until the year after the death of Julius Caesar. But the sudden influx of wealth had the usual effect of raising the standard of expense; and new tastes and desires required increased means for their gratification. All manner of luxuries were finding their way into the city from the East. {2679} Splendid furniture, costly ornaments, wanton dances and music for their banquets, became the fashion among the Roman nobles; and the younger men went to lengths of debauchery and extravagance hitherto unknown. The result to many was financial embarrassment, from which relief was sought in malversation and extortion. The old standard of honour in regard to public money was distinctly lowered, and cases of misconduct and oppression were becoming more common and less reprobated. … The fashionable taste for Greek works of art, in the adornment of private houses, was another incentive to plunder, and in 149 it was for the first time found necessary to establish a permanent court or 'quaestio' for cases of malversation in the provinces. Attempts were indeed made to restrain the extravagance which was at the root of the evil. In 184 Cato, as censor, had imposed a tax on the sale of slaves under twenty above a certain price, and on personal ornaments above a certain value; and though the 'lex Oppia,' limiting the amount of women's jewelry, had been repealed in spite of him in 195, other sumptuary laws were passed. A 'lex Orchia' in 182 limited the number of guests, a 'lex Fannia' in 161 the amount to be spent on banquets; while a 'lex Didia' in 143 extended the operation of the law to all Italy. And though such laws, even if enforced, could not really remedy the evil, they perhaps had a certain effect in producing a sentiment; for long afterwards we find overcrowded dinners regarded as indecorous and vulgar. Another cause, believed by some to be unfavourably affecting Roman character, was the growing influence of Greek culture and Greek teachers. For many years the education of the young, once regarded as the special business of the parents, had been passing into the hands of Greek slaves or freedmen. … On the superiority of Greek culture there was a division of opinion. The Scipios and their party patronised Greek philosophy and literature. … This tendency, which went far beyond a mere question of literary taste, was opposed by a party of which M. Porcius Cato was the most striking member. … In Cato's view the reform needed was a return to the old ways, before Rome was infected by Greece."

E. S. Shuckburgh, History of Rome to the Battle of Actium, chapter 32.

ROME: B. C. 159-133. Decline of the Republic. Social and economic causes. The growing system of Slavery and its effects. Monopoly of land by capitalists. Extinction of small cultivators. Rapid decrease of citizens.

"In the Rome of this epoch the two evils of a degenerate oligarchy and a democracy not yet developed but already cankered in the bud were interwoven in a manner pregnant with fatal results. According to their party names, which were first heard during this period, the ' Optimates' wished to give effect to the will of the best, the 'Populares' to that of the community; but in fact there was in the Rome of that day neither a true aristocracy nor a truly self-determining community. Both parties contended alike for shadows. … Both were equally affected by political corruption, and both were in fact equally worthless. … The commonwealth was politically and morally more and more unhinged, and was verging towards its total dissolution. The crisis with which the Roman revolution was opened arose not out of this paltry political conflict, but out of the economic and social relations which the Roman government allowed, like everything else, simply to take their course"; and which had brought about "the depreciation of the Italian farms; the supplanting of the petty husbandry, first in a part of the provinces and then in Italy, by the farming of large estates; the prevailing tendency to devote the latter in Italy to the rearing of cattle and the culture of the olive and vine; finally, the replacing of the free labourers in the provinces as in Italy by slaves. … Before we attempt to describe the course of this second great conflict between labour and capital, it is necessary to give here some indication of the nature and extent of the system of slavery. We have not now to do with the old, in some measure innocent, rural slavery, under which the farmer either tilled the field along with his slave, or, if he possessed more land than he could manage, placed the slave … over a detached farm. … What we now refer to is the system of slavery on a great scale, which in the Roman state, as formerly in the Carthaginian, grew out of the ascendancy of capital. While the captives taken in war and the hereditary transmission of slavery sufficed to keep up the stock of slaves during the earlier period, this system of slavery was, just like that of America, based on the methodically prosecuted hunting of man. … No country where this species of game could be hunted remained exempt from visitation; even in Italy it was a thing by no means unheard of, that the poor free man was placed by his employer among the slaves. But the Negroland of that period was western Asia, where the Cretan and Cilician corsairs, the real professional slave-hunters and slave-dealers, robbed the coasts of Syria and the Greek islands; and where, emulating their feats, the Roman revenue-farmers instituted human hunts in the client states and incorporated those whom they captured among their slaves. … At the great slave market in Delos, where the slave-dealers of Asia Minor disposed of their wares to Italian speculators, on one day as many as 10,000 slaves are said to have been disembarked in the morning and to have heen all sold before evening. … In whatever direction speculation applied itself, its instrument was invariably man reduced in the eye of the law to a brute. Trades were in great part carried on by slaves, so that the proceeds belonged to the master. The levying of the public revenues in the lower departments was regularly conducted by the slaves of the associations that leased them. Servile hands performed the operations of mining, making pitch, and others of a similar kind; it became early the custom to send herds of slaves to the Spanish mines. … The tending of cattle was universally performed by slaves. … But far worse in every respect was the plantation system proper—the cultivation of the fields by a band of slaves not unfrequent]y branded with iron, who with shackles on their legs performed the labours of the field under overseers during the day, and were locked up together by night in the common, frequently subterranean, labourers' prison. This plantation system had migrated from the East to Carthage, … and seems to have been brought by the Carthaginians to Sicily. … {2680} The abyss of misery and woe which opens before our eyes in this most miserable of all proletariates, we leave to be fathomed by those who venture to gaze into such depths; It is very possible that, compared with the sufferings of the Roman slaves, the sum of all Negro suffering is but a drop. Here we are not so much concerned with the distress of the slaves themselves as with the perils which it brought upon the Roman state. …

See SLAVE WARS IN SICILY AND ITALY.

The capitalists continued to buy out the small landholders, or indeed, if they remained obstinate, to seize their fields without title of purchase. … The landlords continued mainly to employ slaves instead of free labourers, because the former could not like the latter be called away to military service; and thus reduced the free proletariate to the same level of misery with the slaves. They continued to supersede Italian grain in the market of the capital, and to lessen its value over the whole peninsula, by selling Sicilian slave-corn at a mere nominal price. … After 595 [B. C. 159], … when the census yielded 328,000 citizens capable of bearing arms, there appears a regular falling off, for the list in 600 [B. C. 154] stood at 324,000, that in 607 [B. C. 147] at 322,000, that in 623 [B. C. 131] at 319,000 burgesses fit for service—an alarming result for a period of profound peace at home and abroad. If matters were to go on at this rate, the burgess-body would resolve itself into planters and slaves; and the Roman state might at length, as was the case with the Parthians, purchase its soldiers in the slave-market. Such was the external and internal condition of Rome, when the state entered on the 7th century of its existence. Wherever the eye turned, it encountered abuses and decay; the question could not but force itself on every sagacious and well disposed man, whether this state of things were not capable of remedy or amendment."

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 4, chapter 2 (volume 3).

ALSO IN: T. Arnold, History of the Roman Commonwealth, chapter 2.

G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 1, chapters 10-12.

W. R. Brownlow, Slavery and Serfdom in Europe, lectures 1-2.

ROME: B. C. 151-146. The Third Punic War: Destruction of Carthage.

"Carthage, bound hand and foot by the treaty of 201 B. C., was placed under the jealous watch of the loyal prince of Numidia, who himself willingly acknowledged the suzerainty of Rome. But it was impossible for this arrangement to be permanent. Every symptom of reviving prosperity at Carthage was regarded at Rome with feverish anxiety, and neither the expulsion of Hannibal in 195 B. C. nor his death in 183 B. C. did much to check the growing conviction that Rome would never be secure while her rival existed. It was therefore with grim satisfaction that many in the Roman senate watched the increasing irritation of the Carthaginians under the harassing raids and encroachments of their favoured neighbour, Masinissa, and waited for the moment when Carthage should, by some breach of the conditions imposed upon her, supply Rome with a pretext for interference. At last in 151 B. C. came the news that Carthage, in defiance of treaty obligations, was actually at war with Masinissa. The anti-Carthaginian party in the senate, headed by M. Porcius Cato, eagerly seized the opportunity; in spite of the protests of Scipio Nasica and others, war was declared, and nothing short of the destruction of their city itself was demanded from the despairing Carthaginians. This demand, as the senate, no doubt, foresaw, was refused, and in 149 B. C. the siege of Carthage began. During the next two years little progress was made, but in 147 P. Cornelius Scipio Æmilianus, son of L. Æmilius Paulus, conqueror of Macedonia, and grandson by adoption of the conqueror of Hannibal, was, at the age of 37, and though only a candidate for the ædileship, elected consul and given the command in Africa. In the next year (146 B. C.) Carthage was taken and razed to the ground. Its territory became the Roman province of Africa, while Numidia, now ruled by the three sons of Masinissa, remained as an allied state under Roman suzerainty, and served to protect the new province against the raids of the desert tribes. Within little more than a century from the commencement of the first Punic war, the whole of the former dominions of Carthage had been brought under the direct rule of Roman magistrates, and were regularly organised as Roman provinces."

H. F. Pelham, Outlines of Roman History, book 3, chapter 1.

See, also, CARTHAGE: B. C. 146.

ROME: B. C. 146. Supremacy of the Senate.

"At the close of a century first of deadly struggle and then of rapid and dazzling success, Rome found herself the supreme power in the civilised world. … We have now to consider how this period of conflict and conquest had affected the victorious state. Outwardly the constitution underwent but little change. It continued to be in form a moderate democracy. The sovereignty of the people finally established by the Hortensian law remained untouched in theory. It was by the people in assembly that the magistrates of the year were elected, and that laws were passed; only by 'order of the people' could capital punishment be inflicted upon a Roman citizen. For election to a magistracy, or for a seat in the senate, patrician and plebeian were equally eligible. But between the theory and the practice of the constitution there was a wide difference. Throughout this period the actually sovereign authority in Rome was that of the senate, and behind the senate stood an order of nobles (nobiles), who claimed and enjoyed privileges as wide as those which immemorial custom had formerly conceded to the patriciate. The ascendency of the senate, which thus arrested the march of democracy in Rome, was not, to any appreciable extent, the result of legislation. It was the direct outcome of the practical necessities of the time, and when these no longer existed, it was at once and successfully challenged in the name and on the behalf of the constitutional rights of the people. Nevertheless, from the commencement of the Punic wars down to the moment when with the destruction of Carthage in 146 B. C. Rome's only rival disappeared, this ascendency was complete and almost unquestioned. It was within the walls of the senate-house, and by decrees of the senate, that the foreign and the domestic policy of the state were alike determined. … Though the ascendency of the senate was mainly due to the fact that without it the government of the state could scarcely have been carried on, it was strengthened and confirmed by the close and intimate connection which existed between the senate and the nobility. This 'nobility' was in its nature and origin widely different from the old patriciate. {2681} Though every patrician was of course 'noble,' the majority of the families which in this period styled themselves noble were not patrician but plebeian, and the typical nobles of the time of the elder Cato, of the Gracchi, or of Cicero, the Metelli, Livii, or Licinii were plebeians. The title nobilis was apparently conceded by custom to those plebeian families one or more of whose members had, after the opening of the magistracies, been elected to a curule office, and which in consequence were entitled to place in their halls, and to display at their funeral processions the 'imagines' of these distinguished ancestors. The man who, by his election to a curule office thus ennobled his descendants, was said to be the 'founder of his family,' though himself only a new man. … Office brought wealth and prestige, and both wealth and prestige were freely employed to exclude 'new men' and to secure for the 'noble families' a monopoly of office. The ennobled plebeians not only united with the patricians to form a distinct order, but outdid them in pride and arrogance. … The establishment of senatorial ascendency was not the only result of this period of growth and expansion. During the same time the foundations were laid of the provincial system, and with this of the new and dangerous powers of the proconsuls."

H. F. Pelham, Outlines of Roman History, book 3, chapter 3.

"The great struggle against Hannibal left the Senate the all but undisputed government of Rome. Originally a mere consulting board, assessors of the king or consul, the Senate had become the supreme executive body. That the government solely by the comitia and the magistrates should by experience be found wanting was as inevitable at Rome as at Athens. Rome was more fortunate than Athens in that she could develop a new organism to meet the need. The growth of the power of the Senate was all the more natural and legitimate the less it possessed strict legal standing-ground. But the fatal dualism thus introduced into the constitution—the Assembly governing de jure, and the Senate governing de facto—made all government after a time impossible. The position of the Senate being, strictly speaking, an unconstitutional one, it was open to any demagogue to bring matters of foreign policy or administration before an Assembly which was without continuity, without special knowledge, and in which there was no debate. Now, if the Senate governed badly, the Assembly 'could not govern at all;' and there could be, in the long run, but one end to the constant struggle between the two sources of authority."

W. T. Arnold, The Roman System of Provincial Administration, chapter 2.

See, also, SENATE, ROMAN.

ROME: B. C. 133-121. The attempted reforms of the Gracchi.

"The first systematic attack upon the senatorial government is connected with the names of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, and its immediate occasion was an attempt to deal with no less a danger than the threatened disappearance of the class to which of all others Rome had owed most in the past. For, while Rome had been extending her sway westward and eastward, and while her nobles and merchants were amassing colossal fortunes abroad, the small landholders throughout the greater part of Italy were sinking deeper into ruin under the pressure of accumulated difficulties. The Hannibalic war had laid waste their fields and thinned their numbers, nor when peace returned to Italy did it bring with it any revival of prosperity. The heavy burden of military service still pressed ruinously upon them, and in addition they were called upon to compete with the foreign corn imported from beyond the sea, and with the foreign slave-labour purchased by the capital of the wealthier men. … The small holders went off to follow the eagles or swell the proletariate of the cities, and their holdings were left to run waste or merged in the vineyards, oliveyards, and above all in the great cattle-farms of the rich, while their own place was taken by slaves. The evil was not equally serious in all parts of Italy. It was least felt in the central highlands, in Campania, and in the newly settled fertile valley of the Po. It was worst in Etruria and in southern Italy; but everywhere it was serious enough to demand the earnest attention of Roman statesmen. Of its existence the government had received plenty of warning in the declining numbers of able-bodied males returned at the census, in the increasing difficulties of recruiting for the legions, in servile out-breaks in Etruria and Apulia."

H. F. Pelham, Outlines of Roman History, book 4, chapter 1.

The earlier agrarian laws which the Roman plebeians had wrung from the patricians (the Licinian Law and similar ones—see ROME: B. C. 376-367; also AGRARIAN LAWS) had not availed to prevent the absorption, by one means and another, of the public domain—the "ager publicus," the conquered land which the state had neither sold nor given away—into the possession of great families and capitalists, who held it in vast blocks, to be cultivated by slaves. Time had almost sanctioned this condition of things, when Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, elder of the two famous brothers called "The Gracchi," undertook in 133 B. C. a reformation of it. As one of the tribunes of the people that year, he brought forward a law which was intended to enforce the provisions of the Licinian Law of 367 B. C., by taking away from the holders of public land what they held in excess of 500 jugera (about 320 acres) each. Three commissioners, called Triumviri, were to be appointed to superintend the execution of the law and to redistribute the land recovered, among needy citizens. Naturally the proposal of this act aroused a fierce opposition in the wealthy class whose ill-gotten estates were threatened by it. One of the fellow-tribunes of Tiberius was gained over by the opposition and used the power of his veto to prevent the taking of a vote upon the bill. Then Gracchus, to overcome the obstacle, had recourse to an unconstitutional measure. The obstinate tribune was deposed from his office by a vote of the people, and the law was then enacted. For the carrying out of his measure, and for his own protection, no less, Tiberius sought a re-election to the tribunate, which was contrary to usage, if not against positive law. His enemies raised a tumult against him on the day of election and he was slain, with three hundred of his party, and their corpses were flung into the Tiber. Nine years later, his younger brother, Caius Gracchus, obtained election to the tribune's office and took up the work of democratic political reform which Tiberius had sacrificed his life in attempting. His measures were radical, attacking the powers and privileges of the ruling orders. But mixed with them were schemes of demagoguery which did infinite mischief to the Roman people and state. {2682} He carried the first frumentarian law (lex frumentaria) as it was called, by which corn was bought with public money, and stored, for sale to Roman citizens at a nominal price. After three years of power, through the favor of the people, he, too, in 121 B. C. was deserted by them and the party of the patricians was permitted to put him to death, with a great number of his supporters.

G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 1, chapters 10-13, 18-19.

"Caius, it is said, was the first Roman statesman who appointed a regular distribution of corn among the poorer citizens, requiring the state to buy up large consignments of grain from the provinces, and to sell it again at a fixed rate below the natural price. The nobles themselves seem to have acquiesced without alarm in this measure, by which they hoped to secure the city from seditious movements in time of scarcity; but they failed to foresee the discouragement it would give to industry, the crowds of idle and dissipated citizens it would entice into the forum, the appetite it would create for shows, entertainments and largesses, and the power it would thus throw into the hands of unprincipled demagogues. Caius next established customs duties upon various articles of luxury imported into the city for the use of the rich: he decreed the gratuitous supply of clothing to the soldiers, who had hitherto been required to provide themselves out of their pay; he founded colonies for the immediate gratification of the poorer citizens, who were waiting in vain for the promised distribution of lands: he caused the construction of public granaries, bridges and roads, to furnish objects of useful labour to those who were not unwilling to work. Caius himself, it is said, directed the course and superintended the making of the roads, some of which we may still trace traversing Italy in straight lines from point to point, filling up depressions and hollowing excrescences in the face of the country, and built upon huge substructions of solid masonry. Those who most feared and hated him confessed their amazement at the magnificence of his projects and the energy of his proceedings; the people, in whose interests he toiled, were filled with admiration and delight, when they saw him attended from morning to night by crowds of contractors, artificers, ambassadors, magistrates, soldiers, and men of learning, to all of whom he was easy of access, adapting his behaviour to the condition of each in turn: thus proving, as they declared, the falsehood of those who presumed to call him violent and tyrannical. … By these innovations Caius laid a wide basis of popularity. Thereupon he commenced his meditated attack upon the privileged classes. We possess at least one obscure intimation of a change he effected or proposed in the manner of voting by centuries, which struck at the influence of the wealthier classes. He confirmed and extended the Porcian law, for the protection of citizens against the aggression of the magistrates without a formal appeal to the people. Even the powers of the dictatorship, to which the senate had been wont to resort for the coercion of its refractory opponents, were crippled by these provisions; and we shall see that no recourse was again had to this extraordinary and odious appointment till the oligarchy had gained for a time a complete victory over their adversaries. Another change, even more important, was that by which the knights were admitted to the greater share, if not, as some suppose, to the whole, of the judicial appointments. … As long as the senators were the judges, the provincial governors, who were themselves senators, were secure from the consequence of impeachment. If the knights were to fill the same office, it might be expected that the publicani, the farmers of the revenues abroad would be not less assured of impunity, whatever were the enormity of their exactions. … It was vain, indeed, to expect greater purity from the second order of citizens than from the first. If the senators openly denied justice to complainants, the knights almost as openly sold it. This was in itself a grievous degradation of the tone of public morality; but this was not all the evil of the tribune's reform. It arrayed the two privileged classes of citizens in direct hostility to one another. 'Caius made the republic double-headed,' was the profound remark of antiquity. He sowed the seeds of a war of an hundred years. Tiberius had attempted to raise up a class of small proprietors, who, by the simplicity of their manners and moderation of their tastes, might form, as he hoped, a strong conservative barrier between the tyranny of the nobles and the envy of the people; but Caius, on the failure of this attempt, was content to elevate a class to power, who should touch upon both extremes of the social scale,—the rich by their wealth, and the poor by their origin. Unfortunately this was to create not a new class, but a new party. … One direct advantage, at all events, Caius expected to derive, besides the humiliation of his brother's murderers, from this elevation of the knights: he hoped to secure their grateful co-operation towards the important object he next had in view: this was no less than the full admission of the Latins and Italians to the right of suffrage."

C. Merivale, The Fall of the Roman Republic, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus; Caius Gracchus.

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 4, chapters 2-3 (volume 3).

S. Eliot, Liberty of Rome: Rome, book 3, chapter 1.

See, also, AGER PUBLICUS.

ROME: B. C. 125-121. Conquest of the Salyes and Allobroges in Gaul. Treaty of friendship with the Ædui.

See SALYES; ALLOBROGES; and ÆDUI.

ROME: B. C. 118-99. Increasing corruption of government. The Jugurthine War. Invasion and defeat of the Cimbri and Teutones. The power of Marius.

"After the death of Caius Gracchus, the nobles did what they pleased in Rome. They paid no more attention to the Agrarian Law, and the state of Italy grew worse and worse. … The nobles cared nothing for Rome's honour, but only for their own pockets. They governed badly, and took bribes from foreign kings, who were allowed to do what they liked if they could pay enough. This was especially seen in a war that took place in Africa. After Carthage had been destroyed, the greatest state in Africa was Numidia. The king of Numidia was a friend of the Roman people, and had fought with them against Carthage. So Rome had a good deal to do with Numidia, and the Numidians often helped Rome in her wars. In 118 a king of Numidia died, and left the kingdom to his two sons and an adopted son named Jugurtha. Jugurtha determined to have the kingdom all to himself, so he murdered one of the sons and made war upon the other, who applied to Rome for help.

See NUMIDIA: B. C. 118-104.

{2683}

The Senate was bribed by Jugurtha, and did all it could to please him; at last, however, Jugurtha besieged his brother in Cirta, and when he took the city put him and all his army to death (112). After this the Romans thought they must interfere, but the Senate for more money were willing to let Jugurtha off very easily. He came to Rome to excuse himself before the people, and whilst he was there he had a Numidian prince, of whom he was afraid, murdered in Rome itself. But his bribes were stronger than the laws. … The Romans declared war against Jugurtha, but he bribed the generals, and for three years very little was done against him. At last, in 108, a good general, who would not take bribes, Quintus Metellus, went against him and defeated him. Metellus would have finished the war, but in 106 the command was taken from him by Caius Marius the consul. This Caius Marius was a man of low birth, but a good soldier. He had risen in war by his bravery, and had held magistracies in Rome. He was an officer in the army of Metellus, and was very much liked by the common soldiers, for he was a rough man like themselves, and talked with them, and lived as they did. … Marius left Africa and went to Rome to try and be made consul in 106. He found fault with Metellus before the people, and said that he could carry on the war better himself. So the people made him consul, and more than that, they said that he should be general in Africa instead of Metellus. … Marius finished the war in Africa, and brought Jugurtha in triumph to Italy in 104. … When it was over, Marius was the most powerful man in Rome. He was the leader of the popular party, and also the general of the army. The army had greatly changed since the time of Hannibal. The Roman soldiers were no longer citizens who fought when their country wanted them, and then went back to their work. But as wars were now constantly going on, and going on too in distant countries, this could no longer be the case, and the army was full of men who took to a soldier's life as a trade. Marius was the favourite of these soldiers: he was a soldier by trade himself, and had risen in consequence to power in the state. Notice, then, that when Marius was made consul, it was a sign that the government for the future was to be carried on by the army, as well as by the people and the nobles. Marius was soon wanted to carry on another war. Two great tribes of barbarians from the north had entered Gaul west of the Alps, and threatened to drive out the Romans, and even attack Italy. They came with their wives and children, like a wandering people looking for a home. … At first these Cimbri defeated the Roman generals in southern Gaul, where the Romans had conquered the country along the Rhone, and made it a province, which is still called the province, or Provence. The Romans, after this defeat, were afraid of another burning of their city by barbarians, so Marius was made consul again, and for the next five years he was elected again and again. … In the year 102 the Teutones and the Cimbri marched to attack Italy, but Marius defeated them in two great battles.