Note 240 — Chapter III · CONQUEST OF ITALY. (From 416 to 488.)

“A sedition was already rising between the patricians and the people, and the terror of so sudden a war (with the Tiburtini) stifled it.” (Titus Livius, VII. 12.)—“Appius Sabinus, to prevent the evils which are an inevitable consequence of idleness, joined with want, determined to occupy the people in external wars, in order that, gaining their living for themselves, by finding on the lands of the enemy abundant provisions which were not to be had in Rome, they might render at the same time some service to the State, instead of troubling at an unseasonable moment the senators in the administration of affairs. He said that a town which, like Rome, disputed empire with all others, and was hated by them, could not want a decent pretext for making war; that, if they would judge the future by the past, they would see clearly that all the seditions which had hitherto torn the Republic had never arrived except in time of peace, when people no longer feared anything from without.” (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, IX. 43.)