Chapter CCCLXXVI: Section 7 (4)

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.