The History of Rome, Book II

It was only with the second half of the fourth century that the large extensions of territory, which must have suddenly and considerably augmented the burgess roll, began. It is reported on trustworthy authority and is intrinsically credible, that about 416 the Roman burgesses numbered 165,000; which very well agrees with the statement that ten years previously, when the whole militia was called out against Latium and the Gauls, the first levy amounted to ten legions, that is, to 50,000 men. Subsequently to the great extensions of territory in Etruria, Latium, and Campania, in the fifth century the effective burgesses numbered, on an average, 250,000; immediately before the first Punic war, 280,000 to 290,000. These numbers are certain enough, but they are not quite available historically for another reason, namely, that in them probably the Roman full burgesses and the "burgesses without vote" not serving, like the Campanians, in legions of their own, —such, e. g., as the Caerites, —are included together in the reckoning, while the latter must at any rate -de facto- be counted among the subjects (Rom. Forsch. ii. 396).

131

II. VI. Battle of Sentinum

132

II. VII. Commencement of the Conflict in Lower Italy

133

II. VII. Quaestors of the Fleet

134

Not merely in every Latin one; for the censorship or so-called -quinquennalitas- occurs, as is well known, also among communities whose constitution was not formed according to the Latin scheme.

135

This earliest boundary is probably indicated by the two small townships -Ad fines-, of which one lay north of Arezzo on the road to Florence, the second on the coast not far from Leghorn. Somewhat further to the south of the latter, the brook and valley of Vada are still called -Fiume della fine-, -Valle della fine- (Targioni Tozzetti, Viaggj, iv. 430).

136

In strict official language, indeed, this was not the case. The fullest designation of the Italians occurs in the agrarian law of 643, line 21; -[ceivis] Romanus sociumve nominisve Latini, quibus ex formula togatorum [milites in terra Italia imperare solent]-; in like manner at the 29th line of the same -peregrinus- is distinguished from the -Latinus-, and in the decree of the senate as to the Bacchanalia in 568 the expression is used: -ne quis ceivis Romanus neve nominis Latini neve socium quisquam-. But in common use very frequently the second or third of these three subdivisions is omitted, and along with the Romans sometimes only those Latini nominis are mentioned, sometimes only the -socii- (Weissenborn on Liv. xxii. 50, 6), while there is no difference in the meaning. The designation -homines nominis Latini ac socii Italici- (Sallust. Jug. 40), correct as it is in itself, is foreign to the official -usus loquendi, which knows -Italia-, but not -Italici-.

137

I. XI. Punishment of Offenses against Order

138

II. I. Right of Appeal

139

II. III. The Senate, Its Composition

140

II. I. Law and Edict

141

II. III. Censorship, the Magistrates, Partition and Weakening of the Consular Powers

142

II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes

143

I. VI. Class of —Metoeci— Subsisting by the Side of the Community

144

I. V. The Housefather and His Household, note

145

II. III. Praetorship

146

II. III. Praetorship, II. V. Revision of the Municipal Constitutions, Police Judges

147

The view formerly adopted, that these -tres viri- belonged to the earliest period, is erroneous, for colleges of magistrates with odd numbers are foreign to the oldest state-arrangements (Chronol. p. 15, note 12). Probably the well-accredited account, that they were first nominated in 465 (Liv. Ep. 11), should simply be retained, and the otherwise suspicious inference of the falsifier Licinius Macer (in Liv. vii. 46), which makes mention of them before 450, should be simply rejected. At first undoubtedly the -tres viri- were nominated by the superior magistrates, as was the case with most of the later -magistratus minores-; the Papirian -plebiscitum-, which transferred the nomination of them to the community (Festus, -v. sacramentum-, p. 344, Niall.), was at any rate not issued till after the institution of the office of -praetor peregrinus-, or at the earliest towards the middle of the sixth century, for it names the praetor -qui inter jus cives ius dicit-.

148

II. VII. Subject Communities

149

This inference is suggested by what Livy says (ix. 20) as to the reorganization of the colony of Antium twenty years after it was founded; and it is self-evident that, while the Romans might very well impose on the inhabitant of Ostia the duty of settling all his lawsuits in Rome, the same course could not be followed with townships like Antium and Sena.

150

II. I. Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers

151

People are in the habit of praising the Romans as a nation specially privileged in respect to jurisprudence, and of gazing with wonder on their admirable law as a mystical gift of heaven; presumably by way of specially excusing themselves for the worthlessness of their own legal system. A glance at the singularly fluctuating and undeveloped criminal law of the Romans might show the untenableness of ideas so confused even to those who may think the proposition too simple, that a sound people has a sound law, and a morbid people an unsound. Apart from the more general political conditions on which jurisprudence also, and indeed jurisprudence especially, depends, the causes of the excellence of the Roman civil law lie mainly in two features: first, that the plaintiff and defendant were specially obliged to explain and embody in due and binding form the grounds of the demand and of the objection to comply with it; and secondly, that the Romans appointed a permanent machinery for the edictal development of their law, and associated it immediately with practice. By the former the Romans precluded the pettifogging practices of advocates, by the latter they obviated incapable law-making, so far as such things can be prevented at all; and by means of both in conjunction they satisfied, as far as is possible, the two conflicting requirements, that law shall constantly be fixed, and that it shall constantly be in accordance with the spirit of the age.

152

II. II. Relation of the Tribune to the Consul

153

V. V. The Hegemony of Rome over Latium Shaken and Re-established

154

Venus probably first appears in the later sense as Aphrodite on occasion of the dedication of the temple consecrated in this year (Liv. x. 31; Becker, Topographie, p. 472).

155

II. III. Intrigues of the Nobility

156

I. VI. Organization of the Army

157

II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses

158

I. VI. the Five Classes

159

According to Roman tradition the Romans originally carried quadrangular shields, after which they borrowed from the Etruscans the round hoplite shield (-clupeus-, —aspis—), and from the Samnites the later square shield (-scutum-, —thureos—), and the javelin (-veru-) (Diodor. Vat. Fr. p. 54; Sallust, Cat. 51, 38; Virgil, Aen. vii. 665; Festus, Ep. v. Samnites, p. 327, Mull.; and the authorities cited in Marquardt, Handb. iii. 2, 241). But it may be regarded as certain that the hoplite shield or, in other words, the tactics of the Doric phalanx were imitated not from the Etruscans, but directly from the Hellenes, As to the -scutum-, that large, cylindrical, convex leather shield must certainly have taken the place of the flat copper -clupeus-, when the phalanx was broken up into maniples; but the undoubted derivation of the word from the Greek casts suspicion on the derivation of the thing itself from the Samnites. From the Greeks the Romans derived also the sling (-funda- from —sphendone—). (like -fides- from —sphion—),(I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences). The pilum was considered by the ancients as quite a Roman invention.

160

I. XIII. Landed Proprietors

161

II. III. Combination of the Plebian Aristocracy and the Farmers against the Nobility

162

Varro (De R. R. i. 2, 9) evidently conceives the author of the Licinian agrarian law as fanning in person his extensive lands; although, we may add, the story may easily have been invented to explain the cognomen (-Stolo-).

163

I. XIII. System of Joint Cultivation

164

I. XIII. Inland Commerce of the Italians

165

I. XIII. Commerce in Latium Passive, in Etruria Active

166

I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

167

I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

168

II. IV. Etruria at Peace and on the Decline, II. V. Campanian Hellenism

169

The conjecture that Novius Flautius, the artist who worked at this casket for Dindia Macolnia, in Rome, may have been a Campanian, is refuted by the old Praenestine tomb-stones recently discovered, on which, among other Macolnii and Plautii, there occurs also a Lucius Magulnius, son of Haulms (L. Magolnio Pla. f.).

170

I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce, II. II. Rising Power of the Capitalists

171

II. III. The Burgess Body

172

II. III. The Burgess Body

173

II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes

174

II. III. The Burgess Body

175

II. VII. Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

176

We have already mentioned the censorial stigma attached to Publius Cornelius Rufinus (consul 464, 477) for his silver plate.(II. VIII. Police) The strange statement of Fabius (in Strabo, v. p. 228) that the Romans first became given to luxury (—aisthesthae tou plouton—) after the conquest of the Sabines, is evidently only a historical version of the same matter; for the conquest of the Sabines falls in the first consulate of Rufinus.

177

II. V. Colonizations in the Land of the Volsci

178

II. VI. Last Campaigns in Samnium

179

II. VIII. Inland Intercourse in Italy

180

I. III. Localities of the Oldest Cantons

181

I. II. Iapygians

182

II. V. Campanian Hellenism

183

II. VIII. Transmarine Commerce

184

II. VII. The Full Roman Franchise

185

II. VI. Battle of Sentinum

186

II. III. The Burgess-Body

187

II. VIII. Impulse Given to It

188

II. III. New Opposition

189

II. VII. Attempts at Peace

190

I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

191

The account given by Dionysius (vi. 95; comp. Niebuhr, ii. 40) and by Plutarch (Camill. 42), deriving his statement from another passage in Dionysius regarding the Latin festival, must be understood to apply rather to the Roman games, as, apart from other grounds, is strikingly evident from comparing the latter passage with Liv. vi. 42 (Ritschl, Parerg. i. p. 313). Dionysius has—and, according to his wont when in error, persistently—misunderstood the expression -ludi maximi-.

There was, moreover, a tradition which referred the origin of the national festival not, as in the common version, to the conquest of the Latins by the first Tarquinius, but to the victory over the Latins at the lake Regillus (Cicero, de Div. i. 26, 55; Dionys. vii. 71). That the important statements preserved in the latter passage from Fabius really relate to the ordinary thanksgiving-festival, and not to any special votive solemnity, is evident from the express allusion to the annual recurrence of the celebration, and from the exact agreement of the sum of the expenses with the statement in the Pseudo-Asconius (p. 142 Or.).

192

II. III. Curule Aedileship

193

I. II. Art

194

I. XV. Metre

195

I. XV. Masks

196

II. VIII. Police f.

197

I. XV. Melody

198

A fragment has been preserved:

-Hiberno pulvere, verno luto, grandia farra Camille metes-

We do not know by what right this was afterwards regarded as the oldest Roman poem (Macrob. Sat. v. 20; Festus, Ep. v. Flaminius, p. 93, M.; Serv. on Virg. Georg, i. 101; Plin. xvii. 2. 14).

199

II. VIII. Appius Claudius

200

II. VIII. Rome and the Romans of This Epoch

201

The first places in the list alone excite suspicion, and may have been subsequently added, with a view to round off the number of years between the flight of the king and the burning of the city to 120.

202

I. VI. Time and the Occasion of the Reform, II. VII. System of Government

203

II. VIII Rome and the Romans of This Epoch. According to the annals Scipio commands in Etruria and his colleague in Samnium, and Lucania is during this year in league with Rome; according to the epitaph Scipio conquers two towns in Samnium and all Lucania.

204

I. XI. Jurisdiction, second note.

205

I. XI. Jurisdiction, second note.

206

They appear to have reckoned three generations to a hundred years and to have rounded off the figures 233 1/3 to 240, just as the epoch between the king's flight and the burning of the city was rounded off to 120 years (II. IX. Registers of Magistrates, note). The reason why these precise numbers suggested themselves, is apparent from the similar adjustment (above explained, I. XIV. The Duodecimal System) of the measures of surface.

207

I. XII. Spirits

208

I. X. Relations of the Western Italians to the Greeks

209

The "Trojan colonies" in Sicily, mentioned by Thucydides, the pseudo-Scylax, and others, as well as the designation of Capua as a Trojan foundation in Hecataeus, must also be traced to Stesichorus and his identification of the natives of Italy and Sicily with the Trojans.

210

According to his account Rome, a woman who had fled from Ilion to Rome, or rather her daughter of the same name, married Latinos, king of the Aborigines, and bore to him three sons, Romos, Romylos, and Telegonos. The last, who undoubtedly emerges here as founder of Tusculum and Praeneste, belongs, as is well known, to the legend of Odysseus.

211

II. IV. Fruitlessness of the Celtic Victory

212

II. VII. Relations between the East and West

213

II. VII. The Roman Fleet

214

II. II. Political Value of the Tribunates, II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws

215

I. XIV. Corruption of Language and Writing

216

In the two epitaphs, of Lucius Scipio consul in 456, and of the consul of the same name in 495, -m and -d are ordinarily wanting in the termination of cases, yet -Luciom- and -Gnaivod- respectively occur once; there occur alongside of one another in the nominative -Cornelio- and -filios-; -cosol-, -cesor-, alongside of -consol-, -censor-; -aidiles-, -dedet-, -ploirume- (= -plurimi-) -hec- (nom. sing.) alongside of -aidilis-, -cepit-, -quei-, -hic-. Rhotacism is already carried out completely; we find -duonoro-(= -bonorum-), -ploirume-, not as in the chant of the Salii -foedesum-, -plusima-. Our surviving inscriptions do not in general precede the age of rhotacism; of the older -s only isolated traces occur, such as afterwards -honos-, -labos- alongside of -honor-, -labor-; and the similar feminine -praenomina-, -Maio- (= -maios- -maior-) and -Mino- in recently found epitaphs at Praeneste.

217

-Litterator- and -grammaticus- are related nearly as elementary teacher and teacher of languages with us; the latter designation belonged by earlier usage only to the teacher of Greek, not to a teacher of the mother-tongue. -Litteratus- is more recent, and denotes not a schoolmaster but a man of culture.

218

It is at any rate a true Roman picture, which Plautus (Bacch. 431) produces as a specimen of the good old mode of training children:—

… -ubi revenisses domum,Cincticulo praecinctus in sella apud magistrum adsideres;Si, librum cum legeres, unam peccavisses syllabam,Fieret corium tam maculosum, quam est nutricis pallium-.

219

I. XIV. The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar

220

I. XIV. The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar

221

I. XV. Plastic Art in Italy

222

II. VIII. Building

223

II. VIII. Building

224

I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

225

I. VII. Servian Wall

226

I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

227

The round temple certainly was not, as has been supposed, an imitation of the oldest form of the house; on the contrary, house architecture uniformly starts from the square form. The later Roman theology associated this round form with the idea of the terrestrial sphere or of the universe surrounding like a sphere the central sun (Fest. v. -rutundam-, p. 282; Plutarch, Num. 11; Ovid, Fast. vi. 267, seq.). In reality it may be traceable simply to the fact, that the circular shape has constantly been recognized as the most convenient and the safest form of a space destined for enclosure and custody. That was the rationale of the round —thesauroi— of the Greeks as well as of the round structure of the Roman store-chamber or temple of the Penates. It was natural, also, that the fireplace—that is, the altar of Vesta—and the fire-chamber—that is, the temple of Vesta —should be constructed of a round form, just as was done with the cistern and the well-enclosure (-puteal-). The round style of building in itself was Graeco-Italian as was the square form, and the former was appropriated to the store-place, the latter to the dwelling-house; but the architectural and religious development of the simple -tholos- into the round temple with pillars and columns was Latin.

228

I. XV. Plastic Art in Italy

229

II. V. Complete Submission of the Campanian and Volscian Provinces

230

I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods

231

Novius Plautius (II. VIII. Capital in Rome) cast perhaps only the feet and the group on the lid; the casket itself may have proceeded from an earlier artist, but hardly from any other than a Praenestine, for the use of these caskets was substantially confined to Praeneste.

232

I. IX. Settlements of the Etruscans in Italy

233

I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

234

I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform

235

A. U. C. – Ab Urbe Condita (from the founding of the City of Rome)