BOOK

III.

390-343 B.C.

serve the memory of passing events from corruption and oblivion.'

2

Immediately after the retreat of the Gauls, it is said, all the old enemies of Rome-the Etruscans, Volscians, and Exploits of Camillus. Equians-were again in arms, in order to take advantage of the helpless condition of the Romans, and the threatened revolt of the Latins and Hernicans made these attacks especially dangerous. But the tried hero, Camillus, who now for the second time commanded the Roman legions as dictator, first attacked and overcame the Volscians, and reduced them to final submission after they had carried on war with Rome for seventy years. He then vanquished the Equians, and turned with the rapidity of lightning against the Etruscans, who, with united powers, were besieging the town of Sutrium.3 Unable to resist any longer, the inhabitants of Sutrium had already surrendered their town, in consideration of a free retreat, and the train of the poor homeless creatures, with their wailing wives and children, met Camillus, who was hastening to their relief. He immediately pushed forward to Sutrium, where he surprised the Etruscans as they were engaged in plundering the town, and, having regained the place, restored it to the inhabitants on the same day on which they had lost it. A well-deserved triumph crowned this threefold victory.

Livy says indeed (vi. 1) that the history of Rome after its second birth will henceforth be related with greater clearness and accuracy.' But this promise is not kept by Livy in the subsequent narrative for a considerable period. Dr. Arnold (Hist. of Rome, ii. 2) remarks, with his usual good sense, that no period of Roman history since the first institution of the tribunes of the Commons is really more obscure than the thirty years immediately following the retreat of the Gauls. Sir G. C. Lewis, speaking of these records (Credibility of Early Roman History, ii. 361), says, 'Whatever these records may have been, their character must have been fragmentary, and at the most annalistic. They were detached notices and morsels of evidence, but not a continuous narrative: they were not the work of a historian, and they did not of themselves form a history of the period. We may have reached the time when there is a substratum of notation: but we have not yet reached the time when there is an authentic narrative of events.'

2 Livy, vi. 2.

Livy. vi. 3: Etruria prope omnis armata Sutrium, socios populi Romani, obsidebat.' See above, p. 98, note 2.

CHAP.

I.

390-343

B.C.

Second

Sutrium.

This story, wonderful enough in itself, is still more curious, because we meet with it again three years later.1 Again Camillus returns from a war with the Volscians,2 and marches against the Etruscans, who, in the meantime, had again conquered Sutrium.3 Again the enemy are conquest of expelled and the town is restored to its possessors. Of the two conquests of Sutrium one is clearly fictitious. We should almost be inclined to doubt the other also, because every story related of victories of Camillus is more or less suspicious. But Livy reports that, out of the sum which the sale of the Etruscan prisoners realised, three golden bowls were dedicated as consecrated gifts in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, inscribed with the name of Camillus,5 and that these bowls were to be seen before the feet of Juno until the burning of the Capitol (83 B.C.), and it is, moreover, certain that Sutrium was made a Roman colony seven years after the Gallic conflagration."

confedera

The old confederation of Romans, Latins, and Hernicans, The Latin which at no time can have been very firm or mutually tion. satisfactory, was, as we have already seen, very much weakened and modified by the long wars with the Volscians and Equians. Many of the old confederate cities in Latium had been lost. Those which remained had become more

2 Three years before, the Volscians had, according to Livy (vi. 2) himself, been reduced to submission, and the wars, which had lasted for seventy years, were ended victoriously. Nevertheless they are now again in arms.—Livy

vi. 6.

3 To avoid the semblance of repetition, Livy (vi. 9) relates that this time the Etruscans had gained possession of only part of the town of Sutrium, and that the inhabitants were still holding the other part. Variations of this kind in duplicate stories are quite usual. Their origin is easily explained. When they were not introduced intentionally for the purpose of hiding the repetition, they may have been found by the first compiler of a connected account in the detached and independent sources from which he obtained his information. * Livy, vi. 4.

4

If the bowls were inscribed only with the name of Camillus, they could; not bear testimony to the taking of Sutrium. But unless the statement is rejected as untrustworthy, we may adopt the opinion which assigns that particular circumstance as the cause of the dedication.

• Vell. Pater, c. i. 14, 2. Soon after a colony was sent to Nepete, near Sutrium.

III.

BOOK dependent on Rome, and those which were re-conquered from the Volscians did not regain their original position as members of a confederation. From having been allied and independent states, they became more and more the subjects of Rome.

390-343 B.C.

Suspicion

of Rome.

Resistance

of Præneste.

During the invasion of the Gauls, every Latin town was, it seems, thrown back on its own resources. The league was completely dissolved, since the head town was destroyed and appeared to be annihilated. We find, therefore, after the retreat of the Gauls, some Latin towns, in an isolated and independent position, as mistresses of neighbouring communities. Such towns were especially Præneste and Tibur. At the same time these towns appear to be impatient of the control which the Romans had hitherto exercised over them. They had found out, it seems, that Rome was seeking to take away their independence, and to sacrifice their interests to her own. They discovered that their position, relatively to the Equians and Volscians, differed essentially from that of the Romans; that they had in the end less to fear from an alliance with these peoples than from a confederacy at the head of which was such a grasping and centralized power as Rome.

Præneste was the first to venture (382 B.C.) on open war. The subjection of this great, fortified, and at that time impregnable town to the dominion of Rome is especially important, because it is alleged to be proved by an historical monument and a written record. If these are genuine, they leave no doubt of the fact, and may tend moreover to raise in our eyes the character also of other annalistic statements which are not borne out by any documentary evidence. But, unfortunately, the reports concerning this monument and this record are of such a kind that, by their contradictions, they warrant grave doubts of the trustworthiness of the old collectors of documentary evidence. According to Livy,' the dictator T. Quinctius Cincinnatus. defeated the Prænestines on the Allia, 380 B.C., took eight

1 Livy, vi. 29.

towns which were subject to them, as well as the town of Velitræ, by force, compelled Præneste to surrender,' conveyed from thence to the Capitol the statue of Jupiter Imperator, and placed it between the shrines of Jupiter and Minerva, furnished with an inscription which declared that Jupiter and all the gods had permitted the dictator T. Quinctius to conquer nine towns.' 2

CHAP.
I.

390-343

P.C.

of the

narrative.

The first thing that strikes us in this account is, that Difficulties the statue of the supreme deity was carried away from a town, not taken by force and destroyed, but surrendered by treaty on condition of retaining her liberty. The removal of the statue from Præneste to Rome would have been the sign and symbol of the annihilation of the former town as a political community, just as the carrying away of the statue of Juno from Veii denoted and sealed the total overthrow of the Veientine state. But Præneste continued to exist as a Latin town with undiminished power. In the following year she even renewed the war with Rome, and, according to an entirely trustworthy report of Diodorus, made peace or concluded an armistice with Rome only in the year 354 B.C. These considerations and doubts have still more weight if we compare other circumstances. Cicero also mentions a statue of Jupiter in the Capitoline Temple, but he says that it was brought by T. Quinctius Flamininus from Macedonia. As it is not likely that two statues of Jupiter Imperator were placed in the Capitoline Temple, each by a T. Quinctius, as war trophies; as moreover Cicero could hardly be misinformed about a statue brought to Rome after the Macedonian war, we cannot hesitate to condemn the story which would make the statue in question about 200 years older.5 But if the

4

'Livy, vi. 29: 'Caput belli Præneste non vi sed per deditionem receptum est.' Livy. vi. 29: Tabula sub eo fixa monumentum rerum gestarum, his forme incisa literis fuit: "Iupiter atque divi omnes hoc dederunt, ut T. Quinctius dictator oppida novem caperet."

Diodorus, xvi. 45. See Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch., iii. 96; English translation, iii. 83.

4 Cicero, Verr., iv. 58.

This was the opinion of Lipsius. See Drakenborch, ad Liv., vi. 29.

BOOK III. 390-343

B.C.

Value of

inscriptions.

General

resistance of the Latins.

statue of Jupiter Imperator was not brought to Rome by T. Quinctius from Præneste, the inscription quoted by Livy could have no reference to it. Livy' says that it was engraved on a tablet, not on the pedestal or the body of the statue. Such a tablet may easily have been put in a wrong place. The object to which it originally belonged is indicated by Festus,' who mentions an inscription in which the 'dictator T.Quinctius consecrated a golden crown to Jupiter, two pounds and a third in weight, because in nine days he conquered as many towns, and Præneste as the tenth.' There can be no doubt whatever that Festus and Livy quote the same inscription, though both quote it inaccurately. Yet they agree in the main as to the substance of its purport, and their testimony leaves no doubt that such an inscription and a golden crown were dedicated in the temple of Jupiter in commemoration of some signal victories of T. Quinctius Cincinnatus over the Prænestines. It is, however, by no means certain at what time the offering was made and the inscription composed. If it were contemporary with the event, it would be the oldest Latin inscription authentically preserved. But it is quite as likely that it was composed by a descendant of T. Quinctius many years later.

The references even to such sources of information as statues with inscriptions cannot therefore be trusted without the most careful investigation, as unfortunately the Roman antiquarians were most credulous, and, moreover, inaccurate and superficial. At the same time we gain the conviction that we now meet in the Roman history with events which, though not cleared up in every particular, are still no longer mere illusions and fictions.

The example of Præneste was followed by several Latin towns. Some are described as secretly assisting the Volscians.3 4 Lanuvium is hostile; then the Latins generally are in open war with Rome." The Hernicans

1 Livy, v. 29: 'Tabula sub eo signo fixa monumentum rerum gestarum.'

2 Festus, s. v. trientem tertium, p. 363, ed. Müller.

Livy, vi. 7, 13.

Livy, vi. 21.

5

Livy, vi. 30, 32, 33.