CHAP. XII. 298-290 B.C. Extension The Volscian towns of Arpinum and Trebula received the Roman citizenship, without honorary rights (the civitas sine suffragio)-that is, they were made subject towns or municipia; the town of Frusino, in the country of the Hernicans, was punished by having a third of its land of Roman confiscated, because the inhabitants were charged with colonies. having excited the Hernicans to revolt. The beheading of the leaders of this alleged conspiracy ended this episode, and re-established peace in the small town of Frusino, of whose sad fate we only hear accidentally. Probably it was not the only place in which the Romans established peace and submission in that effectual but inhuman manner which was peculiarly their own. The next colony to be established was Carseoli, in the country of the Marsians, to which in 301 B.C. no less than 4,000 colonists were sent. This foundation also called forth, like that of Alba, the opposition of those at whose expense and in whose country it was made. But the Marsians resisted in vain. were subdued by the dictator M. Valerius Maximus, and their old alliance with Rome, it is said, was renewed; by which we are to understand that Rome, for the present, forbore to take from them more than the town and the district of Carseoli. The frontier of the republic was now sufficiently protected on the south and east by the chain. of colonies, which extended from Campania, along the valley of the Liris, as far as the Anio, and which consisted of Cales, Suessa, Interamna, Fregellæ, Sora, Alba, and Carseoli. In the north Sutrium and Nepete were still the only military strongholds, and between these towns and Carseoli the valley of the Tiber offered the easiest and most natural road for an advance upon Rome, should the Etruscans or the Umbrians be in a condition to undertake a war in that quarter." Hitherto it had not been found They The colony of Casinum is doubtful. Compare Th. Mommsen in Rheinisches Museum, 1853, p. 623. This explains the terror prevailing in Rome in the second Samnite war, when the Romans apprehended an attack on the part of the Umbrians.—Livy, ix. 41: Expertis Gallica clade quam intutam urbem incolerent.' BOOK 298-290 B.C. Relations with the necessary to stop this approach to Rome by a fortified place, because the northern neighbours of Rome gave no cause for serious apprehension. They had not materially affected the war of Rome with Samnium, for the alleged exploits of Q. Fabius Maximus against the Etruscans and Umbrians, in the course of the second Samnite war, were, as we have seen, in reality of very small importance. If the Romans found it necessary now to erect a fortification on the northern frontier, the cause must be looked for in the movements of the Gauls, who, strengthened by reinforcements from beyond the Alps, now began again to harass northern Italy. Since the conquest and destruction of their town by the Gauls, the Romans entertained a deep-rooted terror of these impetuous barbarians. Nothing was so calculated to produce uneasiness and undignified anxiety, not only among the mass of the people but in the senate itself, generally the model of firmness and resolution, as the news of the approach of the Gauls. They had marched along the Tiber in the year of the battle of the Allia. It was therefore for the defence of this road that the Romans now took possession of the Umbrian town of Nequinum, which lay close to the river Nar, near its junction with the Tiber. This town, from henceforth called Narnia, impregnable by its situation on steep rocks, and almost surrounded by the Nar, became a Roman colony, and filled up the gap which till now had existed between Sutrium and Nepete on the one side, and Carseoli on the other.3 A further precautionary measure of the Romans against Etruscans. the dangers which threatened them from the Gauls was the keeping up or the renewal of the good understanding with the Etruscan towns which formed the bulwark of Rome against the barbarians. Even during their first disastrous invasion, the Romans, it is said, had made an attempt to interpose on behalf of the town of Clusium. They now See above, p. 266. Compare Livy, x. 10: Romæ terrorem præbuit fama Gallici tumultus.' 2 CHAP. XII. B.C. availed themselves of internal disturbances in Arretium' to establish in that town a government entirely dependent on themselves. A civil war had broken out in this town, 298-290 which led to the expulsion of the noble house of the Cilnii, and probably raised the democratic party to power. The Romans showed themselves here, as everywhere, the friends of the nobility, and sent out an army at the request of the expelled Cilnii to bring them back again. This was effected without much difficulty, and we may presume that the nobles, now in possession of the government of Arretium, had from this time forward a double reason for clinging to Rome, because they were safe only by Roman assistance against their internal enemies as well as against the attacks of the Gauls.3 This intervention in Arretium was, as Livy says,' in some annals represented as a regular war of Rome with Etruria. The dictator M. Valerius Maximus is made the hero of this war. It is related with much detail how he repaired a fault of the master of the horse," how he defeated the Etruscans in great battles, and compelled them to accept a humiliating peace. The domestic annalists of the Valerians have undoubtedly enriched the history of Rome with this war, and they found ready credence with a public so ignorant and so incapable of critical discrimination as 'It appears from Livy's statement (ix. 32) that Arretium had, during the second Samnite war, been friendly to Rome, or at least neutral. Nevertheless, soon after Livy reports (ix. 37) that she sued for peace. If the two statements are correct, it seems that, by an internal revolution in Arretium, the power passed from the nobles, the friends of Rome, to the democratic party. 2 The Cilnii were the princes from whom Cilnius Mæcenas traced his deHor. Od. i. 1, 1. scent. Livy does not venture to decide who this Magister Equitum was. Some called him M. Æmilius Lepidus, other Q. Fabius Maximus. The accounts referring to the events of 301 B.C. are indeed in great confusion. The Fasti contain the names of no consuls for this year, but only those of dictators, with considerable variations. Q. Fabius Maximus is named by one authority dictator, by another master of the horse. 6 One of the most notorious falsifiers of the Roman annals was Valerius Antias, who, proud of the great name of Valerius, seems to have lost no oppor tunity of glorifying the great men of that family. III. 298-290 B.C. BOOK the Romans. Fortunately we learn from Livy that some of the annalists did not relate these mendacious stories.' We owe these annalists our best thanks. Their silence enables us to clear away the fictions which render the Roman policy of that time completely incomprehensible and absurd. We may now maintain that the Roman senate was not guilty of the folly of undertaking a war with the Etruscans and Umbrians, in addition to that which threatened them from the Samnites and the Gauls, and moreover that the former two nations saw the necessity of seeking Roman protection against the greatest danger to which they could be exposed, the danger of being extirpated, like their kinsmen in the north, by the savage barbarians of Gaul. Causes of the third Samnite war. Relative strength of Rome and Rome had thus made use of the six years of peace, when, in 298 B.C., a new war threatened to break out with the Samnites. The cause was furnished by the Lucanians. This people was agitated by incessant internal dissensions; the democratic party were averse to the connexion with Rome, and sought among the Samnites a support against their political enemies. It was decidedly in the interest of the Romans to keep the Lucanians, as their allies, in a sort of dependence, and to allow no Samnite influence to supplant their own. They sent a message therefore to the Samnites, requesting them to desist from interference in Lucania. The Samnites declined to obey this arrogant injunction, which assumed a superiority they were in no way ready to concede, and the war broke out anew.2 The relative strength of the two belligerent states was in the year 298 B.C. very different from that which it had Samnium. been thirty years before. Rome had during that time become indisputably the first power in Italy; the Samnites were internally weakened and cut off all round from their cognate races. Their attempts to make conquests in Campania, in the country of the Volscians, and in Apulia, had been frustrated, and these countries had come altogether into the possession or under the influence of Rome. The Samnites owed only to the wild mountains which they Livy, x. 11, 12. 1 Livy, x. 5. inhabited the preservation of their independence and the continued importance of their friendship or hostility. When we recollect how long the mountain tribes of the Caucasus defied the colossal power of Russia, how the mountains of Switzerland were strongholds of independence, we can understand that the rude inhabitants of the highlands of the Apennines, though often beaten, could make themselves again terrible. The loss of the pasturage on the Apulian plains and the devastations of the long wars compelled the Samnites more and more to live by plunder, and their predatory expeditions became a general grievance. The Romans therefore always found allies, ready under their guidance to keep off these troublesome neighbours. CHAP. XII. 298-290 of L. B.C. The first year of the third Samnite war, 298 B.C., is of Campaign particular interest for the Roman history. In the epitaph Cornelius of L. Cornelius Scipio, the consul of this year, which was Scipio. found in Rome in the year 1780, we possess a valuable, if not the oldest, document of the republic which has come down to posterity in the original. On this account alone the inscription deserves especial respect and attention; at the same time it exhibits so fully the characteristics of the oldest family traditions, from which mostly the annalists have gleaned their facts, that we may pause for a moment to examine the epitaph. Composed in the Saturnian versethe rude Italian rhythm which was afterwards superseded by the refined and elaborate metres of the Greeks-the epitaph runs thus1:— Cornelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus, A noble father's offspring, a brave man and wise, 1 Cornelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus Gnaivod patre prognatus fortis vir sapiensque Consol censor ædilis quei fuit apud vos Taurasia Cisauna Samnio cepit Subigit omne Loucana opsidesque abdoucit.' -Orelli, Inser. Lat., i. 149. See also Sir G. C. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, i. 188. |