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which the large proportion of the people had been denied admission to his school or to the government of which his disciples had taken possession. Within the interval from the death of Pythagoras to the visit of Cicero to Metapontum, not only had the Patricians been obliged to give way to the Plebeians, but both the estates were falling, with broken spirits and in much diminished numbers, beneath the despotism prepared by years of conquest, corruption, and civil wars. And the Roman, the best, as he was, of all his name, may have asked himself, as he stood where Pythagoras died, whether the principles of the ancient philosopher had not been proved to be better than any which had succeeded or departed through the intervening period.

32 See Müller's Dorians, Vol. II. p. 187, Eng. transl.

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BOOK II.

PERIOD OF INCREASE.

A. C. 499-137.

"Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks."- MILTON, Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.

BOOK II.

PERIOD OF INCREASE.

CHAPTER I.

MONS SACER.

"Plebi re non verbo danda libertas."- CICERO, De Legg., III. 10.

THE arms surrendered to Porsena' were soon replaced by others that prevailed more easily against feebler foes. Many losses were inevitable to campaigns, of which the scene was always laid near Rome, and in which the enemy was frequently as powerful as any force that could be raised amongst the Romans. But the territory preserved during the Etruscan invasion was not likely to be lost afterwards; and its actual extent, between Crustumerium, five miles on the northeast, and Ostia, sixteen miles on the southwest, of the seven hills, with many settlements on the left or southern bank of the Tiber, was the nucleus to the vast dominions of a subsequent period. About ten years after the revolution against Tarquin, the victory by the Regillus, over the people of thirty Latin cities, gained, as tradition

1 According to Pliny's account, use of iron except in agriculture. that the Romans were forbidden the Nat. Hist., XXXIII. 39.

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