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mans conquered, and at the same time yielded; the Italians yielded, yet their demands prevailed."

Before the snows or the green meadows could be trampled again by angry armies, Pompeius, the Consul, preferred a law to invest the people beyond the Po with rights of protection and of property like those previously belonging to the Latin Name; 75 while another law was brought up by Papirius Carbo and Plautius Silvanus, Tribunes, that all the Italians south of the Po,76 who would appear to make their claim within sixty days, should be admitted to the citizenship of Rome. The Samnites and the Lucanians alone held out for revenge; the rest of the confederates were satisfied with independence, and it was not long before peace became apparently general. Such was the victory by which the conquered obtained their ends as though they had been conquerors, while the conquerors gave way, yet not as though

74" Italico bello, quo quidem Romani victis afflictisque, ipsi exarmati, quam integris universis civitatem dare maluerunt." Vell. Pat., II. 17.

75 That is, the Jus Latii, or, as it was also called, the Latinitas. See p. 100. There were other Latin citizens, at least in later times, under the names of Latini Coloniarii and Latini Juniani. The divisions of the Romans and their subjects were henceforth those of Cives, Latini, and Peregrini. The first division comprised the Romans and the Italians; the second, these va

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rious Latins in Italy and in the provinces; and the third, the provincials and all other aliens. The title of municipality became common to all, or almost all, Italian towns and colonies.

76 Cic., Pro Arch., 3. Perhaps the previously mentioned law gave the citizenship to those who were called the Cispadani.

77 Who were virtually subdued in the following year, when their chief, Pompædius Silo, was taken and slain. App., Bell. Civ., 1. 53. Diod. Sic., Reliq., XXXVII. 2.

they had been conquered, before the expansion of their Commonwealth from a city to a nation.

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The cost must be reckoned before glorying in the prize. All the institutions by which the Italians had been separated were now blended in their common liberties; and the lines of division formerly run between allied or municipal or any other subordinate estates were broken down, so that the whole people stood, nominally at least, united amongst themselves and to Rome. But in the operation, more wonderful, had it succeeded, than any similar achievement in ancient history, three hundred thousand of Italian,’ without counting those of Roman, blood had perished; and though the camps were deserted, and the weapons that had rung and glittered in men's hands were laid aside, the pangs of such a conflict could not at once be soothed. The Romans remembered how their Senate had ordered the dead to be buried on the fields of battle, lest the lamentations of kindred or friends at home should overcome the resolution of the survivors.79 And the Italians bewailed the vacant places around their hearthstones, and thought with fury, intermitted, perhaps, but not appeased, of the injustice to which their fathers or their sons, their brothers, lovers, or husbands, had fallen victims. Nor did the reward of citizenship prove so fair as to console them; for they had been put within new Tribes, to which inferior places were

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78 Vell. Pat., II. 15. "Nec Annibalis," exclaims Florus (III. 18), "nec Pyrrhi tanta vastatio!" 79 App., Bell. Civ., I. 43.

80 Of which the number varies from eight to fifteen. Appian (Bell. Civ., 1. 49) says ten. Velleius Paterculus (II. 20) says eight.

assigned; and again the old complaints of arrogance and wrong were heard upon many tongues and felt within some hearts. It appears as if the judgment of Heaven upon the Romans for the abuses of their freedom was its incapacity of finding the air or the life it required, and would have obtained in being generously given to the Italians.

CHAPTER IV.

SULLA:

CIVIL WAR AND DESPOTISM.

"Civilis vulnera dextræ."- LUCAN, I. 32.

"A tyrant is one whose list is his law."- FULLER, Profane State, XVII.

THE introduction of the Italians was as vain as the seditions and the reforms of preceding years to save the Commonwealth from the wreck to which it was hurrying with all its liberties. Of still less avail to its protection were the efforts of one or two amongst its citizens, whose voices were loud and whose figures were prominent in the midst of these conflicting perils. A few years before the Social War, for instance, the Censors Domitius Ahenobarbus and Licinius Crassus expelled some Latin rhetoricians, on account of the corruption they were supposed to inculcate upon their disciples; but there was no better instruction to take the place of that thus formally forbidden; and if the rhetoricians themselves did not actually return, their schools must soon have been reopened by others like them, and thronged, as theirs

1 A. C. 93. See the singular edict of the Censors in Aul. Gell., XV. 11, and the explanation which

Cicero has preserved, as if made by
Crassus, in De Orat., III. 24.

had been, by young and old. In the second year of the war, another essay towards regeneration was made by the Prætor Sempronius Asellio, who endeavoured to subdue the tumults, excited afresh between creditors and debtors, by reviving the impossible law against interest; but it was far too late to wear about upon the courses of an earlier period, and Asellio, attacked by an armed band while sacrificing before a temple in the Forum, was slain as though he had been the victim whom his gods required.2 Plautius Silvanus, a Tribune of the same year, and one of the two whose law gave welcome to the allies, was more successful in the wiser designs he had conceived. The first law, apparently, that bears his name, committed the choice of a certain number of judges to each of the Tribes, in order, as it seems, to unite the Senators, the Knights, and even the lower classes of citizens, - then largely increased, as must be remembered, in the management, or at least the superintendence, of the public tribunals.3 A second law, a yet nobler memorial of the Tribune's wisdom, determined the punishment of riot or violence, at the very moment, perhaps, of the Prætor Asellio's murder, as a capital offence; and could any

2 A. C. 89. The Senate offered a reward for the apprehension of his murderers, but the affair was hushed up and nothing more was heard of them. App., Bell. Civ., I. 54. Liv., Epit. LXXIV.

3" Quum primum Senatores cum Equitibus Romanis lege Plotia judicarent." Cic., Pro C. Corn., I.

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