Camillus stood forth to prevent a greater ruin than that which had been wrought on walls and columns by the barbarians; and through his appeal, as an ancient author remarks, the city and the citizens were reconciled.13 They who had already emigrated were recalled; the poor were assisted in the work of rebuilding; the rich were in earnest to do their part; and within a year, as the historian says, a new city was standing," safe from the attacks of foes 15 and from the doubts of its own inhabitants. The admission of four new Tribes within four years 16 from the inroad of the Gauls proves the restoration of general tranquillity. The foregoing narrative may be taken in test of the liberty in the early Commonwealth at its time of greatest trial. The spirit of those who, after defending the Capitol or delivering the wasted country, returned to build up their fallen homes and obey their uninjured laws, was the spirit of a free people, the weakness of whose liberty, however, must still be confessed to have been proved by the shocks soon succeeding to the spontaneous resolution which brought them back and gave them the hope of regeneration. It seems unfortunate that the test can not be more thoroughly applied, by means of other memorials than those we have concerning the hearts as well as the outward men of Rome; because they lived so much for show, that there is often danger of misapprehending the substance of their lives. Now and then, indeed, something comes floating down the stream to prove its steadiness of course. A single tradition of the present period relates, that, when the Gauls, in the moment of triumph, demanded from the Romans, who sought to regain possession of their ruined city, a ransom for it so enormous as to make them think wistfully of the treasures their temples yet contained, the matrons brought in together their jewels or their hoards to satisfy the covetous barbarians. On the retreat of the invaders, the matrons were not only publicly thanked, but honored with the peculiar privilege, as it was then esteemed, of having a eulogy pronounced upon them at their death.1 Tradition though it be, this of the offering and the requital, it is better than many pages concerning an assembly or a campaign, to measure that patriotism which softened the roughest trials and quickened the most exalted capacities amongst the Roman women as amongst the Roman men. On the other hand, the disasters through which the Commonwealth had been preserved by the free spirit of its citizens reacted upon the liberty which had faced and for a moment silenced the effects of such calamities. The fall of the fired dwelling or VOL. I. 17 Liv., V. 50. Diod. Sic., XIV. 116. 63 the broken wall was that, likewise, of some old principles, for some time tottering. The season of distress that came with the Gaulish invasion was not the most favorable to the luxuriance of the Patricianism sunned by so many summers and braced by so many winters of existence. No memories of greatness could mend the shattered image, or restore the flame to the desecrated hearth-stone; nor could any pride of blood bring plenty and order back into the midst of ruin and almost utter desolation. The work to be done required the strength to labor for one's self, or the means to pay the labor of other men; and the poor Patrician was of nearly as little consequence as the poor Plebeian. It is true that the change in individual circumstances, however sudden, might not have been wide enough to create any general revolution amongst the classes or estates at large; the more so, as the Patricians were the rich men of the city and the landholders of the country in greater numbers than the Plebeians. But it will soon be plainer that the authority in the Commonwealth is passing from the hands of the noble to those of the wealthy citizens. At the same time that the rich were growing more powerful, the poor were becoming more miserable. All the old burdens of taxes and debts were replaced and augmented; and, as in former times, the energies of men and the cares of women were absorbed almost to the lees in the wastes which war kept open and arid. One year, the tenth from the invasion, the Tribunes appear earnest in demanding a new Census,18 in order both to ascertain the extent of the obligations in which the needy were involved, and to obtain some relief or equity in the apportionment of taxes, which had now long since depended upon the pleasure of the Censors. Within two years more, the Tribunes are seen to resist an enlistment, and urge, as the condition of submitting to it, that none who go to war shall be taxed or sued until the campaign is ended.19 From the same causes the same consequences followed; the anger of the poor would be as little tempered by reason as by benevolence; and the flame on into faction and wrong. that of the rich both sides burst Allusion has been made to the probability that the two Patricians whose names give to our chapter its title were personally or politically opposed. When Manlius Capitolinus was in the full exercise of the consulship, two years, as has been said, before the irruption of the Gauls, he was seized, together with his colleague, by an epidemic then prevailing throughout the city. On their recovery, the Consuls were required by the Senate to abdicate, as if on account of their illness, in any event, a pretext, and Camillus was appointed the first Interrex to succeed them, until his term should expire or new magistrates be appointed.20 On comparing this account with that already given concerning the exile of Camillus in the following year, it does not seem to be an irregular inference, that, of the two parties 18 Liv., existing, as of yore, amongst the Patricians, the moderate and the extreme, Camillus belonged to one, and Manlius to the other. As for the adherents of either, or the other factions in the Commonwealth, it is nearly impossible to define them, except in the most general terms. Most of the richer or more eminent Plebeians, having now obtained admission to the Senate through the quæstorship, would side with their new associates according to their own tempers; and many as yet without the circle of the privileged assembly would follow their example. majority of the Plebeians were unquestionably poor, and probably formed the largest, if not the bravest or the wisest, party of the citizens. The It is recorded, six years or thereabouts after the capture of Rome, that Manlius Capitolinus became, in the historian's phrase, a "popular man," "21 that is to say, a supporter of the Plebeians, and, as appears from the subsequent narrative, of the poor Plebeians. We might as well look into the ocean to see what may be hid beneath its waves, as to try the depths of this man's heart, and be sure that we are right in our estimation of his designs. His contemporaries or his posterity accused him of vanity and treason, such as seem beneath the hero, even the heathen hero, that he had been in his more successful days; and we may perhaps discover, or think we discover, that he was unjustly charged. In the relation preserved, he is represented as having sought the co 21 Popularis factus." Liv., VI. 11. |