various classes have been united through individual members of each, in advocacy or pursuit of the same objects, he will understand the unity, as it may be called, of Rome. It was this unity, or the confidence and the patriotism which, in spite of its imperfections, it supplied, that armed the Romans for the battle and set up their trophies in field after field, until it totally disappeared. In these characteristics, therefore, we may trace the aptitude of the people for warfare, as the result of their early liberty.

Of

Warfare was, nevertheless, the general occupation of the times over which we have passed; and the Romans would naturally have their part, offensive or defensive, in the conflicts round them. A field of grain or a town near the frontier would be a sufficient motive to the early forays, which expanded by gradual and easily conceivable degrees into the campaigns and deeper purposes of subsequent wars. the various nations nearest Rome, the Latins and the Hernicans appear to have been the only allies, according to the treaties of Spurius Cassius. On the east, the Sabines were so completely defeated by Horatius, the Consul at the time of the Decemvirs' fall, that they were glad to keep on terms of peace for many a succeeding year. The Equians and the Volscians, towards the south, were more persevering in their hostilities; and the contest between them and the Romans, after long fury and variable fortune on either side, was still undecided at the period of our present observations. On the north, also, the Etruscans were continually in arms, and often to the

disadvantage of the enemies they had once, under Porsena, actually vanquished; but the great conquests of the century after the secession were on the Etruscan side. Fidenæ fell; the great city of Veii yielded after a siege of over nine years; and the Roman outposts were pushed near the Ciminian hills, thirty or forty miles northwards. It was at the beginning of the contest with Veii that the troops of the Commonwealth were first regularly paid,' and soon after that the first winter quarters were taken at a distance from home:2 both measures to determine the military career of the nation. The decision upon war at any time was a national procedure, in which every citizen had an interest, and over which he had the control of his vote in the Centuries 3 or the Tribes.1

The people whom the Romans conquered under the kings became Plebeians, as has been told, or else were left, in a state of dependence, upon a part of their ancient territory. Others, less entirely subdued, were, of course, allowed to remain in comparative independence, generally, indeed, dignified by the name of alliance, which, properly speaking, belonged to a third class of neighbours, who had not yet thought of yielding to the formidable nation in their centre. The accessions to the lower estate under the Commonwealth must be noted as they

1 Liv., IV. 59, 60. For its amount, see Niebuhr's History, Vol II. p. 200.

2 Liv., V. 2.

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3 Ibid., IV. 30. It had before this been in the cognizance of the Senate.

4 Ibid., VI. 21.

actually occurred; and any instances in which the treatment of the allied or the conquered appears to throw light upon the temper or the strength of the victors must be from time to time observed. Of these, there are one or two immediately at hand.

The first incident noticeable in regard to the relations of the Commonwealth with other states occurred about the time when Canuleius was in the tribunate. A long dispute, in which blood had often flowed, between the inhabitants of Aricia and those of Ardea, two of the thirty allied Latin towns, was referred to the decision of the Roman people, who met together in their Tribes to hear the cause on either side. It concerned a piece of land in the vicinity of both the towns, and upon which the claims of both were urged with proofs and testimonies before the Tribes. Just as the votes were to be taken, an old Plebeian, named Publius Scaptius, rose in his place and craved a hearing, which he obtained through the interposition of the Tribunes against the refusal of the Consuls. He was four-and-eighty years of age, he said, too old to serve his country in any other way than with his tongue. With his memory, he might have added; for he proceeded, before the gaping people, to relate an early campaign against Corioli, to which the very land now in question then belonged, and of which the conquest, of course, involved the possession of all its territory. It is said that the efforts of the principal citizens were ineffectual to dissuade the Tribes from voting that the land was in the right neither of Aricia nor of

6

Ardea, but in that of Rome.5 Ardea threw off the Roman alliance, and sent, at once, to protest against the unjust judgment of the assembly; but the breach was healed without immediate redress, which was made, eventually, only by sending a colony to the territory, and enrolling the citizens of Ardea as a large proportion of the colonists. Such was the injustice, and such the reparation, to be expected from any stronger nation.

Another account is preserved, which illustrates with equal distinctness both the irascibility and the magnanimity of the Romans. Ten or twenty years after the present epoch of our history, it chanced, that, amongst the captives in a battle with the Volscians, there were found some troops from Tusculum, who justified themselves, on being discovered, by declaring they had been sent by their government to aid the enemies of Rome. Tusculum had long been the most faithful and the most serviceable of all the Latin allies; but in the estimation of the Romans, a single fault was always sufficient to obliterate the memories by which they did not like to be bound to gratitude. Without taking the pains to ascertain the truth or the falsehood of a confession extorted from a few terrified prisoners, an army was sent out instantly to punish the city, which it thus hastily pleased the Senate to consider faithless. The famous Camillus, of whom we shall presently have to read more carefully, was put at the head of the expedition.

5 Liv., III. 71, 72.

6 Ibid., IV. 7.

7 Ibid., IV. 11.

As he marched beyond the plain and up the hill, the laborers were seen in the fields; the gates of the city stood open, and the very houses within were all unbarred. Instead of defending themselves by battery or spear, the Tusculans had resolved to keep at their usual occupations, and let the unworthy fury of their foes die out for want of resistance. Camillus, the hero whom no arms would have repelled, if the half reported of him be true, was overcome by the patience of the people he was sent to vanquish and bring to cruel punishment; and when the Tusculans, perhaps at his suggestion, despatched an embassy to Rome, the Senate granted the peace so well deserved, and soon after admitted the whole people to the citizenship of Rome. The story of the campaign and of its conclusion embraces at once the dark and the bright points in the foreign history, if so it may be called, of Roman liberty.

Several opportunities of observing the effect of new conquests upon the necessities or the passions of the different classes in Rome amongst themselves have some time ago occurred. When Veii yielded to the forces raised at great hazard and with greater difficulty by the Romans, a large number of the victors, struggling with poverty and humiliation at home, demanded the privilege of removing, as many of them as pleased, to the captured city, in

8 "Victus patientia." Liv., VI. been argued, on the other hand, 26. See Plut., Cam., 38. that they were full and entire. This they became afterwards.

9 Liv., VI. 26. The rights were probably incomplete, though it has