The History of Rome by Theodor Mommsen (highly recommended books TXT) 📖

plundering expedition against them. The Rutuli also, who bordered with Latium on the south in the plain along the coast, early succumbed; their town Ardea was converted into a Latin colony as early as 312.(12) The Volscians opposed a more serious resistance. The first notable success, after those mentioned above, achieved over them by the Romans was, remarkably enough, the foundation of Circeii in 361, which, as long as Antium and Tarracina continued free, can only have held communication with Latium by sea. Attempts were often made to occupy Antium, and one was temporarily successful in 287; but in 295 the town recovered its freedom, and it was not till after the Gallic conflagration that, in consequence of a violent war of thirteen years (365-377), the Romans gained a decided superiority in the Antiate and Pomptine territory. Satricum, not far from Antium, was occupied with a Latin colony in 369, and not long afterwards probably Antium itself as well as Tarracina.(13) The Pomptine territory was secured by the founding of the fortress Setia (372, strengthened in 375), and was distributed into farm-allotments and burgess-districts in the year 371 and following years. After this date the Volscians still perhaps rose in revolt, but they waged no further wars against Rome.

Crises within the Romano-Latin League

But the more decided the successes that the league of Romans, Latins, and Hernici achieved against the Etruscans, Aequi, Volsci, and Rutuli, the more that league became liable to disunion. The reason lay partly in the increase of the hegemonic power of Rome, of which we have already spoken as necessarily springing out of the existing circumstances, but which nevertheless was felt as a heavy burden in Latium; partly in particular acts of odious injustice perpetrated by the leading community. Of this nature was especially the infamous sentence of arbitration between the Aricini and the Rutuli in Ardea in 308, in which the Romans, called in to be arbiters regarding a border territory in dispute between the two communities, took it to themselves; and when this decision occasioned in Ardea internal dissensions in which the people wished to join the Volsci, while the nobility adhered to Rome, these dissensions were still more disgracefully employed as a pretext for the—already mentioned —sending of Roman colonists into the wealthy city, amongst whom the lands of the adherents of the party opposed to Rome were distributed (312). The main cause however of the internal breaking up of the league was the very subjugation of the common foe; forbearance ceased on one side, devotedness ceased on the other, from the time when they thought that they had no longer need of each other. The open breach between the Latins and Hernici on the one hand and the Romans on the other was more immediately occasioned partly by the capture of Rome by the Celts and the momentary weakness which it produced, partly by the definitive occupation and distribution of the Pomptine territory. The former allies soon stood opposed in the field. Already Latin volunteers in great numbers had taken part in the last despairing struggle of the Antiates: now the most famous of the Latin cities, Lanuvium (371), Praeneste (372-374, 400), Tusculum (373), Tibur (394, 400), and even several of the fortresses established in the Volscian land by the Romano-Latin league, such as Velitrae and Circeii, had to be subdued by force of arms, and the Tiburtines were not afraid even to make common cause against Rome with the once more advancing hordes of the Gauls. No concerted revolt however took place, and Rome mastered the individual towns without much trouble.

Tusculum was even compelled (in 373) to give up its political independence, and to enter into the burgess-union of Rome as a subject community (-civitas sine suffragio-) so that the town retained its walls and an—although limited—self-administration, including magistrates and a burgess-assembly of its own, whereas its burgesses as Romans lacked the right of electing or being elected —the first instance of a whole burgess-body being incorporated as a dependent community with the Roman commonwealth.

Renewal of the Treaties of Alliance

The struggle with the Hernici was more severe (392-396); the first consular commander-in-chief belonging to the plebs, Lucius Genucius, fell in it; but here too the Romans were victorious. The crisis terminated with the renewal of the treaties between Rome and the Latin and Hernican confederacies in 396. The precise contents of these treaties are not known, but it is evident that both confederacies submitted once more, and probably on harder terms, to the Roman hegemony. The institution which took place in the same year of two new tribes in the Pomptine territory shows clearly the mighty advances made by the Roman power.

Closing of the Latin Confederation

In manifest connection with this crisis in the relations between Rome and Latium stands the closing of the Latin confederation,(14) which took place about the year 370, although we cannot precisely determine whether it was the effect or, as is more probable, the cause of the revolt of Latium against Rome which we have just described. As the law had hitherto stood, every sovereign city founded by Rome and Latium took its place among the communes entitled to participate in the federal festival and federal diet, whereas every community incorporated with another city and thereby politically annihilated was erased from the ranks of the members of the league. At the same time, however, according to Latin use and wont the number once fixed of thirty confederate communities was so adhered to, that of the participating cities never more and never less than thirty were entitled to vote, and a number of the communities that were of later admission, or were disqualified for their slight importance or for the crimes they had committed, were without the right of voting. In this way the confederacy was constituted about 370 as follows. Of old Latin townships there were—besides some which have now fallen into oblivion, or whose sites are unknown—still autonomous and entitled to vote, Nomentum, between the Tiber and the Anio; Tibur, Gabii, Scaptia, Labici,(15) Pedum, and Praeneste, between the Anio and the Alban range; Corbio, Tusculum, Bovillae, Aricia, Corioli, and Lanuvium on the Alban range; Cora in the Volscian mountains, and lastly, Laurentum in the plain along the coast. To these fell to be added the colonies instituted by Rome and the Latin league; Ardea in the former territory of the Rutuli, and Satricum, Velitrae, Norba, Signia, Setia and Circeii in that of the Volsci. Besides, seventeen other townships, whose names are not known with certainty, had the privilege of participating in the Latin festival without the right of voting. On this footing—of forty-seven townships entitled to participate and thirty entitled to vote—the Latin confederacy continued henceforward unalterably fixed. The Latin communities founded subsequently, such as Sutrium, Nepete,(16) Antium, Tarracina,(17) and Gales, were not admitted into the confederacy, nor were the Latin communities subsequently divested of their autonomy, such as Tusculum and Lanuvium, erased from the list.

Fixing of the Limits of Latium

With this closing of the confederacy was connected the geographical settlement of the limits of Latium. So long as the Latin confederacy continued open, the bounds of Latium had advanced with the establishment of new federal cities: but as the later Latin colonies had no share in the Alban festival, they were not regarded geographically as part of Latium. For this reason doubtless Ardea and Circeii were reckoned as belonging to Latium, but not Sutrium or Tarracina.

Isolation of the Later Latin Cities as Respected Private Rights

But not only were the places on which Latin privileges were bestowed after 370 kept aloof from the federal association; they were isolated also from one another as respected private rights. While each of them was allowed to have reciprocity of commercial dealings and probably also of marriage (-commercium et conubium-) with Rome, no such reciprocity was permitted with the other Latin communities. The burgess of Satrium, for example, might possess in full property a piece of ground in Rome, but not in Praeneste; and might have legitimate children with a Roman, but not with a Tiburtine, wife.(18)

Prevention of Special Leagues

If hitherto considerable freedom of movement had been allowed within the confederacy, and for example the six old Latin communities, Aricia, Tusculum, Tibur, Lanuvium, Cora, and Laurentum, and the two new Latin, Ardea and Suessa Pometia, had been permitted to found in common a shrine for the Aricine Diana; it is doubtless not the mere result of accident that we find no further instance in later times of similar separate confederations fraught with danger to the hegemony of Rome.

Revision of the Municipal Constitutions. Police Judges

We may likewise assign to this epoch the further remodelling which the Latin municipal constitutions underwent, and their complete assimilation to the constitution of Rome. If in after times two aediles, intrusted with the police-supervision of markets and highways and the administration of justice in connection therewith, make their appearance side by side with the two praetors as necessary elements of the Latin magistracy, the institution of these urban police functionaries, which evidently took place at the same time and at the instigation of the leading power in all the federal communities, certainly cannot have preceded the establishment of the curule aedileship in Rome, which occurred in 387; probably it took place about that very time. Beyond doubt this arrangement was only one of a series of measures curtailing the liberties and modifying the organization of the federal communities in the interest of aristocratic policy.

Domination of the Romans; Exasperation of the Latins—
Collision between the Romans and the Samnites

After the fall of Veii and the conquest of the Pomptine territory, Rome evidently felt herself powerful enough to tighten the reins of her hegemony and to reduce the whole of the Latin cities to a position so dependent that they became in fact completely subject. At this period (406) the Carthaginians, in a commercial treaty concluded with Rome, bound themselves to inflict no injury on the Latins who were subject to Rome, viz. the maritime towns of Ardea, Antium, Circeii, and Tarracina; if, however, any one of the Latin towns should fall away from the Roman alliance, the Phoenicians were to be allowed to attack it, but in the event of conquering it they were bound not to raze it, but to hand it over to the Romans. This plainly shows by what chains the Roman community bound to itself the towns protected by it and how much a town, which dared to withdraw from the native protectorate, sacrificed or risked by such a course.

It is true that even now the Latin confederacy at least—if not also the Hernican—retained its formal title to a third of the gains of war, and doubtless some other remnants of the former equality of rights; but what was palpably lost was important enough to explain the exasperation which at this period prevailed among the Latins against Rome. Not only did numerous Latin volunteers fight under foreign standards against the community at their head, wherever they found armies in the field against Rome; but in 405 even the Latin federal assembly resolved to refuse to the Romans its contingent. To all appearance a renewed rising of the whole Latin confederacy might be anticipated at no distant date; and at that very moment a collision was imminent with another Italian nation, which was able to encounter on equal terms the united strength of the Latin stock. After the overthrow of the northern Volscians no considerable people in the first instance opposed the Romans in the south; their legions unchecked approached the Liris. As early as 397 they had contended; successfully with the Privernates; and in 409 occupied Sora on the upper Liris. Thus the Roman armies had reached the Samnite frontier; and the friendly alliance, which the two bravest and most powerful of the Italian nations concluded with each other in 400, was the sure token of an approaching struggle for the supremacy of Italy—a struggle which threatened to become interwoven with the crisis within the Latin nation.

Conquests of the Samnites in the South of Italy

The Samnite nation, which, at the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome, had doubtless already been for a considerable period in possession of the hill-country which rises between the Apulian and Campanian plains and commands them both, had hitherto found its further advance impeded on the one side by the Daunians —the power and prosperity of Arpi fall within this period—on the other by the Greeks and Etruscans. But the fall of the Etruscan power towards the end of the third, and the decline of the Greek colonies in the course of the fourth century, made room for them towards the west and south; and now one Samnite host after another marched down to, and even