demands of the poorer plebeians, and to secure their support
for the first half of the scheme. Ten years of bitter conflict
387.
followed, but at last, in 367 B.C., the Licinian rotations
became law, and one of their authors, L. Sextius, was
created the first plebeian consul. For the moment it was some
consolation to the patricians that they not only succeeded in
detaching from the consulship the administration of civil law,
which was entrusted to a separate officer, praetor urbanus, to
be elected by the comitia of the centuries, with an understanding
apparently that he should be a patrician, but also obtained
the institution of two additional aediles (aediles curules), who
were in like manner to be members of their own
order.[1] With
the opening of the consulship, however, the issue of the long contest
was virtually decided, and the next eighty years witnessed
a rapid succession of plebeian victories. Now that a plebeian
Opening of the magistracies.
398. 404.
417. 454.
415. Publilian laws.
consul might preside at the elections, the main difficulty
in the way of the nomination and election of plebeian
candidates was removed. The proposed patrician
monopoly of the new curule aedileship was almost
instantly abandoned. In 356 the first plebeian
was made dictator; in 350 the censorship, and in
337 the praetorship were filled for the first time by
plebeians; and lastly, in 300, by the lex Ogulnia, even
the sacred colleges of the pontiffs and augurs, the old
strongholds of patrician supremacy, were thrown open to the
plebs.[2] The patricians lost also the control they had exercised
so long over the action of the people in assembly. The patrum
auctoritas, the sanction given or refused by the patrician
senators to laws and to elections, had hitherto been a powerful
weapon in their hands. But in 339 a law of Q. Publilius
Philo, a plebeian dictator, enacted that this sanction
should be given beforehand to laws enacted in the
comitia centuriata,[3] and a lex Maenia of uncertain date extended
the rule to elections in the same assembly. Livy ascribes
to the same Publilius a law emancipating the concilium plebis
Lex Hortensia, 467.
from the control of the patres; but this seems in reality
to have been effected by the famous lex Hortensia,
carried by another plebeian dictator.[4] Henceforward
the patrum auctoritas sank into a meaningless form, though as
such it still survived in the time of Livy. From 287 onwards
it is certain that measures passed by the plebs, voting by their
tribes, had the full force of laws without any further conditions
whatsoever. The legislative independence of the plebeian
assembly was secured, and with this crowning victory ended
the long struggle between the orders.
(b) Conquest of Italy.—Twelve years after the passing of the lex Hortensia, King Pyrrhus, beaten at Beneventum, withdrew from Italy, and Rome was left mistress of the peninsula. The steps by which this supremacy had been won have now to be traced.[5]
The expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome, followed as it seems to have been by the emancipation from Etruscan supremacy of all the country between the Tiber and the Liris, entirely altered the aspect of affairs. North of the Tiber the powerful Etruscan city, of Veii, after aivain attempt to restore, the Tarquins, relapsed into an attitude of sullen hostility towards Rome, 347. which, down to the outbreak of the final struggle in 407, found vent in constant and harassing border forays. The Sabines recommenced their raids across the Anio; from their hills to the south-east the Aequi pressed forward as far as the eastern spurs of the Alban range, and ravaged the low country between that range and the Sabine mountains; the Volsci overran the coast-lands as far as Antium, established themselves at Velitrae and even wasted the fields within a few miles of Rome. But the good fortune of Rome did not leave her to face these foes single-handed, and it is a significant League with the Latins and Etruscans. 261. fact that the history of the Roman advance begins, not with a brilliant victory, but with a timely alliance. According to Livy, it was in 493, only a few years after the defeat of the prince of Tusculum at Lake Regillus, that a treaty was concluded between Rome and the Latin communities of the Campagna.[6] The alliance was in every respect natural. The Latins were the near neighbours and kinsmen of the Romans, and both Romans and Latins were just freed from Etruscan rule to find themselves as lowlanders and dwellers in towns face to face with a common foe in the ruder hill tribes on their borders. The exact terms of the treaty cannot, any more than the precise circumstances under which it was concluded, be stated with certainty (see Latium), but two points seem clear. There was at first a genuine equality in the relations between the allies; Romans and Latins, though combining for defence and offence, did so without sacrificing their separate freedom of action, even in the matter of waging wars independently of each other.[7] But, secondly, Rome enjoyed from the first one inestimable advantage. The Latins lay between her and the most active of her foes, the Aequi and Volsci, and served to protect her territories at the expense of their own. Behind this barrier Rome grew strong, and the close of the Aequian and Volscian wars left the Latins her dependents rather than her allies. Beyond the limits of the Campagna. Rome found a second ally, hardly less useful than the Latins, in the tribe of the Hernici (“the men of the rocks”), in the valley of the Trerus, who had equal reason with the Romans and Latins to dread the Volsci and Aequi, while their position midway between the two latter peoples made them valuable auxiliaries to the lowlanders of the Campagna.
The treaty with the Hernici is said to have been concluded
in 486,[8] and the confederacy of the three peoples—Romans,
Latins and Hernicans—lasted down to the
great Latin war in 340. Confused and untrustworthy
as are the chronicles of the early wars of Rome, it is
clear that, notwithstanding the acquisition of these allies, Rome
268. 414.
280. 305.
made but little way against her foes during the first fifty years
of the existence of the Republic. In 474, it is true, an
end was put for a time to the harassing border feud
with Veii by a forty years’ peace, an advantage due not so much
to Roman valour as to the increasing dangers from other
quarters which were threatening the Etruscan
states.[9] But
this partial success stands alone, and down to 449 the
raids of Sabines, Aequi and Volsci continue without
intermission, and are occasionally carried up to the very walls
of Rome.
Very different is the impression left by the annals of the next
sixty years (449–390). During this period there is an
unmistakable development of Roman power on all
sides. In southern Etruria the capture of Veii (396)
virtually gave Rome the mastery as far as the Ciminian
forest. Sutrium and Nepete, “the gates of Etruria,”
305–64.
Capture of Veii.
358. 308.
336. 361.
became her allies and guarded her interests against
any attack from the Etruscan communities to the north, while
along the Tiber valley her suzerainty was acknowledged as
far as Capena and Falerii. On the Anio frontier we hear of no
disturbances from 449 until some ten years after the sack of
Rome by the Gauls. In 446 the Aequi appear for
the last time before the gates of Rome. After 418
they disappear from Mount Algidus, and in the same
year the communications of Rome and Latium with
the Hernici in the Trerus valley were secured by the capture and
colonization of Labicum. Successive invasions, too, broke the
strength of the Volsci, and in 393 a Latin colony was
founded as far south as Circeii. In part, no doubt,
these Roman successes were due to the improved condition of
- ↑ Livy vi. 42.
- ↑ Ibid. vii. 17, 22; viii. 15; x. 6.
- ↑ Ibid. viii. 12, “ut . . . ante initum suffragium patres auctores fierent,” cf. Livy. i. 17. For the lex Maenia, see Cic. Brut. 14, 55; Soltau 112.
- ↑ Plin. N.H. xvi. 10; Gell. xv. 27; Gaius i. 3, “plebiscita lege Hortensia non minus valere quam leges.”
- ↑ For details of these wars see articles on the various cities, districts and tribes. For ethnographic and philological evidence see Italy, Ancient Peoples.
- ↑ Livy ii. 332 Cic. Pro Balbo, 23.
- ↑ Livy viii. 2.
- ↑ Ibid. ii. 41.
- ↑ From the Celts in the north especially.
