The miraculous signs, which preceded the Gallic war, and their interpretation by the aruspex Manius, are equivalent to an historical testimony, that Rome was visited by famine and pestilence during very brilliant years of war. In accordance with the interpretation of those signs the famine rose to such a highth, that hunger was appeased by grass and the most loathsome food. According to the order in which they are mentioned, the pestilence must have preceded the famine, and then it could only have been spoken of in Livy's eleventh book: else the contrary succession is all the more probable, as the epidemic, which visited Rome this time, seems to have been nothing else but an ordinary typhus. Earlier ones, which I have pointed out as true pestilences, were contemporaneous with equally murderous epidemics on the other coasts of the Mediterranean: this one stands isolated, and no one is mentioned who was carried off by it. The war, from the manner in which it was carried on in those years, might have occasioned both calamities: famine, if there was a bad harvest during the repeated devastations of Campania, and typhus in the armies, which had to endure all imaginable privations in districts that had been laid waste far and wide, although they still continued to obtain booty in places taken by storm.

When this epidemic was raging in the third year of the war in 453 (459), the Sibylline books were consulted, and in accordance with their oracle, which prescribed that Æsculapius should be brought from Epidaurus to Rome, ten embassadors were sent thither with a trireme.

It was moreover owing to the awkwardness and inefficiency of the Samnite government, that the Samnites were not prepared when the war was declared, and that they conducted their preparations so slowly, that neither was any attempt made to relieve Neapolis, nor were the Romans stopt by an army in the taking of Allifæ and other places, when they entered Samnium across the Vulturnus from the Volscian frontier. This expedition belongs to the earlier months of the year 423 (428): the taking of Palæpolis to the first months of the year 424 (429).

That the army which blockaded the two Greek towns, might not be left without a commander, since the comitia had been protracted for two months without producing any result in consequence of the renewed obstinacy of the patricians, proconsular power was given to Q. Publilius Philo by an ordinance of the senate and a plebiscitum, in order to bring the war against the Greeks to a close. This power conferred the auspices and the full imperium of a consul, and not merely the supreme command of an army and the right as general to reward and punish, but jurisdiction also. But as the power of the tribunes only extended a mile beyond the city, so on the other hand the city and this its immediate vicinity were exempted from the proconsular power, which was conferred without the auspices by a mere decree of the two governing powers, and not by the lawful comitia for election.

Tacitus says, that the uncial rate of interest was introduced by the twelve tables: Livy represents it as establisht in 393 (398) in consequence of a rogation. Now it is clear, that the Licinian law cannot have found the interest limited, for the merciless usurers would without fail have extorted a far higher interest than the law allowed, and then nothing more would have been necessary, than to leave to the debtors the fourfold fine forfeited to the state. However, it does not seem credible, that Tacitus, who was by no means indifferent to the antiquities of Roman history, should not have read the twelve tables; and to say that he quoted them carelessly, violates the reverence due to his memory. The supposition, that an enactment of the twelve tables had fallen into disuse, and that therefore its renewal had become necessary, whereby a commentator worthy of all honour endeavoured to reconcile the two historians, seems inconceivable to me; the time down to the general prevalence of debts before the Licinian law is too short for that: but that law might perhaps have been expressly repealed. Its existence in the twelve tables is supported by the state of things before the Gallic time, when not the slightest complaint is heard of oppressive interest: moreover it is clear, that without an interest fixt by law there could not have been the punishment of the fourfold fine for usurers; and Cato, who unquestionably knew the twelve tables by heart, places this as a part of the legislation of his same ancestors by the side of the twofold fine for theft.

The restoration of the consulship, if no change had been made, would have legally renewed its rights to the same extent, as they had been exercised by those consuls, whose election was carried in violation of law after the institution of the consular tribunate. The pretor's office would thus have remained united with it; whether the deputy or warden of the city, in the absence of both collegues, would have been appointed by them, or elected by the people, cannot be conjectured, since traces of this magistracy, from the time of the decemvirate, only occur in those years which have consular tribunes.

In this manner the consular power, the division and limitation of which had been urgently demanded ninety years before, would have been restored in its full strength, with the exception of the censorship; and it is not surprising that parties now took quite a different view of the matter from what they did then. The patricians, whose forefathers had represented every diminution of the consulship as an attempt against the soverain power, now demanded the separation as vehemently as at one time their opponents, in order that the power taken away from it might remain a prerogative of their own: but if this were to be done, the plebeians now thought, that the accumulation of powers in one office was a disadvantage which might easily be borne.

In the same year, if Polybius's reckoning is correct, the Romans concluded the first peace with the Gauls; consequently for the same reasons which occasioned their peace with Alexander, and that they might be safe on this side during the war with the Samnites. Livy's account under the same year, that apprehensions of a Gallic invasion were spread abroad, and that a dictator was appointed: that the persons however sent out in order to collect information reported, that every thing was quiet among the Gauls, has an obscure reference to that statement: so far did the annals leave traces of an embassy despatcht to the Gauls; the mention of the peace was obliterated. To conclude such a peace with the Romans, who had no kind of connexion with them, unless they themselves marcht against Rome, the Gauls could have had no occasion, except it was solicited, and no reason to grant it, except presents, if not an annual tribute, which even the proudest have often considered to be no dishonour to pay to barbarians; for certainly this peace, which protected all nations dependent upon the Romans, however distant Rome herself was, almost put an end to their marauding expeditions. The northern boundary of Etruria was protected by the impassable nature of the Apennines: the road through the Abruzzi was easily defended by the brave inhabitants, and might have been dreaded by the barbarians on account of more than one defeat: there remained the middle road through Umbria which was certainly subdued, and down the lower Tiber.

In this period king Demetrius the Besieger reigned; who, when Roman privateers had been taken up in the Greek seas, sent the prisoners to the senate, but added the reproach, that a Greek people, which thought itself entitled to the dominion of Italy, and had erected a temple in its market-place to the Dioscuri, the tutelary deities of navigation, allowed pirates to sail out. The letter which exprest these complaints, was of course brought over by an embassy: an opportunity for forming connexions, from which sooner or later an alliance might possibly arise, must have been very welcome to a prince like Demetrius. The privateers belonged to some one of the subject maritime towns, which were infected by the piracy of the neighbouring Etruscans. The Tyrrhenian ships, which had served Agathocles a few years before, were probably privateers, and Tyrrhenian piracy rendered the Ægean sea unsafe, until the Rhodians put an end to it; from which time the power of this new maritime state began. This time falls a little later, and the Greeks may have owed their deliverance from this scourge to the measures, which the Romans were enabled to take after the subjugation of Etruria.

During this period Rome was embellisht with buildings, streets, and important works of art, partly from the booty taken in war, and partly from the fines accruing from the accusations of the ediles.

Until all Roman institutions acquired fixt stability, it was quite common for more than five years to elapse before new censors were chosen: but it is, so far as we can know, without example, that it ever happened in a shorter time, and that new censors were elected three times in eight years: for Q. Fabius and P. Decius were elected in 443 (449), eight years after Appius and Plautius, 436 (442). This rapid succession, the choice of two friends of congenial minds, who were the first in their respective orders, leads us to conclude without any doubt, that they were called upon to remedy the evil which by a longer delay it might not have been easy to cure by peaceful means. Now it is well known, that the consequences of Appius's innovation were got the better of by these censors, that peace and a legitimate order of things returned through their means, and that such scandals as the election of Flavius no longer occurred, that they confined the libertini to the four city tribes, that this is universally stated as the means by which that great result was brought about, and that Q. Fabius, who must be regarded as the soul of this decisive undertaking, received in consequence the surname of Maximus.