So long as the Etruscan calendar remained in use in civil life also, the nundines, on which the country people came to the city, were at the same time the days, on which the kings gave judges and administered justice, and on which business could be transacted before them according to the law. These nundines were thirty-eight in number, which always fell on the same day of the month every year. But when the twelve months' year was introduced, and it was at the same time found advisable to separate the nundines from the court-days, the number of the latter, the dies fasti, remained unaltered, thirty-eight: which is by the way a clear proof, that what I have said respecting the civil use of the ten months' year is not a mere fancy. But these thirty-eight days were now distributed among all the twelve months, without any perceptible rule being observed in the distribution: and as business increast, justice was administered on the comitial days also, when no comitia were held, and the pontiffs granted for the transaction of business even some hours of many dies nefasti, before the religious obstacle commenced or when it was over. It was therefore now a matter of importance to know, in order that time might not be lost by coming for no purpose, nor the proper times be neglected, which days were entirely nefasti and which only half and during what hours: and this every one was obliged to learn from the pontiffs as often as he wanted to know it.

When fire-arms in the seventeenth century were made more usable and handy, it was soon perceived, that troops provided with them in greater proportion, and drawn up with a larger front, had such decided advantages over the deep masses arranged in the old fashion, and armed for the most part with pikes, that it was thought wiser, if the soldier could have the necessary individual training, to submit to the disadvantages which sometimes could not be avoided in an engagement with deep masses. In the same way Iphicrates, about the hundredth Olympiad, had considered, that the phalanx could only be overcome either by an overwhelming increase of the masses and of physical power, that is, by increasing the depth of the ranks and the strength of the spears, or by picking out and training the individual for a service, which held a middle place between that of the phalangite and the arquebusier. It must have appeared that with the former system both parties would again be on an equality after a short time, as those who suffered would, with the most ordinary degree of common sense, adopt the innovation, the only difficulty of which consisted in the management of the spears: the second could not be applied in the case of a militia, but afforded decided advantages to mercenary troops when permanently assembled.

Of C. Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius, to whom Rome owed her regeneration, we know scarcely any thing more than their names, and, very imperfectly, the substance of their laws. But the greatness and boldness of the plan of their legislation, their unwearied perseverance, the calmness, with which they allowed their work to proceed to its completion, while they confined themselves strictly to the paths permitted by the law, so that neither they nor the commonalty are charged with the slightest act of violence, although the annals continued for a long time afterwards to be written exclusively by the hostile party:—all this gives us the means of judging of their spirit and of their character. A revolution, which in the Greek republics or at Florence would have commenced with violence, have succeeded or failed within a few months, and been sealed with banishment and blood, was developt at Rome during five years of incessant and manly struggle, without disturbing the peace of a single citizen.

It is a piece of malice, as common as it is hateful, in the enemies of the memory of great men and of great deeds, to trace such deeds to low motives, as opposite as possible to the loftiness of their real aims; as indeed down to this day, in spite of the most convincing arguments to the contrary, it is asserted that Luther was urged to the reformation by the envy of his brother monks, by the Dominicans, and by the desire of marrying his nun.

The state of peace with the Etruscans ever since the taking of the city by the Gauls is the more surprising, since the two nations up to that time had struggled against each other with a vehemence and an exertion, such as never had been manifested in the conduct of the Latin wars. During the first half century after the expulsion of the kings it was the Etruscan wars, which brought Rome down more than any others; and the destruction of one of the great Etruscan towns and the possession of its whole territory, as well as the alienation of another allied city, Capua, were occasions which might have induced even a peaceful nation, which the Etruscans in former times by no means appear to have been, to seize every opportunity for recovering what was lost: and those wounds were still quite fresh, when Rome's fall and weakness gave the greatest hopes. Yet all their attempts are confined to the attack upon Sutrium and Nepete, four years after the taking of Rome; and this war is carried on so feebly, that it is clear, that it can only have been the enterprise of a single town, the neighbouring Volsinii. Just as little do the Romans repeat those campaigns against Volsinii, which previous to the Gallic calamity had to overcome such few difficulties; and it is only in the last years of the fourth century that a war arises with any of the Etruscan people and then with the Tarquinians alone; for the Faliscans were Æquians.

The three campaigns which still followed, before the war in southern Italy was brought to a close, seem, with the exception of the fate of Tarentum, to have past away without such occurrences as stand forth in a manner to attract the attention of hasty and unlearned epitomisers, amid the repetition of monotonous narratives of the ravages of war and the taking of unimportant places. This however is evident, that Rome availed herself of the entire removal of all danger, in order to recover breath after the continued exertions of the last nine years, which had been increast since the landing of Pyrrhus beyond all previous example: otherwise the first two years would have been adorned not merely by a single triumph over the Tarentines and Samnites. In order to have rest themselves, they allowed the Lucanians and Bruttians to rest.

Tarentum meantime was already doing penance for the outrage she had committed. A phrurarchus regarded himself as tyrant of the city entrusted to his power, and it was only in consequence of a mild disposition, which but few among those usurpers possest and Milo not at all, that this power was not exercised in the most revolting manner. Many citizens conspired against him; as their undertaking failed, those who succeeded in making their escape, took possession of a castle where they obtained peace from the Romans.

The whole country opposite Corcyra and the Cephallenian islands, from the Acroceraunian rocks as far as the Rhion, bore the name of Epirus, or the continent, in contradistinction to those islands, in ancient times and even during the Peloponnesian war. It was not till later, when Ætolia and Acarnania had come forth from their obscurity, and most tribes north of the Ambracian gulph had been united into one kingdom, that the narrower geographical signification of the name arose, which supplanted the former one, and it now became customary to call Epirots the inhabitants of that country, who were not Greeks, especially those who formed that state.

These Epirots were no more Greeks than the Sicelians: Thucydides expressly calls them barbarians, and even Polybius, without using the harsh expression which had become more unusual in his time, says distinctly, that the Epirot tribes which were united with the Ætolians, were not Greeks. They were however by no means, like the Thracians or Illyrians, quite forein to the Greeks, but rather a kindred people: so that he who paid most regard to affinity, might in certain respects consider them as Greeks; and that they were reckoned among Greeks in later times, must surprise us all the less, inasmuch as this honour was confered upon the people in western Asia, among whom the Greek language had become predominant in business and society, since Carians and Lydians past at Rome as Greeks, and were admitted to the Olympian contests.

As Capua was a part of the Roman state, it may be comprised in the internal history. Wardens (praefecti) had been sent thither from the year 431 (436), and the pretor L. Furius composed laws for the city. Livy, who relates this, adds, that the Campanians had requested both, as a remedy for the internal disturbances, which had worn out their state. But the commentators have been justly surprised, how a magistrate under the Oscan name of Meddix tuticus could have afterwards been at the head of the Campanian republic: and we may remark in addition, that the dignity and estimation, which Capua enjoyed down to the war with Hannibal, exclude every thought of this city having been degraded to the most complete state of subjection. But since brief statements of this kind can least of all be rejected as fictitious, it remains for us to endeavour to understand them. That a magistrate of a city which was most friendly to it, should have been called to legislate, would have been something quite common: when confusion prevailed in their domestic affairs, the nations of antiquity thought least of all of expecting relief from the collective deliberation of legislative assemblies, nay the idea would have appeared to them senseless: and that Capua was suffering from unfortunate dissensions, is rendered probable by the division between the nobility and commonalty in the Latin war.

It is an essential part of the vocation I have chosen,—in clearing up the history of Rome, so far as my powers and the existing resources allow, in such a manner, that it may become no less familiar and perceptible than that of modern times, in which we have not lived ourselves,—to give such a representation of the nations and states, with which Rome came into contact in the extension of her empire either in relations of friendship or in war, that the reader instead of a mere name, such as that of Epirots or Ætolians, may know in general outlines, what was then the extent of their state, what their power, and what their constitution and mode of living. These representations are in general the fruits of an attention directed from early life to all notices respecting nations and periods that have been despised and overlookt; and in some cases of enquiries not less laborious than those, by which I have brought into order the chaos of the early times of Rome, but with which I shall avoid increasing the size of a work, whose unavoidable expansion leaves me on the borders of old age little hope of completing it.

The expedition of king Alexander of Epirus to Italy gives occasion to such a digression; an event, which had, it is true, no immediate connexion with Roman history, with the exception of a treaty that produced no results, and respecting the indirect effects of which little can be ascertained with certainty in consequence of the confusion in the relations of Magna Græcia, but which nevertheless had an influence that affected the relations of the Romans to the people of those countries.

As if it were an hereditary obligation to protect the freedom of the citizen, the consul M. Valerius renewed in more careful terms in the year 446 (452) the law of his ancestor, which secured an appeal to the people in cases where the highest magistrates had sentenced a person to corporal punishment, but still without affixing a definite punishment for the offender. The different degrees of the crime and of the excuses that might be made for it, were of too various a kind, not to leave it entirely to the discretion of the tribunes in those times, which feared to endanger the power of those who were called to the government, whether they should bring forward an accusation for a heavier or a lighter punishment when the time came, in case they should not be able, which can seldom have happened, to prevent the outrage.

I assign to about this period the Lex Furia respecting wills, which is evidently very much older than the Voconian law, and the author of which may probably be supposed to be the same L. Furius, who wrote laws for the conventus at Capua in 430 (436). This law, which, as is well known, forbade with a few exceptions, of which the particulars are not stated, any single person to bequeath by will more than a thousand ases, and which condemned him who received more in violation of the law, to a fourfold punishment like a usurer, is of importance on acocunt of the causes which gave rise to it.

The tenth book of Livy is in reality the only source for the first six years of the third Samnite war with the exception of a few insignificant accounts; and we miss with the lost annals of Diodorus those brief statements, which borrowed, though hastily and with ignorance, from original annals, nevertheless served so often as a check upon Livy's narrative during the greater half of the second war. Concerning the last three campaigns, as well as concerning the whole period down to the war against Pyrrhus, only scattered statements are preserved, and though these are in truth but scanty, yet however much they may be so, we must not at all suppose, that we possess very much less of the real history than would remain after an unprejudiced consideration of a detailed account. For it must be acknowledged, that the history of this war in Livy is evidently much more precise than that of the preceding one: and if every trace of most of the places in Samnium had not been obliterated, one could have followed the description of the occurrences in more than one campaign from place to place: several parts are already of quite an historical nature, as the statements respecting the booty and especially the history of Fabius's campaign in 449 (455), in which everything sounds credible and fair.

The Samnites were then in the fulness of their strength: in extent of territory, and of population too, they were certainly far superior to Rome and her allies. Their tribes extended from the Lower sea, where they separated Campania from Lucania, right up to the Upper: towards the Liris, in the mountains of Lucania, and down upon the plains of Apulia, their territories embraced far more than the space, which bears the name of Samnium upon the maps: but the Campanians and Lucanians had become estranged from the mother people. Samnium itself however was not a single state, but a confederacy of different and independent countries, which were consequently jealous of their allies in maintaining their own independence. One of them, the Pentrians, took no part in one campaign in the midst of the war against the Romans: a part of the Samnites received the Roman municipium: namely, the Caudines, of whom Sp. Postumius was a municeps. According to all appearance there were four of these Samnite tribes, in accordance with the regulative number of the Sabellians, like that of the Marsian confederacy: the Caudines, Hirpinians, Pentrians, and Frentanians: the latter of whom had certainly not become separated from them yet, as they are at that time expressly reckoned among the Samnites by foreiners. The southern country from Surrentum to the Silarus may have contained none but allied or subject places, and not have formed a part of the confederacy.

The wars of this period prove, that the Licinian legislation freed the republic from pernicious fetters, which had kept her in deplorable and wretched weakness. Hitherto it has been only the internal struggles of life to break through this deadening restraint, which were worthy of attention; from this time begins the development of Rome in her call to rule over the nations. Complaints concerning the oppression of the taxes die away; the impossibility of paying them has vanisht, because the republic has returned to the full enjoyment of her rich possessions: no opposition to the levying of troops is heard of, but on the contrary dissatisfaction, when the soldiers are dismist from the colours against their will; so quickly had the nation become fond of war, so rich was it in warlike virtues and soldiers, from the time that every one had acquired the power of gaining the place due to him and a free farm.

We must not be misled, when the historians speak, as if the Gauls had come down for the purpose of making war against Rome: the chronicles had confined themselves to the still very limited circle of domestic occurrences, and the carelessness of later writers overlookt the general fate of Italy. The Gauls however did not seek Rome, distant many days' journey from their own home, and divided from it by other nations, but they laid waste also the Roman territory and Latium in the course of those desolating wanderings, by which they penetrated into the most distant districts.