Though a firm hand had secured the promist benefits, yet nothing but time and the gentle force of habit could establish a sincere peace between two orders, which had now past over to a state of equality from one of longstanding oppression and insult. The blindness of the patricians prevented them from perceiving, how vain their attempts were, to recover their lost privileges: it was necessary that such attempts should become dangerous to them, before the republic could enjoy internal peace with freedom. Before this object was attained, five and twenty years past by in supprest but violent agitations.

After the revolution, which had become possible through external peace, there followed an unusual calm, while the government was wholly engaged in carrying the laws into effect. It may also be true, that the senate did not wish for any war, in order to keep the plebeian consul in inglorious inactivity. Natural events of a destructive kind prevented this tranquillity from restoring the republic to health: a pestilence raged: and the river overflowed the low districts. But so changed was the general feeling in little more than one generation, that now the comitia could not be disturbed by the pretended indignation of the gods at the election from unworthy houses. The fourth year was already passing away without war: and now there ripened in the patricians the scheme for putting a stop to the operations of the Licinian law by the old terrours of the dictatorship, and by a forced levy of troops.

The fate of the Hernicans was upon the whole decided in the same way as that of the Latins had been thirty years before. The three towns which had not revolted, retained their laws, and mutual connubium: without doubt the commercium too: but scarcely the right of holding diets. Anagnia and the other Hernicans became municipia without the suffragium and were governed by prefects, who exercised jurisdiction among them, and whom the Roman pretor appointed annually: for their ordinary magistrates who remained nominally, in order that the worship of the gods might not be disturbed, were exclusively confined to the performance of the priestly functions of their office. They were deprived of the connubium with the other Hernicans and undoubtedly of the commercium also, and this too with the same intentions as the Latins had been. Frusino lost according to Diodorus as early as 441 (447), according to Livy as a punishment for an attempt to excite the nation to revolt in 444 (450), a third part of its territory: which land, as Diodorus states, was sold. Rome had now got rid of the obligations incumbent upon it by the treaty, though these perhaps latterly had no longer consisted in giving up a third part of the spoil, but in the Roman treasury giving pay to the contingent of the Hernicans, and only assigning a part of the spoil to them: which was considered so important a gain, that an equestrian statue was erected to C. Marcius in front of the temple of Castor.

There are only two kinds of tactic, between which various modifications occur; that which calculates upon the individual warrior, and that which builds upon masses; so that in the former the mass with its dead weight does not appear at all and is taken no account of, and in the latter the individual vanishes as insignificant. The extremes of these two kinds are represented by the Homeric heroes, and those swarms of Cimbrians who were held together by chains. The remarks however which will be made upon this subject, refer properly to the infantry; respecting the cavalry, for which many things are different, I shall say a little afterwards.

The tactic of barbarians begins with masses: many people have never gone beyond them; others have returned to them again: that the Romans had no other system in the infancy of their military art, is clear from the celebrated passage in Livy, and even from the arms of the hoplites of Servius Tullius. This system was entirely Greek, and in the time of Pisistratus there was unquestionably not the slightest difference between the Roman and Greek tactics. It remained among the Greeks to very late times; the Romans broke up their arrangement very early, long before this time, and changed their arms. It is said that they borrowed them from the Italicans; whether this be so, cannot be ascertained in any way; but so much is certain, that the Italicans were at this time armed and drawn up like the Romans.

The consular year began at that time in summer, about the same time as the Olympic year; it must be supposed that the campaigns generally fell in the autumn; and during the cessation of war, which winter brought, changes and revolutions were prepared. In the year 409 (414), before the Samnite peace was concluded, the consul C. Plautius marcht, still in accordance with the league, into the field against the Volscians of Privernum and Antium. The former purchast peace with two thirds of their domain land: Latium evidently received one third as well as Rome. The war was renewed with the Antiatians for the possession of Satricum; a hard won victory led to the devastation of their territory as far as the sea coast.

But when Rome had abandoned the war against Samnium in consequence of a peace, which was without any doubt contrary to the league, new connexions were of necessity soon formed. The Sidicinians were given over to the Samnites: the Campanians, after the Roman garrisons had been withdrawn, saw no safety for themselves except in the continuance of their alliance with the Latins; they were indeed, when united, strong enough to invade Samnium in the spring of the same consular year with a great army.

Latium and the Volscians of Antium, and all of the Volscian name that may have remained on the sea coast, had now given up the war and become allied to one another, like Rome and Samnium: in the same manner also the Auruncians,—the Volscians on the Liris.

In what way the treaty of the year 261 granted to the Latin state independence and equality; how the greater part of it fell, afterwards, into the power of its enemies, and the remainder lost the form of a confederacy, and separately took shelter under the supremacy of Rome; how they became separated from one another after their star had set; and at the same time how, from the dissolution of the Æquian state, Latin towns which formerly had only been equal to those contained in the number of the thirty townships, again come to light as states:—all these things have been described in their proper places in the course of the second volume.

After the consulship was shared with the plebeians, Latium still contained the same isolated states, as appear after the devastations of the Gauls. Tibur and Præneste stood apart from the others, each soverain of a district; those places, which had remained as Latins after the extension of the Volscians, must again have formed a league with one another, but still without preventing separate places, such as Tusculum, from forming an equally close connection with Rome: Antium was an entirely forein state, and so were Velitræ and Privernum also. One would seek in vain for compact territories: for Roman districts, either assigned or occupied, lay mixt among the Latin ones.

Two years after Pyrrhus had been conquered, 473 (479), Ptolemy Philadelphia sought the friendship and alliance of the Romans by an embassy, which was received at Rome with great distinction. The senate accepted the proposal very readily, and in reply sent three embassadors with presents to Alexandria: it was the custom however to transmit to kings in friendship with the Romans a purple toga and tunic, and an ivory throne. In costliness the Romans could not pretend to vie with the treasures of Alexandria: but the chief of the embassy, Q. Fabius Gurges, was the chief of the senate; a distinction of which no second example occurs. The embassadors were splendidly received: the king, according to the Greek custom, had golden crowns offered them: to preserve the omen and honour the king, they accepted the present, but placed them on the heads of his statues. Other marks of honour which could not be refused thus, they gave up to the treasury, even before making their report upon the embassy: but the senate gave it all to them as their property.

These transactions were not an empty display of vanity. The ruler of the first commercial state in the world at that time had not a few important relations with the rulers of Italy: but political ones, which can only be perceived by attentive reflection, in consequence of the isolation of the histories of states which are destroyed even down to almost unintelligible fragments, induced the Alexandrian king to seek something more than a connexion favorable to the commerce of his subjects.