When the remnant of the Romans were collected in the city, and able to look about them again, they found that the state was bereft of its subjects, and had shrunk within its own limits; like Florence after the expulsion of the Duke of Athens. The towns which after the fall of Latium had placed themselves under the soverainty of Rome for the sake of enjoying her protection, now disdained to submit to her. Even under the year 366 we already find mention of the revolt of the Latins and Hernicans: which however only means that the league then subsisting was dissolved. Still even if the Latins were not animated by any hostile feelings at the time of their separation, some such must are long have inevitably taken root in their minds. As soon as the remains of that people had resumed its independence, its national assembly was of course restablisht. To this assembly the Roman senate complained in 369 that no aid had been afforded them for the last three years; and the sense of their own weakness compelled them to take up with an empty evasion. Still the union among the Latins at this time must have been very lax: several towns were induced by their situation or by other circumstances to stand by the Romans; and this affords an explanation how Latin colonies subject to Rome came to be founded during this period, such as Sutrium and Nepete, as well as Setia, which probably was one of the towns taken from the Volscians before the year 365.

I Have already intimated in the former volume that the Veientine war cannot have been the occasion on which the practice of giving the troops pay was first introduced; that the serarians must undoubtedly have always continued to pay pensions to the infantry, as single women and minors did to the knights; that the change consisted in this, that every legionary now became entitled to pay, whereas previously the number of pensions had been limited by that of the persons liable to be charged with them; and hence that the deficiency was supplied out of the ærarium, from the produce of the tithe, and, when this failed, by a tribute levied even from those plebeians who were themselves bound to serve. Not only however is it utterly inconceivable that the paternal legislation which introduced the census, should have allowed that, while the wealthiest knights were to receive pay, the infantry was to serve without any kind of wages: I can also bring forward unequivocal indications that both services were originally paid according to the same system.

Polybius, it is well known, states the daily pay of a legionary to have been two obols: which,—since he takes a drachm as equivalent to a denary, and since the latter, in paying the soldiers, even after the introduction of a small currency, was not reckoned, as in all other transactions, at 16 ases, but at 10—are equal to uses, and in 30 days amount to 100.

The league of Rome with the Latins and that with the Hernicans are parted by an interval of seven years, and by events which our history must not pass over: but it would shew a slavish adherence to the order of time to let the internal connexion between the two subjects be broken by this separation. The same Sp. Cassius concluded both the treaties as consul, and the tenour of both was precisely the same: the alliance was common to the three states, and they were all placed on an equality; so that when their forces took the field conjointly, a third of the spoil and of the conquered territory fell to the lot of each, and each took an equal share in the colonies they sent forth. Now for the subsistence of this equality it was necessary there should be no marked disproportion between the allies in power, even if they were not exactly balanced; and the Hernicans must have occupied a compass far wider than their later history assigns to them. They, like the Latins, were overpowered by the Volscians and Æquians, who conquered a part of their towns: some of these, as was the case with Ferentinum, were recovered; others perhaps were destroyed; others, when peace was concluded and the possessions of the parties secured by treaties, may have remained in the hands of the Volscians.

Cnæus Marcius was in the camp before Corioli when the Volscians came from Antium to relieve it. While the two armies were fighting, the garrison made a sally: Marcius attackt them, routed them, rusht through the gates with them, and took the place. The cries of the defenseless captives, and the flames that rose from the town, announced the result to the armies; and the Antiates retreated from the bootless conflict. Thus Rome was indebted for two victories in one day to Coriolanus; which surname was supposed in afterages to have been derived from that conquest. Henceforward he was greatly looked up to by the senate and burgesses; but his haughty bearing offended the commonalty. On one occasion, when the tribunes prevented the consuls from levying troops, he called his clients together, and invited volunteers to join him: with this body he made an inroad into the territory of the Antiates, carried off much booty, and divided it among his followers. Hence the plebeians dreaded him, and refused him the consulship: this inflamed him with implacable anger.

After this it came to pass that there was a famine in the city: many of the commonalty sold themselves along with their children; others threw themselves into the river; not a few went into forein lands: the patricians did not suffer, and took care to provide for their clients.

The incessant wars with these Ausonian nations, which for more than a century occur almost every year, have induced Livy to express a fear that, as he cannot write of them without weariness, he shall excite a like feeling in his readers. How much more reason then has a foreiner to expect this, living eighteen hundred years after, with very few among his contemporaries who reflect that the glory of Arpinum and its sons belonged to the Volscian name, or who are familiar with the noble hills, the scene of those wars; and not one who takes interest in them from any of the feelings connected with his birthplace! Hence the endless uniformity of occurrences, few of which are even distinguisht by the mention of the spot where they took place, and which look like mere predatory inroads, passing away and perpetually recurring without any result, must to us be intolerably tedious. But this appearance of intrinsic insignificance has only been occasioned by the dishonesty of the Roman annalists, which has studiously thrown the conquests of these nations into oblivion, as their narrowness of mind has the wholesome and politic treaties with them at which the vanity of the later Romans took offense.

Whether Rome was considered as a colony from Alba, or as planted by the son of Mars, who stood in the place of a parent city, its foundation was supposed, and related as from tradition, to have been accompanied by all the solemnities usual in new colonies. As Romulus was made to trace the pomœrium with a plough, so to him was ascribed the assignment of two jugers a-piece to each of the citizens, as inheritable property; and it cannot be doubted that in very early times the Roman territory was actually divided into such small allotments. A hundred such formed an ancient century, of two hundred jugers of arable, inclosed by strips that were drawn according to the rules of augury as immovable limits. This was the district of a cury: that each possest an equal one, is among the traditions of the old law: and that a hundred householders were assigned to each cury is clear, because three thousand warriors were reckoned for the three tribes, as the colonists of Antium are designated as a thousand soldiers: and hence the statement that at the first there were a thousand householders in Rome was unquestionably understood of the Ramnes, though it may originally have related to a state of things the remembrance of which was studiously obliterated. A cury is also shewn to have contained a hundred citizens by the ten decuries it consisted of.

The campaigns during this period begin to be in many instances so important both from what was achieved in them and from the consequences they led to, that a circumstantial relation of them could no longer be censured as a tedious recital of petty occurrences proceeding from a fond predilection for the subject: but almost all the details in our accounts are still of a very suspicious character. Thus we must content ourselves with saying that in 306 M. Horatius gained a glorious victory over the Sabines: an extremely memorable event, since the Sabine wars, which for more than twenty years had been continually breaking out afresh, cease from this time forward, till after the lapse of a century and a half, when the powerless state was madly roused to take up arms, and sank in a few days into final ruin. During the whole of this period the Sabines are never named in history, though the cities on their borders, at one time Tibur, at another Falerii, are waging war against Rome: in the second and third Samnite wars the Roman troops pass through their territory without any obstruction; nor could an army have been sent into Apulia, had not their friendship been completely secured.

In the investigations concerning the agrarian institutions I have made frequent and considerable use of the works and fragments which treat of the art of dividing lands. The collection of these works, at least in the latest of the three different editions which were publisht during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, each subsequent one containing fresh matter derived from manuscripts, is by no means rare even in common private libraries; yet at the same time, as has been remarkt already, it is less known than any other work of ancient profane literature. One would hardly believe that in books on literary history it is classed under the head of agriculture: and although a few quotations here and there seem to shew that in our days these writings are rather less neglected than they used to be, yet it is quite plain that they are still a sealed mysterious book, wherein only such scattered passages are noticed as are intelligible when taken apart from the rest, such as may be found even in the volumes of the cabbalists.

For me these writings from several causes have had a peculiar charm. There is always some kind of attraction in whatever is mysterious and difficult: and as I derived much instruction from them when I learnt in some degree to understand them, they called forth a feeling of gratitude, which excites a particularly lively interest even in neglected books.

Some privileges might be exercised by an outlying freeman without changing his relation to his native country; but of others he could not avail himself without becoming a citizen of the pale: and these were determined not by the higher dignity of the privilege, but by the nature of the case. Without quitting Capua Pacuvius Calavius had wedded a Claudia, and had given his daughter in marriage to a Roman: this bred no confusion: but if he had purchased Roman lands subject to the land-tax, the republic would have lost the tribute due upon them, which was assest not on the objects, but on the persons liable to it. Thus the higher right, the connubium, was open to every isopolite; the commercium was reserved for those who settled in their adopted country.

It is mentioned as one feature in the relation between Rome and Alba, that the connubium subsisted between them: and however all pretended statements concerning the earliest times may be rejected, perhaps with needless rigour, this at all events was meant to explain the origin of the same right among the Latins, and therefore deserves attention. The right of intermarriage with Alba is exprest in the legend of the mothers of the Horatii and Curiatii; that with the Priscans and Latins, in the story of the matrons who before the battle of Regillus were allowed to part from their husbands; and on such matters tradition cannot deviate from the truth: the marriage of the last king's daughter with the dictator Mamilius may certainly pass for a historical fact.

The following classification, while it is strictly adapted to the notions of the Romans, gives us the peculiar terms of their ancient national law.

Ager, a district, was the whole territory belonging to any civic community, in opposition to terra, a country, which comprised many such proprietary districts, as for instance terra Italia, Graecia. All landed property (ager in its restricted sense) was either Roman or forein, aut Romanus aut peregrinus. Under the head of forein came even that of isopolitan nations.

All Roman land was either the property of the state (common land, domain), or private property, aut publicus aut privatus.

The landed property of the state was either consecrated to the gods (sacer), or allotted to men to reap its fruits (profanus, humani juris). A later view made this the primary division, and then distinguisht the land belonging to man into public property and private property: but a treatise, evidently written in the time of Domitian, and assuredly by Frontinus—the only work among those of the Agrimensores which can be accounted a part of classical literature, or was composed with any real legal knowledge—says that the soil of the sacred groves was indisputably the property of the Roman people. This is confirmed by the statement in Livy that the temple and grove of Juno at Lanuvium became the joint property of the Roman people and of the Lanuvine municipals when the latter were admitted to the civic franchise.

A Correct notion of the constitution of 311 will lead us to acquit the patricians of the charge of setting a great value on the show of excluding the plebeians from the consulship, while they granted them the substance. Dion tells us that no consular military tribune, though several of them gained brilliant victories, ever celebrated a triumph. Hence it follows that they cannot have had the curule honours: for a triumph, properly so called, is termed triumphus curulis: and this epithet assuredly refers to the privilege of the supreme magistrates to go to the senate in a chariot: an honour not allowed to the consular tribunes, because they were not of curule rank. In like manner no master of the horse ever triumpht: nobody ever supposed that his was one of the curule offices; and the consular tribunes were not above him in rank. One may easily conceive that the office, when thrown open to the plebeians, was shorn of its dignity: if its power however had continued the same, the advantage that the consulship had over it would merely have been matter of vanity.

The most remarkable feature of this tribuneship is the variableness in the number of its members: for this in all the other offices of the ancient states was permanently fixt, and did not alter with the shifting of circumstances, as in modern monarchies.