The History of Rome, Book II - Theodor Mommsen
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23. II. III. The Burgess-Body. Its Composition
24. II. III. Complete Opening Up of Magistracies and Priesthoods
25. II. III. Restrictions as to the Accumulation and the Reoccupation
of Offices
26. II. III. Partition and Weakening of Consular Powers
CHAPTER IV
Fall of the Etruscan Power-the Celts
Etrusco-Carthaginian Maritime Supremacy
In the previous chapters we have presented an outline of the
development of the Roman constitution during the first two centuries
of the republic; we now recur to the commencement of that epoch for
the purpose of tracing the external history of Rome and of Italy.
About the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome the Etruscan
power had reached its height. The Tuscans, and the Carthaginians who
were in close alliance with them, possessed undisputed supremacy on
the Tyrrhene Sea. Although Massilia amidst continual and severe
struggles maintained her independence, the seaports of Campania and
of the Volscian land, and after the battle of Alalia Corsica also,(1)
were in the possession of the Etruscans. In Sardinia the sons of the
Carthaginian general Mago laid the foundation of the greatness both of
their house and of their city by the complete conquest of the island
(about 260); and in Sicily, while the Hellenic colonies were occupied
with their internal feuds, the Phoenicians retained possession of
the western half without material opposition. The vessels of the
Etruscans were no less dominant in the Adriatic; and their pirates
were dreaded even in the more eastern waters.
Subjugation of Latium by Etruria
By land also their power seemed to be on the increase. To acquire
possession of Latium was of the most decisive importance to Etruria,
which was separated by the Latins alone from the Volscian towns that
were dependent on it and from its possessions in Campania. Hitherto
the firm bulwark of the Roman power had sufficiently protected Latium,
and had successfully maintained against Etruria the frontier line of
the Tiber. But now, when the whole Tuscan league, taking advantage of
the confusion and the weakness of the Roman state after the expulsion
of the Tarquins, renewed its attack more energetically than before
under the king Lars Porsena of Clusium, it no longer encountered the
wonted resistance. Rome surrendered, and in the peace (assigned to
247) not only ceded all her possessions on the right bank of the Tiber
to the adjacent Tuscan communities and thus abandoned her exclusive
command of the river, but also delivered to the conqueror all her
weapons of war and promised to make use of iron thenceforth only for
the ploughshare. It seemed as if the union of Italy under Tuscan
supremacy was not far distant.
Etruscans Driven Back from Latium--
Fall of the Etrusco-Carthaginian Maritime Supremacy--
Victories of Salamis and Himera, and Their Effects
But the subjugation, with which the coalition of the Etruscan and
Carthaginian nations had threatened both Greeks and Italians, was
fortunately averted by the combination of peoples drawn towards each
other by family affinity as well as by common peril. The Etruscan
army, which after the fall of Rome had penetrated into Latium, had
its victorious career checked in the first instance before the walls
of Aricia by the well-timed intervention of the Cumaeans who had
hastened to the succour of the Aricines (248). We know not how the
war ended, nor, in particular, whether Rome even at that time tore up
the ruinous and disgraceful peace. This much only is certain, that
on this occasion also the Tuscans were unable to maintain their ground
permanently on the left bank of the Tiber.
Soon the Hellenic nation was forced to engage in a still more
comprehensive and still more decisive conflict with the barbarians
both of the west and of the east. It was about the time of the
Persian wars. The relation in which the Tyrians stood to the great
king led Carthage also to follow in the wake of Persian policy
--there exists a credible tradition even as to an alliance between
the Carthaginians and Xerxes--and, along with the Carthaginians, the
Etruscans. It was one of the grandest of political combinations which
simultaneously directed the Asiatic hosts against Greece, and the
Phoenician hosts against Sicily, to extirpate at a blow liberty and
civilization from the face of the earth. The victory remained with
the Hellenes. The battle of Salamis (274) saved and avenged Hellas
proper; and on the same day--so runs the story--the rulers of Syracuse
and Agrigentum, Gelon and Theron, vanquished the immense army of the
Carthaginian general Hamilcar, son of Mago, at Himera so completely,
that the war was thereby terminated, and the Phoenicians, who by no
means cherished at that time the project of subduing the whole of
Sicily on their own account, returned to their previous defensive
policy. Some of the large silver pieces are still preserved which
were coined for this campaign from the ornaments of Damareta, the
wife of Gelon, and other noble Syracusan dames: and the latest times
gratefully remembered the gentle and brave king of Syracuse and
the glorious victory whose praises Simonides sang.
The immediate effect of the humiliation of Carthage was the fall of
the maritime supremacy of her Etruscan allies. Anaxilas, ruler of
Rhegium and Zancle, had already closed the Sicilian straits against
their privateers by means of a standing fleet (about 272); soon
afterwards (280) the Cumaeans and Hiero of Syracuse achieved a
decisive victory near Cumae over the Tyrrhene fleet, to which the
Carthaginians vainly attempted to render aid. This is the victory
which Pindar celebrates in his first Pythian ode; and there is still
extant an Etruscan helmet, which Hiero sent to Olympia, with the
inscription: "Hiaron son of Deinomenes and the Syrakosians to Zeus,
Tyrrhane spoil from Kyma."(2)
Maritime Supremacy of the Tarentines and Syracusans--
Dionysius of Syracuse
While these extraordinary successes against the Carthaginians and
Etruscans placed Syracuse at the head of the Greek cities in Sicily,
the Doric Tarentum rose to undisputed pre-eminence among the Italian
Hellenes, after the Achaean Sybaris had fallen about the time of the
expulsion of the kings from Rome (243). The terrible defeat of the
Tarentines by the Iapygians (280), the most severe disaster which a
Greek army had hitherto sustained, served only, like the Persian
invasion of Hellas, to unshackle the whole might of the national
spirit in the development of an energetic democracy. Thenceforth
the Carthaginians and the Etruscans were no longer paramount in the
Italian waters; the Tarentines predominated in the Adriatic and Ionic,
the Massiliots and Syracusans in the Tyrrhene, seas. The latter in
particular restricted more and more the range of Etruscan piracy.
After the victory at Cumae, Hiero had occupied the island of Aenaria
(Ischia), and by that means interrupted the communication between the
Campanian and the northern Etruscans. About the year 302, with a
view thoroughly to check Tuscan piracy, Syracuse sent forth a special
expedition, which ravaged the island of Corsica and the Etruscan
coast and occupied the island of Aethalia (Elba). Although
Etrusco-Carthaginian piracy was not wholly repressed--Antium,
for example, having apparently continued a haunt of privateering down
to the beginning of the fifth century of Rome--the powerful Syracuse
formed a strong bulwark against the allied Tuscans and Phoenicians.
For a moment, indeed, it seemed as if the Syracusan power must be broken
by the attack of the Athenians, whose naval expedition against Syracuse
in the course of the Peloponnesian war (339-341) was supported by the
Etruscans, old commercial friends of Athens, with three fifty-oared
galleys. But the victory remained, as is well known, both in the west
and in the east with the Dorians. After the ignominious failure of
the Attic expedition, Syracuse became so indisputably the first Greek
maritime power that the men, who were there at the head of the state,
aspired to the sovereignty of Sicily and Lower Italy, and of both the
Italian seas; while on the other hand the Carthaginians, who saw their
dominion in Sicily now seriously in danger, were on their part also
obliged to make, and made, the subjugation of the Syracusans and the
reduction of the whole island the aim of their policy. We cannot
here narrate the decline of the intermediate Sicilian states, and
the increase of the Carthaginian power in the island, which were the
immediate results of these struggles; we notice their effect only so
far as Etruria is concerned. The new ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius
(who reigned 348-387), inflicted on Etruria blows which were severely
felt. The far-scheming king laid the foundation of his new colonial
power especially in the sea to the east of Italy, the more northern
waters of which now became, for the first time, subject to a Greek
maritime power. About the year 367, Dionysius occupied and colonized
the port of Lissus and island of Issa on the Illyrian coast, and the
ports of Ancona, Numana, and Atria, on the coast of Italy. The memory
of the Syracusan dominion in this remote region is preserved not only
by the "trenches of Philistus," a canal constructed at the mouth
of the Po beyond doubt by the well-known historian and friend of
Dionysius who spent the years of his exile (368 et seq.) at Atria,
but also by the alteration in the name of the Italian eastern sea
itself, which from this time forth, instead of its earlier designation
of the "Ionic Gulf",(3) received the appellation still current at the
present day, and probably referable to these events, of the sea
"of Hadria."(4) But not content with these attacks on the possessions
and commercial communications of the Etruscans in the eastern sea,
Dionysius assailed the very heart of the Etruscan power by storming
and plundering Pyrgi, the rich seaport of Caere (369). From this blow
it never recovered. When the internal disturbances that followed the
death of Dionysius in Syracuse gave the Carthaginians freer scope, and
their fleet resumed in the Tyrrhene sea that ascendency which with but
slight interruptions they thenceforth maintained, it proved a burden
no less grievous to Etruscans than to Greeks; so that, when Agathocles
of Syracuse in 444 was making preparations for war with Carthage, he
was even joined by eighteen Tuscan vessels of war. The Etruscans
perhaps had their fears in regard to Corsica, which they probably
still at that time retained. The old Etrusco-Phoenician symmachy,
which still existed in the time of Aristotle (370-432), was thus
broken up; but the Etruscans never recovered their maritime strength.
The Romans Opposed to the Etruscans in Veii
This rapid collapse of the Etruscan maritime power would be
inexplicable but for the circumstance that, at the very time when
the Sicilian Greeks were attacking them by sea, the Etruscans found
themselves assailed with the severest blows oil every side by land.
About the time of the battles of Salamis, Himera, and Cumae a furious
war raged for many years, according to the accounts of the Roman
annals, between Rome and Veii (271-280). The Romans suffered in its
course severe defeats. Tradition especially preserved the memory of
the catastrophe of the Fabii (277), who had in consequence of internal
commotions voluntarily banished themselves from the capital(4) and had
undertaken the defence of the frontier against Etruria, and who were
slain to the last man capable of bearing arms at the brook Cremera.
But the armistice for 400 months, which in room of a peace terminated
the war, was so far favourable to the Romans that it at least restored
the -status quo- of the regal period; the Etruscans gave up Fidenae
and the district won by them on the right bank of the Tiber. We
cannot ascertain how far this Romano-Etruscan war was connected
directly with the war between the Hellenes and the Persians, and with
that between the Sicilians and Carthaginians; but whether the Romans
were or were not allies of the victors of Salamis and of Himera, there
was at any rate a coincidence of interests as well as of results.
The Samnites Opposed to the Etruscans in Campania
The Samnites as well as the Latins threw themselves upon the
Etruscans; and hardly had their Campanian settlement been cut off
from the motherland in consequence of the battle of Cumae, when it
found itself no longer able to resist the assaults of the Sabellian
mountain tribes. Capua, the capital, fell in 330; and the Tuscan
population there was soon after the conquest extirpated or expelled by
the Samnites. It is true that the Campanian Greeks also, isolated and
weakened, suffered severely from the same invasion: Cumae itself was
conquered by the Sabellians in 334. But the Hellenes maintained their
ground at Neapolis especially, perhaps with the aid of the Syracusans,
while the Etruscan name in Campania disappeared from history
--excepting some detached Etruscan communities, which prolonged
a pitiful and forlorn existence there.
Events still more momentous, however, occurred about the same time in
Northern Italy. A new nation was knocking at the gates of the Alps:
it was the Celts; and their first pressure fell on the Etruscans.
The Celtic, Galatian, or Gallic nation received from the common mother
endowments different from those of its Italian, Germanic, and Hellenic
sisters. With various solid qualities and still more that were
brilliant, it was deficient in those deeper moral and political
qualifications which lie at the root of all that is good and great
in human development. It was reckoned disgraceful, Cicero tells us,
for the free Celts to till their fields with their own hands. They
preferred a pastoral life to agriculture; and even in the fertile
plains of the Po they chiefly practised the rearing of swine, feeding
on the flesh of their herds, and staying with them in the oak forests
day and night. Attachment to their native soil, such as characterized
the Italians and the Germans, was wanting in the Celts; while on the
other hand they delighted to congregate in towns and villages, which
accordingly acquired magnitude and importance among the Celts earlier
apparently than in Italy. Their political constitution was imperfect.
Not only was the national unity recognized but feebly as a bond of
connection--as is, in fact, the case with all nations at first--but
the individual communities were deficient in concord and firm
control, in earnest public spirit and consistency of aim. The only
organization for which they were fitted was a military one, where the
bonds of discipline relieved the individual from the troublesome task
of self-control. "The prominent qualities of the Celtic race," says
their historian Thierry, "were personal bravery, in which they
excelled all nations; an open impetuous temperament, accessible to
every impression; much intelligence, but at the same time extreme
mobility, want of perseverance, aversion to discipline and order,
ostentation and perpetual discord--the result of boundless vanity."
Cato the Elder more briefly describes them, nearly to the same effect;
"the Celts devote themselves mainly to two things--fighting and
-esprit-."(6) Such qualities--those of good soldiers but of bad
citizens--explain the historical fact, that the Celts have shaken all
states and have founded none. Everywhere we find them ready to rove
or, in other words, to march; preferring moveable property to landed
estate, and gold to everything else; following the profession of arms
as a system of organized pillage or even as a trade for hire, and
with such success at all events that even the Roman historian Sallust
acknowledges that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in
feats of arms. They were the true soldiers-of-fortune of antiquity,
as figures and descriptions represent them: with big but not sinewy
bodies, with shaggy hair and long mustaches--quite a contrast to the
Greeks and Romans, who shaved the head and upper lip; in variegated
embroidered dresses, which in combat were not unfrequently thrown off;
with a broad gold ring round the neck; wearing no helmets and without
missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense
shield, a long ill-tempered sword, a dagger and a lance--all
ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful at working in
metals. Everything was made subservient to ostentation, even wounds,
which were often subsequently enlarged for the purpose of boasting
a broader scar. Usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on
horseback, in which case every freeman was followed by two attendants
likewise mounted; war-chariots were early in use, as they were among
the Libyans and the Hellenes in the earliest times. Various traits
remind us of the chivalry of the Middle Ages; particularly the custom
of single combat, which was foreign to the Greeks and Romans. Not
only were they accustomed during war to challenge a single enemy to
fight, after having previously insulted him by words and gestures;
during peace also they fought with each other in splendid suits of
armour, as for life or death. After such feats carousals followed as
a matter of course. In this way they led, whether under their own or
a foreign banner, a restless soldier-life; they were dispersed from
Ireland and Spain to Asia Minor, constantly occupied in fighting and
so-called feats of heroism. But all their enterprises melted away
like snow in spring; and nowhere did they create a great state or
develop a distinctive culture of their own.
Celtic Migrations--
The Celts Assail the Etruscans in Northern Italy
Such is the description which the ancients give us of this nation.
Its origin can only be conjectured. Sprung from the same cradle from
which the Hellenic, Italian, and Germanic peoples issued,(7) the
Celts doubtless like these migrated from their eastern motherland into
Europe, where at a very early period they reached the western ocean
and established their headquarters in what is now France, crossing
to settle in the British isles on the north, and on the south passing
the Pyrenees and contending with the Iberian tribes for the possession
of the peninsula. This, their first great migration, flowed past the
Alps, and it was from the lands to the westward that they first began
those movements of smaller masses in the opposite direction--movements
which carried them over the Alps and the Haemus and even over the
Bosporus, and by means of which they became and for many centuries
continued to be the terror of the whole civilized nations of
antiquity, till the victories of Caesar and the frontier defence
organized by Augustus for ever broke their power.
The native legend of their migrations, which has been preserved to us
mainly by Livy, relates the story of these later retrograde movements
as follows.(8) The Gallic confederacy, which was headed then as in
the time of Caesar by the canton of the Bituriges (around Bourges),
sent forth in the days of king Ambiatus two great hosts led by the
two nephews of the king. One of these nephews, Sigovesus, crossed
the Rhine and advanced in the direction of the Black Forest, while the
second, Bellovesus, crossed the Graian Alps (the Little St. Bernard)
and descended into the valley of the Po. From the former proceeded
the Gallic settlement on the middle Danube; from the latter the oldest
Celtic settlement in the modern Lombardy, the canton of the Insubres
with Mediolanum (Milan) as its capital. Another host soon followed,
which founded the canton of the Cenomani with the towns of Brixia
(Brescia) and Verona. Ceaseless streams thenceforth poured over the
Alps into the beautiful plain; the Celtic tribes with the Ligurians
whom they dislodged and swept along with them wrested place after
place from the Etruscans, till the whole left bank of the Po was
in their hands. After the fall of the rich Etruscan town Melpum
(presumably in the district of Milan), for the subjugation of which
the Celts already settled in the basin of the Po had united with newly
arrived tribes (358?), these latter crossed to the right bank of the
river and began to press upon the Umbrians and Etruscans in their
original abodes. Those who did so were chiefly the Boii, who are
alleged to have penetrated into Italy by another route, over the
Poenine Alps (the Great St. Bernard): they settled in the modern
Romagna, where the old Etruscan town Felsina, with its name changed
by its new masters to Bononia, became their capital. Finally came
the Senones, the last of the larger Celtic tribes which made their
way over the Alps; they took up their abode along the coast of the
Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona. But isolated bands of Celtic settlers
must have advanced even far in the direction of Umbria, and up to
the border of Etruria proper; for stone-inscriptions in the Celtic
language have been found even at Todi on the upper Tiber. The limits
of Etruria on the north and east became more and more contracted,
and about the middle of the fourth century the Tuscan nation found
themselves substantially restricted to the territory which thenceforth
bore and still bears their name.
Attack on Etruria by the Romans
Subjected to these simultaneous and, as it were, concerted assaults on
the part of very different peoples--the Syracusans, Latins, Samnites,
and above all the Celts--the Etruscan nation, that had just acquired
so vast and sudden an ascendency in Latium and Campania and on both
the Italian seas, underwent a still more rapid and violent collapse.
The loss of their maritime supremacy and the subjugation of the
Campanian Etruscans belong to the same epoch as the settlement of
the Insubres and Cenomani on the Po; and about this same period the
Roman burgesses, who had not very many years before been humbled to
the utmost and almost reduced to bondage by Porsena, first assumed an
attitude of aggression towards Etruria. By the armistice with Veii in
280 Rome had recovered its ground, and the two nations were restored
in the main to the state in which they had stood in the time of the
kings. When it expired in the year 309, the warfare began afresh; but
it took the form of border frays and pillaging excursions which led to
no material result on either side. Etruria was still too powerful for
Rome to be able seriously to attack it. At length the revolt of the
Fidenates, who expelled the Roman garrison, murdered the Roman envoys,
and submitted to Lars Tolumnius, king of the Veientes, gave rise to
a more considerable war, which ended favourably for the Romans; the
king Tolumnius fell in combat by the hand of the Roman consul Aulus
Cornelius Cossus (326?), Fidenae was taken, and a new armistice for
200 months was concluded in 329. During this truce the troubles of
Etruria became more and more aggravated, and the Celtic arms were
already approaching the settlements that hitherto had been spared on
the right bank of the Po. When the armistice expired in the end of
346, the Romans on their part resolved to undertake a war of conquest
against Etruria; and on this occasion the war was carried on not
merely to vanquish Veii, but to crush it.
Conquest of Veii
The history of the war against the Veientes, Capenates, and Falisci,
and of the siege of Veii, which is said, like that of Troy, to have
lasted ten years, rests on evidence far from trustworthy. Legend and
poetry have taken possession of these events as their own, and with
reason; for the struggle in this case was waged, with unprecedented
exertions, for an unprecedented prize. It was the first occasion on
which a Roman army remained in the field summer and winter, year
after year, till its object was attained. It was the first occasion
on which the community paid the levy from the resources of the state.
But it was also the first occasion on which the Romans attempted
to subdue a nation of alien stock, and carried their arms beyond
the ancient northern boundary of the Latin land. The struggle was
vehement, but the issue was scarcely doubtful. The Romans were
supported by the Latins and Hernici, to whom the overthrow of their
dreaded neighbour was productive of scarcely less satisfaction and
advantage than to the Romans themselves; whereas Veii was abandoned
by its own nation, and only the adjacent towns of Capena and Falerii,
along with Tarquinii, furnished contingents to its help. The
contemporary attacks of the Celts would alone suffice to explain
the nonintervention of the northern communities; it is affirmed
however, and there is no reason to doubt, that this inaction of the
other Etruscans was primarily occasioned by internal factions in the
league of the Etruscan cities, and particularly by the opposition
which the regal form of government retained or restored by the
Veientes encountered from the aristocratic governments of the other
cities. Had the Etruscan nation been able or willing to take part
in the conflict, the Roman community would hardly have been able
--undeveloped as was the art of besieging at that time--to accomplish
the gigantic task of subduing a large and strong city. But isolated
and forsaken as Veii was, it succumbed (358) after a valiant
resistance to the persevering and heroic spirit of Marcus Furius
Camillus, who first opened up to his countrymen the brilliant and
perilous career of foreign conquest. The joy which this great success
excited in Rome had its echo in the Roman custom, continued down to a
late age, of concluding the festal games with a "sale of Veientes," at
which, among the mock spoils submitted to auction, the most wretched
old cripple who could be procured wound up the sport in a purple
mantle and ornaments of gold as "king of the Veientes." The city was
destroyed, and the soil was doomed to perpetual desolation. Falerii
and Capena hastened to make peace; the powerful Volsinii, which with
federal indecision had remained quiet during the agony of Veii and
took up arms after its capture, likewise after a few years (363)
consented to peace. The statement that the two bulwarks of the
Etruscan nation, Melpum and Veii, yielded on the same day, the former
to the Celts, the latter to the Romans, may be merely a melancholy
legend; but it at any rate involves a deep historical truth. The
double assault from the north and from the south, and the fall of
the two frontier strongholds, were the beginning of the end of the
great Etruscan nation.