Roman History, Books I III - Titus Livius
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25
The contests at home were now concluded. A war against the Veientines,
with whom the Sabines had united their forces, broke out afresh. The
consul Publius Valerius, after auxiliaries had been sent for from
the Latins and Hernicans, being despatched to Veii with an army,
immediately attacked the Sabine camp, which had been pitched before
the walls of their allies, and occasioned such great consternation
that, while scattered in different directions, they sallied forth in
small parties to repel the assault of the enemy, the gate which he
first atacked was taken: then within the rampart a massacre rather
than a battle took place. From within the camp the alarm spread also
into the city; the Veientines ran to arms in as great a panic as if
Veii had been taken: some came up to the support of the Sabines,
others fell upon the Romans, who had directed all their force against
the camp. For a little while they were disconcerted and thrown into
confusion; then they in like manner formed two fronts and made a
stand: and the cavalry, being commanded by the consul to charge,
routed the Tuscans and put them to flight; and in the self-same
hour two armies and two of the most influential and powerful of the
neighbouring states were vanquished. While these events were taking
place at Veii, the Volscians and AEquans had pitched their camp in
Latin territory, and laid waste their frontiers. The Latins, being
joined by the Hernicans, without either a Roman general or Roman
auxiliaries, by their own efforts, stripped them of their camp.
Besides recovering their own effects, they obtained immense booty. The
consul Gaius Nautius, however, was sent against the Volscians from
Rome. The custom, I suppose, was not approved of, that the allies
should carry on wars with their own forces and according to their own
plans without a Roman general and troops. There was no kind of injury
and petty annoyance that was not practised against the Volscians; they
could not, however, be prevailed on to come to an engagement in the
field.
Lucius Furius and Gaius Manlius were the next consuls. The Veientines
fell to Manlius as his province. No war, however, followed: a truce
for forty years was granted them at their request, but they were
ordered to provide corn and pay for the soldiers. Disturbance at home
immediately followed in close succession on peace abroad: the commons
were goaded by the spur employed by the tribunes in the shape of the
agrarian law. The consuls, no whit intimidated by the condemnation of
Menenius, nor by the danger of Servilius, resisted with their utmost
might; Gnaeus Genucius, a tribune of the people, dragged the consuls
before the court on their going out of office. Lucius AEmilius and
Opiter Verginius entered upon the consulate. Instead of Verginius I
find Vopiscus Julius given as consul in some annals. In this year
(whoever were the consuls) Furius and Manlius, being summoned to trial
before the people, in sordid garb solicited the aid of the younger
patricians as much as that of the commons: they advised, they
cautioned them to keep themselves from public offices and the
administration of public affairs, and indeed to consider the consular
fasces, the toga praetexta and curule chair, as nothing else but a
funeral parade: that when decked with these splendid insignia, as with
fillets, [70] they were doomed to death. But if the charms of the
consulate were so great they should even now rest satisfied that the
consulate was held in captivity and crushed by the tribunician power;
that everything had to be done by the consul, at the beck and command
of the tribune, as if he were a tribune's beadle. If he stirred, if he
regarded the patricians at all, if he thought that there existed any
other party in the state but the commons, let him set before his
eyes the banishment of Gnaeeus Marcius, the condemnation and death of
Menenius. Fired by these words, the patricians from that time held
their consultations not in public, but in private houses, and remote
from the knowledge of the majority, at which, when this one point only
was agreed on, that the accused must be rescued either by fair means
or foul, the most desperate proposals were most approved; nor did any
deed, however daring, lack a supporter.[71] Accordingly, on the day of
trial, when the people stood in the forum on tiptoe of expectation,
they at first began to feel surprised that the tribune did not come
down; then, the delay now becoming more suspicious, they believed that
he was hindered by the nobles, and complained that the public cause
was abandoned and betrayed. At length those who had been waiting
before the entrance of the tribune's residence announced that he
had been found dead in his house. As soon as rumour spread the news
through the whole assembly, just as an army disperses on the fall
of its general, so did they scatter in different directions. Panic
chiefly seized the tribunes, now taught by their colleague's death how
utterly ineffectual was the aid the devoting laws afforded them.[72]
Nor did the patricians display their exultation with due moderation;
and so far was any of them from feeling compunction at the guilty act,
that even those who were innocent wished to be considered to have
perpetrated it, and it was openly declared that the tribunician power
ought to be subdued by chastisement.
Immediately after this victory, that involved a most ruinous
precedent, a levy was proclaimed; and, the tribunes being now
overawed, the consuls accomplished their object without any
opposition. Then indeed the commons became enraged more at the
inactivity of the tribunes than at the authority of the consuls: they
declared there was an end of their liberty: that things had returned
to their old condition: that the tribunician power had died along with
Genucius and was buried with him; that other means must be devised and
adopted, by which the patricians might be resisted: and that the only
means to that end was for the people to defend themselves, since they
had no other help: that four-and-twenty lictors waited on the consuls,
and they men of the common people: that nothing could be more
despicable, or weaker, if only there were persons to despise them;
that each person magnified those things and made them objects of
terror to himself. When they had excited one another by these words,
a lictor was despatched by the consuls to Volero Publilius, a man
belonging to the commons, because he declared that, having been a
centurion, he ought not to be made a common soldier. Volero appealed
to the tribunes. When no one came to his assistance, the consuls
ordered the man to be stripped and the rods to be got ready. "I appeal
to the people," said Volero, "since the tribunes prefer to see a Roman
citizen scourged before their eyes, than themselves to be butchered
by you each in his bed." The more vehemently he cried out, the more
violently did the lictor tear off his clothes and strip him. Then
Volero, being both himself a man of great bodily strength, and aided
by his partisans, having thrust back the lictor, retired into the
thickest part of the crowd, where the outcry of those who expressed
their indignation was loudest, crying out: "I appeal, and implore the
protection of the commons; assist me, fellow-citizens: assist me,
fellow-soldiers: it is no use to wait for the tribunes, who themselves
stand in need of your aid." The men, excited, made ready as if for
battle: and it was clear that a general crisis was at hand, that no
one would have respect for anything, either public or private right.
When the consuls had faced this violent storm, they soon found out
that authority unsupported by strength had but little security; the
lictors being maltreated, and the fasces broken, they were driven from
the forum into the senate-house, uncertain how far Volero would follow
up his victory. After that, the disturbance subsiding, having ordered
the members to be summoned to the senate, they complained of the
insults offered to themselves, of the violence of the people, of
the daring conduct of Volero. After many violent measures had been
proposed, the older members prevailed, who did not approve of the
rash behaviour of the commons being met by the resentment of the
patricians.
The commons having warmly espoused the cause of Volero, at the next
meeting, secured his election as tribune of the people for that
year, in which Lucius Pinarius and Publics Furius were consuls: and,
contrary to the opinion of all, who thought that he would make free
use of his tribuneship to harass the consuls of the preceding year,
postponing private resentment to the public interest, without the
consuls being attacked even by a single word, he brought a bill before
the people that plebeian magistrates should be elected at the comitia
tributa.[73] A measure of no small importance was now proposed, under
an aspect at first sight by no means alarming; but one of such a
nature that it really deprived the patricians of all power of electing
whatever tribunes they pleased by the suffrage of their clients. The
patricians resisted to the utmost this proposal, which met with the
greatest approval of the commons: and though none of the college[74]
could be induced by the influence either of the consuls or of the
chief members of the senate to enter a protest against it, which was
the only means of effectual resistance, yet the matter, a weighty one
from its own importance, was spun out by party struggles for a
whole year. The commons re-elected Volero as tribune. The senators,
considering that the matter would end in a desperate struggle, elected
as Consul Appius Claudius, the son of Appius, who was both hated by
and had hated the commons, ever since the contests between them and
his father. Titus Quinctius was assigned to him as his colleague.
Immediately, at the beginning of the year,[75]no other question took
precedence of that regarding the law. But like Volero, the originator
of it, so his colleague, Laetorius, was both a more recent, as well as
a more energetic, supporter of it. His great renown in war made him
overbearing, because, in the age in which he lived, no one was more
prompt in action. He, while Volero confined himself to the discussion
of the law, avoiding all abuse of the consuls, broke out into
accusations against Appius and his family, as having ever been most
overbearing and cruel toward the Roman commons, contending that he had
been elected by the senators, not as consul, but as executioner, to
harass and torture the people: his tongue, unskilled in speech, as was
natural in a soldier, was unable to give adequate expression to the
freedom of his sentiments. When, therefore, language failed him, he
said: "Romans, since I do not speak with as much readiness as I make
good what I have spoken, attend here to-morrow. I will either die
before your eyes, or will carry the law." On the following day the
tribunes took possession of the platform: the consuls and the nobles
took their places together in the assembly to obstruct the law.
Laetorius ordered all persons to be removed, except those going to
vote. The young nobles kept their places, paying no regard to the
officer; then Laetorius ordered some of them to be seized. The consul
Appius insisted that the tribune had no jurisdiction over any one
except a plebeian; for that he was not a magistrate of the people in
general, but only of the commons; and that even he himself could not,
according to the usage of their ancestors, by virtue of his authority
remove any person, because the words were as follows: "If ye think
proper, depart, Quirites." He was easily able to disconcert Laetorius
by discussing his right thus contemptuously. The tribune, therefore,
burning with rage, sent his officer to the consul; the consul sent his
lictor to the tribune, exclaiming that he was a private individual,
without military office and without civil authority: and the tribune
would have been roughly handled, had not both the entire assembly
risen up with great warmth in behalf of the tribune against the
consul, and a crowd of people belonging to the excited multitude,
rushed from all parts of the city into the forum. Appius, however,
withstood this great storm with obstinacy, and the contest would have
ended in a battle, not without bloodshed, had not Quinctius, the other
consul, having intrusted the men of consular rank with the task of
removing his colleague from the forum by force, if they could not
do so in any other way, himself now assuaged the raging people by
entreaties, now implored the tribunes to dismiss the assembly. Let
them, said he, give their passion time to cool: delay would not in
any respect deprive them of their power, but would add prudence to
strength; and the senators would be under the control of the people,
and the consul under that of the senators.
The people were with difficulty pacified by Quinctius; the other
consul with much more difficulty by the patricians. The assembly of
the people having been at length dismissed, the consuls convened the
senate; in which, though fear and resentment by turns had produced a
diversity of opinions, the more their minds were called off, by lapse
of time, from passion to reflection, the more adverse did they become
to contentiousness, so that they returned thanks to Quinctius, because
it was owing to his exertions that the disturbance had been quieted.
Appius was requested to give his consent that the consular dignity
should be merely so great as it could be in a state if it was to be
united: it was declared that, as long as the tribunes and consuls
claimed all power, each for his own side, no strength was left
between: that the commonwealth was distracted and torn asunder: that
the object aimed at was rather to whom it should belong, than that
it should be safe. Appius, on the contrary, called gods and men to
witness that the commonwealth was being betrayed and abandoned through
cowardice; that it was not the consul who had failed to support the
senate, but the senate the consul: that more oppressive conditions
were now being submitted to than had been submitted to on the Sacred
Mount. Overcome, however, by the unanimous feeling of the senators, he
desisted: the law was carried without opposition.
Then for the first time the tribunes were elected in the comita
tributa. Piso is the authority for the statement that three were added
to the number, as if there had been only two before. He also gives
the names of the tribunes, Gnaeus Siccius, Lucius Numitorius, Marcus
Duellius, Spurius Icilius, Lucius Mecilius. During the disturbance
at Rome, a war broke out with the Volscians and AEquans, who had laid
waste the country, so that, if any secession of the people took place,
they might find a refuge with them. Afterward, when matters were
settled, they moved back their camp. Appius Claudius was sent against
the Volscians; the AEquans fell to Quinctius as his province. Appius
exhibited the same severity in war as at home, only more unrestrained,
because it was free from the control of the tribunes. He hated the
commons with a hatred greater than that inherited from his father: he
had been defeated by them: when he had been chosen consul as the only
man able to oppose the influence of the tribunes, a law had been
passed, which former consuls had obstructed with less effect, amid
hopes of the senators by no means so great as those now placed in him.
His resentment and indignation at this stirred his imperious temper to
harass the army by the severity of his command; it could not, however,
be subdued by any exercise of authority, with such a spirit of
opposition were the soldiers filled. They carried out all orders
slowly, indolently, carelessly, and stubbornly: neither shame nor
fear restrained them. If he wished the march to be accelerated, they
designedly went more slowly: if he came up to them to encourage them
in their work, they all relaxed the energy which they had before
exerted of their own accord: they cast down their eyes in his
presence, they silently cursed him as he passed by; so that that
spirit, unconquered by plebeian hatred, was sometimes moved. Every
kind of severity having been tried without effect, he no longer held
any intercourse with the soldiers; he said the army was corrupted by
the centurions; he sometimes gibingly called them tribunes of the
people and Voleros.
None of these circumstances were unknown to the Volscians, and they
pressed on with so much the more vigour, hoping that the Roman
soldiers would entertain the same spirit of opposition against Appius
as they had formerly exhibited against the consul Fabius. However,
they showed themselves still more embittered against Appius than
against Fabius. For they were not only unwilling to conquer, like the
army of Fabius, but even wished to be conquered. When led forth into
the field, they made for their camp in ignominious flight, and did
not stand their ground until they saw the Volscians advancing against
their fortifications, and the dreadful havoc in the rear of their
army. Then they were compelled to put forth their strength for battle,
in order that the now victorious enemy might be dislodged from their
lines; while, however, it was sufficiently clear that the Roman
soldiers were only unwilling that the camp should be taken, in regard
to all else they gloried in their own defeat and disgrace. When the
haughty spirit of Appius, in no wise broken by this behaviour of the
soldiers, purposed to act with still greater severity, and summoned a
meeting, the lieutenants and tribunes flocked around him, recommending
him by no means to decide to put his authority to the proof, the
entire strength of which lay in unanimous obedience, saying that the
soldiers generally refused to come to the assembly, and that their
voices were heard on all sides, demanding that the camp should be
removed from the Volscian territory: that the victorious enemy were
but a little time ago almost at the very gates and rampart, and that
not merely a suspicion but the visible form of a grievous disaster
presented itself to their eyes. Yielding at last--since they gained
nothing save a respite from punishment--having prorogued the assembly,
and given orders that their march should be proclaimed for the
following day, at daybreak he gave the signal for departure by sound
of trumpet. At the very moment when the army, having got clear of the
camp, was forming itself, the Volscians, as if they had been aroused
by the same signal, fell upon those in the rear: from these the alarm
spreading to the van, threw both the battalions and companies into
such a state of consternation, that neither could the general's
orders be distinctly heard, nor the lines drawn up. No one thought
of anything but flight. In such loose order did they make their way
through heaps of dead bodies and arms, that the enemy ceased their
pursuit sooner than the Romans their flight. The soldiers having at
length rallied from their disordered flight, the consul, after he had
in vain followed his men, bidding them return, pitched his camp in a
peaceful part of the country; and having convened an assembly, after
inveighing not without good reason against the army, as traitors to
military discipline, deserters of their posts, asking them, one by one
where were their standards, where their arms, he first beat with rods
and then beheaded those soldiers who had thrown down their arms,
the standard-bearers who had lost their standards, and also the
centurions, and those who received double allowance,[76] who had
deserted their ranks. With respect to the rest of the rank and file,
every tenth man was drawn by lot for punishment.
On the other hand, the consul and soldiers among the AEquans vied with
each other in courtesy and acts of kindness: Quinctius was naturally
milder in disposition, and the ill-fated severity of his colleague had
caused him to give freer vent to his own good temper. This remarkable
agreement between the general and his army the AEquans did not venture
to meet, but suffered the enemy to go through their country committing
devastations in every direction. Nor were depredations committed more
extensively in that quarter in any preceding war. The whole of the
booty was given to the soldiers. In addition, they received praise, in
which the minds of soldiers find no less pleasure than in rewards. The
army returned more reconciled both to their general, and also, thanks
to the general, to the patricians, declaring that a parent had been
given to them, a tyrant to the other army by the senate. The year
which had passed with varied success in war, and violent dissensions
at home and abroad, was rendered memorable chiefly by the elections
of tribes, a matter which was more important from the victory in the
contest[77] that was undertaken than from any real advantage; for more
dignity was withdrawn from the elections themselves by the fact that
the patricians were excluded from the council, than influence either
added to the commons or taken from the patricians.[78]
A still more stormy year followed, when Lucius Valerius and Titus
AEmilius were consuls, both by reason of the struggles between the
different orders concerning the agrarian law, as well as on account
of the trial of Appius Claudius, for whom Marcus Duilius and Gnaeus
Siccius appointed a day of trial, as a most active opposer of the law,
and one who supported the cause of the possessors of the public land,
as if he were a third consul [79]. Never before was an accused
person so hateful to the commons brought to trial before the people,
overwhelmed with their resentment against himself and also against his
father. The patricians too seldom made equal exertions so readily on
one's behalf: they declared that the champion of the senate, and the
upholder of their dignity, set up as a barrier against all the storms
of the tribunes and commons, was exposed to the resentment of the
commons, although he had only exceeded the bounds of moderation in the
contest. Appius Claudius himself was the only one of the patricians
who made light both of the tribunes and commons and his own trial.
Neither the threats of the commons, nor the entreaties of the senate,
could ever persuade him even to change his garb, or accost persons
as a suppliant, or even to soften or moderate his usual harshness of
speech in the least degree, when his cause was to be pleaded before
the people. The expression of his countenance was the same; the same
stubbornness in his looks, the same spirit of pride in his language:
so that a great part of the commons felt no less awe of Appius when on
his trial than they had felt for him when consul. He pleaded his cause
only once, and in the same haughty style of an accuser which he had
been accustomed to adopt on all occasions: and he so astounded both
the tribunes and the commons by his intrepidity, that, of their own
accord, they postponed the day of trial, and then allowed the matter
to die out. No long interval elapsed: before, however, the appointed
day came, he died of some disease; and when the tribunes of the people
endeavoured to put a stop to his funeral panegyric, the commons would
not allow the burial day of so great a man to be defrauded of the
customary honours: and they listened to his eulogy when dead as
patiently as they had listened to the charges brought against him when
living, and attended his obsequies in vast numbers.
In the same year the consul Valerius, having marched with an army
against the Aequans, and being unable to draw out the enemy to an
engagement, proceeded to attack their camp. A dreadful storm coming
down from heaven accompanied by thunder and hail prevented him. Then,
on a signal for a retreat being given, their surprise was excited
by the return of such fair weather, that they felt scruples about
attacking a second time a camp which was defended as it were by some
divine power: all the violence of the war was directed to plundering
the country. The other consul, Aemilius, conducted the war in Sabine
territory. There also, because the enemy confined themselves within
their walls, the lands were laid waste. Then the Sabines, roused by
the burning not only of the farms, but of the villages also, which
were thickly inhabited, after they had fallen in with the raiders
retired from an engagement the issue of which was left undecided, and
on the following day removed their camp into a safer situation. This
seemed a sufficient reason to the consul why he should leave the
enemy as conquered, and depart thence, although the war was as yet
unfinished.
During these wars, while dissensions still continued at home, Titus
Numicius Priscus and Aulus Verginius were elected consuls. The commons
appeared determined no longer to brook the delay in accepting the
agrarian law, and extreme violence was on the point of being resorted
to, when it became known by the smoke from the burning farms and
the flight of the peasants that the Volscians were at hand; this
circumstance checked the sedition that was now ripe and on the point
of breaking out. The consuls, under the immediate compulsion of the
senate, led forth the youth from the city to war, and thereby rendered
the rest of the commons more quiet. And the enemy indeed, having
merely filled the Romans with fear that proved groundless, departed
in great haste. Numicius marched to Antium against the Volscians,
Verginius against the Aequans. There, after they had nearly met with
a great disaster in an attack from an ambuscade, the bravery of the
soldiers restored their fortunes, which had been endangered through
the carelessness of the consul. Affairs were conducted better in the
case of the Volscians. The enemy were routed in the first engagement,
and driven in flight into the city of Antium, a very wealthy place,
considering the times: the consul, not venturing to attack it, took
from the people of Antium another town, Caeno,[80] which was by no
means so wealthy While the Aequans and Volscians engaged the attention
of the Roman armies, the Sabines advanced in their depredations even
to the gates of the city: then they themselves, a few days later,
sustained from the two armies heavier losses than they had inflicted,
both the consuls having entered their territories under the influence
of exasperation.