XI. destroyed or were in the possession of the Opicans: CHAP. that on the Alban hills themselves Tusculum alone remained independent; and that there was no other friendly city to obstruct the irruptions of the enemy into the territory of Rome. Accordingly, that territory was plundered year after year, and whatever defeats the plunderers may at times have sustained, yet they were never deterred from renewing a contest which they found in the main profitable and glorious. So greatly had the power and dominion of Rome fallen since the overthrow of the Monarchy. We have now to notice her wars with another enemy, the Etruscans; and to trace on this side also an equal decline in glory and greatness since the reigns of the later kings. Beginning with Veii. Suffice for this;-take ye no thought for it. While the mole breaks the waves, and bides the tempest, The ship within rides safe: while on the mountain The wind is battling with the adventurous pines, So your state, We standing thus in guard upon the border, CHAP. AFTER the great war of king Porsenna, the Etruscans XII. for several years appear to have lived in peace with of hostilities the Romans; and in the famine of the year 262, when the enmity of the Volscians would allow no supplies of corn to be sent to Rome from the country on the left bank of the Tiber, the Etruscan cities, we are told', allowed the Romans to purchase what they wanted, and the corn thus obtained was the principal support of the people. But nine years afterwards, in 271, a war broke out, not with the Etruscans generally, but with the people of the neighbouring city of Veii. The quarrel is said to have arisen out of some plundering inroads made by the Veientian borderers upon the Roman territory; but it suited the Roman aristocracy at this period to involve the nation in foreign conDionysius, VIII. 81. 91. 1 Livy, II. 34. XII. tests 3, in order to prevent the commons from insisting CHAP. on the due execution of Cassius' agrarian law; and quarrels which at another time might easily have been settled, were now gladly allowed to end in open war. and size of Veii lay about ten miles from Rome, between two Situation small streams which meet a little below the city, and Veii. run down into the Tiber, falling into it nearly opposite to Castel Giubileo, the ancient Fidena. Insignificant in point of size, these little streams, however, like those of the Campagna generally, are edged by precipitous rocky cliffs, and thus are capable of affording a natural defence to a town built on the table-land above and between them. The space enclosed by the walls of Veii was equal to the extent of Rome itself, so long as the walls of Servius Tullius were the boundary of the city: the citadel stood on a distinct eminence, divided by one of the little streams from the rest of the town, and defended by another similar valley on the other side. In the magnificence of its public and private buildings Veii is said to have been preferred by the Roman commons to Rome : and we know enough of the great works of the Etruscans to render this not impossible; but the language is too 3 Dionysius, VIII. 81. Dion Cassius, Fragm. Vatican, XX. * See Sir W. Gell's Map of the Campagna. 5 Dionysius compares the size both of Rome and Veii with that of Athens, II. 54. IV. 13. Sir W. Gell told me that the traces of the walls of Veii, which he had clearly made out, quite justified the comparison of Veii in point of extent with Rome. And his map shows the same thing. 6 Livy, V. 24. Urbem quoque urbi Romæ vel situ vel magnificentiâ publicorum privatorumque tectorum ac locorum præponebant, This being no more than an expression of opinion ascribed to the commons, we cannot be sure that Livy had any authority for it at all, any XII. CHAP. vague to be insisted on; and the Etruscan Veii was as unknown to the Roman annalists as to us. On the other hand, Rome had itself been embellished by Etruscan art, and had been under its kings the seat of a far mightier power than Veii. Its govern ment. Character of its military force. The government of Veii, like that of the other Etruscan cities, was in the hands of an aristocracy of birth, one or more of whom were elected annually by the whole body to command in war and administer justice. There were no free commons; but a large population of serfs or vassals, who cultivated the lands of the ruling class. In wars of peculiar importance", we read from time to time of the appointment of a king, but his office was for life only, and was not perpetuated in his family. The hereditary principle prevailed, however, in the priesthoods; none but members of one particular family could be priests of Juno, the goddess especially honoured at Veii. 9 The Veientians, like the other Etruscans, fought in the close order of the phalanx; their arms being the small round shield, and the long pike. We know not whether they ventured, like the Parthians, to trust their serfs with arms equal to their own, and to enrol 7 Livy, V. 1. His words, "Tædio annuæ ambitionis regem creavêre," imply that the government was commonly exercised by one or more magistrates annually chosen, like the consuls at Rome. Niebuhr refers to the case of Lars Tolumnius, who had been king of Veii thirtyfour years before the time of which Livy is speaking; and he thinks that Livy is mistaken, in supposing the appointment of a king in the last war with Rome to have been any thing unusual. (Vol. I. p. 128, 2nd ed. note 344.) But we read of no king after Lars Tolumnius till the period of the last war, nor of any before him in the earlier wars with Rome. And as the lucumo, or chief magistrate of a single Etruscan city, was appointed sometimes chief over the whole confederacy, when any general war broke out; so the annual lucumo may have been made lucumo for life in times of danger, if he were a man of commanding character and ability. 8 Livy, V. 22. 9 Diodorus, Fragm. Vatican, Lib. XXIII. Τυῤῥηνοὶ χαλκαῖς ἀσπίσι paλayyouaɣouvres, for so we must correct the reading φάλαγγα μαχοῦνTes, just as a little below in the same passage we read σñeɩpaîs, i. e. cohortibus, or manipulis, instead of πpais, which Mai absurdly renders 'cuspidibus." XII. them in the phalanx; but we may more probably CHAP. suppose that they employed them only as light-armed troops; and if this were so, their armies must have encountered the Romans at a disadvantage, their regular infantry being probably inferior in numbers to the legions, and their light troops, except for desultory warfare, still more inferior in quality. To make up for this, they employed the services of mercenaries, who were generally to be hired from one or other of the states of Etruria, even when their respective countries refused to take part publicly in the quarrel. the war from The war between the Romans and Veientians, Outline of which began in the year 271, lasted nine years. It is 271 to 280. difficult to say what portion of the events recorded of it is deserving of credit; nor would the details 10 at any rate be worth repeating now. But it seems to have been carried on with equal fortune on both sides, and to have been ended by a perfectly equal treaty. The Romans established themselves on the Cremera, within the Veientian territory, built a sort of town there, and after having maintained their post for some time, to the great annoyance of the enemy, they were at last surprised and their whole force slaughtered, and the post abandoned. Then the Veientians in their turn established themselves on the hill Janiculum, within the Roman territory; retaliated, by their plundering excursions across the Tiber, the damage which their own lands had sustained from the post on the Cremera; held their ground for more 10 The Roman accounts of the war may be found in Livy, II. 42— 54, and in Dionysius, VIII. 81. 91. IX. 1-36. I imagine the post on the Cremera and that on the Janiculum to have been designed for permanent cities; the one probably being as near to Veii as the other VOL. I. was to Rome. These were exactly N |