XIX. CHAP. driven from his country for a similar act of baseness. Other accounts, as was natural, ascribed the condemnation of Camillus solely to the envy and hatred of the commons; while, according to others 27, his punishment was a sort of ostracism, because the arrogance of his triumph, after the conquest of Veii, seemed inconsistent with the conduct of a citizen in a free commonwealth. It seems allowed by all that no party in the state attempted to save him; and it is clear also, that he incurred the forfeiture of all his civil rights in consequence of his not appearing to stand his trial, either as an outlawry, or because his withdrawal was held equivalent to a confession of guilt, and a man convicted of furtum incurred thereby perpetual ignominy, and lost all his political franchise. Perhaps his case was like that of the Spartan Pausanias; and the treasure which he secreted may have been intended to furnish means for making him tyrant of Rome. But at any rate he withdrew from Rome before his trial came on, and retired to Ardea. The annalists reported 28 that as he went out of the gates, he turned round, and prayed to the gods of his country, that if he were unjustly driven into exile, some grievous calamity might speedily befal the Romans, and force them to call him back again. They who recorded such a prayer must have believed him innocent, and therefore forgave him for it; they even thought that the gods heard it with favour, and fulfilled its petition by sending the Gauls in the very next year to be ministers of vengeance on his ungrateful country. 26 Dionysius, XIII. 5. Fragm. Mai. 27 Diodorus, XIV. 117. 28 Livy, V. 32. Plutarch, Camillus, 12. Dionysius, XIII. 6. CHAPTER XX. STATE OF FOREIGN NATIONS AT THE PERIOD OF THE ... Τὸ τῆς ἡμετέρας πραγματείας ἴδιον . . . τοῦτό ἐστιν· ὅτι καθάπερ ἡ τύχη σχεδὸν ἅπαντα τὰ τῆς οἰκουμένης πράγματα πρὸς ἓν ἔκλινε μέρος, . . . οὕτω καὶ διὰ τῆς ἱστορίας ὑπὸ μίαν σύνοψιν ἀγαγεῖν τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι τὸν χειρισμὸν τῆς τύχης, ᾧ κέχρηται πρὸς τὴν τῶν ὅλων πραγμάτων συντέλειαν.— POLYBIUS, I. 4. XX. Intro the view of foreign THE furthest point hitherto reached by the soldiers of CHAP. any Roman army was scarcely more than fifty miles distant from Rome. The southern limit of Roman duction to warfare had been Anxur; its northern was Vulsinii. of the state Nor do we read of any treaties or commercial inter- nations. course by which Rome was connected with foreign powers, since the famous treaty with Carthage, concluded in the first year of the Commonwealth. Still the nations of the ancient world knew more of one another than we are inclined to allow for: we do not enough consider how small a portion of their records has come down to us; how much must have been done of which mere accident has hindered us from hearing. About thirty years later than the Gaulish invasion, 1 For the date of the Periplus of Scylax, see Niebuhr's essay in the first volume of his "Kleine Historische Schriften," Bonn, 1828, p. 105; or, as translated by Mr. Hare, in the second number of the Philological Museum. I have said that Scylax mentions no other Italian cities but Rome and Ancona, with the exception of the Greek colonies. XX. 3 CHAP. the author of that most curious survey of the coasts of the Mediterranean, known by the name of the Periplus of Scylax, mentions Rome and Ancona alone of all the cities of Italy, with the exception of the Greek colonies; and this notice is the more remarkable as Rome is not immediately on the coast, and the survey rarely extends to any place far inland. Aristotle also was not only acquainted with the fact that Rome was taken by the Gauls, but named an individual whom he called Lucius 2, as its deliverer. Heraclides Ponticus even spoke of Rome as a Greek city, which while it shows the shallowness of his knowledge concerning it, proves also, that it was sufficiently famous in Greece, to make the Greeks think it worthy of belonging to their race and name; and we see besides that a wide distinction was drawn between the Latins and Etruscans, the latter of whom they always regarded as foreigners, while in the former they did but exaggerate the degree of connexion really subsisting between the two nations, whose kindred is proved by the resemblance of their languages. But the fame of the Gaulish invasion, the first great movement of barbarians breaking down upon the civilized countries of Europe from the north, which had occurred within historical memory, drew the attention of the Greeks more than ever towards Italy. And as this invasion led to a more general mixture of nation and nation, for less than twenty years afterwards we read of Gaulish cavalry in the service of Dionysius of Syracuse, 2 Plutarch, Camillus, 22. It need 3 Plutarch, Camillus, 22. Henot be said, that in the old times men were designated by their prænomen rather than by their nomen, or cognomen; and thus Aristotle would call L. Furius "Lucius,' rather than "Furius," or "Camillus," just as Polybius calls Scipio 'Publius," and Regulus "Mar 66 cus." raclides noticed Rome in his treatise, Пepì xs; and said that "a report had come from the west, telling how a host had come from the land of the Hyperboreans, without the Pillars of Hercules, and had taken a Greek city called Rome, which was situated somewhere in those parts about the great sea. XX. and of their being sent by him to Peloponnesus to help CHAP. the Lacedæmonians against Epaminondas; so I may at this period draw up the curtain which has hitherto veiled from our view all countries and people beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the Tiber, and look as widely over the face of the world as the fullest knowledge of Greeks or Carthaginians enabled them at this time to see either eastward or westward. Etruscans. The fall of Veii, and the submission of Capena and The Falerii, have shown us that the greatness of the Etruscans was on the wane. In the days of their highest prosperity they had spread their dominion widely over Italy. The confederacy of their twelve cities, each of which was again the head of a smaller confederacy of the neighbouring towns, occupied the whole country between the Tiber, the Macra, the Apennines, and the sea. But they were also to be found on the north of the Apennines, and another Etruscan confederacy, consisting also of their favourite number of twelve cities, extended to the shores of the Adriatic, and possessed the plain of the Po, and of its tributary rivers to the north and south from the sea as high as the Trebia. Bononia, under its 4 This is the positive statement of the ancient writers; as Livy, V. 33, Strabo, V. p. 216, and Verrius Flaccus, and Cæcina, quoted by the interpreters of Virgil, Æn. X. 198, in the Verona MS. Niebuhr, agreeably to his notion that the Etruscans came into Italy over the Alps, from the north, and not by sea from Asia, considers their settlements in the valley of the Po to have been older than those in Etruria. Müller believes them to have been of equal antiquity with each other; the Etruscans, or Rasena, he holds to have been an aboriginal people of Italy, settled from time immemorial both on the north and south sides of the Apennines.-(Etrusker, Einleitung, III. § 1.) Micali places the original seat of the Etruscans in CHAP. older name of Felsina, Melpum, Mantua, and Atria, XX. with Cupra on the coast of the Adriatic, were Etrus can towns. Nor had their dominion been confined to the north of the Tiber; a third confederacy of twelve cities had occupied Campania; and amongst these were Capua, Nola, Surrentum, and Salernum. Nay, there are traditions and names which have preserved a record of a still more extended Etruscan sovereignty: 5 It is well known that Niebuhr doubts the existence of this Campanian Dodecapolis; and he thinks that the whole statement of Etruscan settlements in Campania is a mere mistake, arising out of the common confusion between the Tyrrhenians and the Etruscans. He says, that neither in the inscriptions found in Campania, nor in the works of art, is there to be observed any trace of an Etruscan population; and he thinks that in the days of the Etruscan greatness, that is, in the third century of Rome, we cannot conceive the possibility of Etruscan colonies being settled in Campania, while the intervening country between the Tiber and the Liris was occupied by the Romans and the Opican nations. See Vol. I. p. 74. 76. Eng. transl. Müller, on the contrary, receives the common account of the ancient writers, as containing in it nothing improbable. Etrusker, Einleitung, IV. 1. Polybius' testimony is positive, that the Etruscans possessed the Phlegræan plains round Capua and Nola, at the time when they were also in possession of the plains round the Po, II. 17. And there were writers whom Velleius Paterculus quotes as saying that Capua and Nola were founded by the Etruscans, about forty-eight years before the common date of the foundation of Rome. When Paterculus further quotes Cato, as saying that Capua had been founded by the Etruscans, and yet that it had existed only two hundred and sixty years at the time of its conquest by the Romans in the second as The Punic war, there is indeed a calculation not very easy to be explained; for this would place the foundation of the Etruscan Capua or Vulturnum, only about fifty years earlier than its conquest by the Samnites, and in the year of Rome 281, a period at which it is indeed difficult to conceive of the Etruscans establishing themselves for the first time in Campania. The solution of the whole question is probably to be found in what Virgil says of Mantua: "Gens illi triplex: Tusco de sanguine vires." ruling portion of these Campanian cities was Etruscan, but the bulk of the population was Oscan. Thus, when they were conquered by the Samnites, the marks of the Etruscan dominion speedily vanished, and the inscriptions which have reached our times are naturally Oscan, as that continued to be the language of the mass of the people. The foundation of Capua and Nola by the Etruscans may, in fact, have been no more than their occupation by some bands of Etruscan adventurers, who may have been engaged in the service of the Oscan inhabitants; just as Mastarna and his followers once occupied Rome, or as the Campanians afterwards occupied Messina. The Etruscan Dodecapolis, or confederacy of twelve cities, if indeed it ever existed in Campania, must have been founded undoubtedly at an earlier period; and yet we need not conceive it much earlier than the beginning of the Commonwealth of Rome. |