CHAPTER IX. SPURIUS CASSIUS-THE LEAGUE WITH THE LATINS AND "The noble Brutus Hath told you, Cæsar was ambitious. And grievously hath Cæsar answered it." Οἱ προστάται τοῦ δήμου, ὅτε πολεμικοὶ γένοιντο, τυραννίδι ἐπετίθεντο πάντες δὲ τοῦτο ἔδρων ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου πιστευθέντες, ἡ δὲ πίστις ἦν ἡ ἀπέχθεια ἡ πρὸς τοὺς πλουσίους.—ARISTOT. Politic. V. 5. IX. BRUTUS and Poplicola were no doubt real characters, CHAP. yet fiction has been so busy with their actions, that history cannot venture to admit them within her own proper domain. By a strange compensation of fortune, the first Roman whose greatness is really historical is the man whose deeds no poet sang, and whose memory the early annalists, repeating the language of the party who destroyed him, have branded with the charge of treason, and attempted tyranny. This was Spurius Cassius. Amidst the silence and the calumnies of his enemies, he is known as the author of three works to which Rome owed all her future greatness; he concluded the league with the Latins in his second consulship, in his third he IX. CHAP. concluded the league with the Hernicans, and procured, although with the price of his own life, the enactment of the first agrarian law. League with the Latins. I. We know that the Latins were in the first year of the Commonwealth subject to Rome. We know that almost immediately afterwards they must have become independent; and it is probable that they may have aided the Tarquinii in some of their attempts to effect their restoration. But the real details of this period cannot be discovered: this only is certain, that in the year of Rome 261, the Latin confederacy, consisting of the old national number of thirty cities, concluded a league with Rome on terms of perfect equality; and the record of this treaty, which existed at Rome on a brazen pillar' down to the time of Cicero, contained the name of Spurius Cassius, as the consul who concluded it, and took the oaths to the Latin deputies on behalf of the Romans. It may be that the Roman burghers desired to obtain the aid of the Latins against their own commons, and that the fear of this union led the commons at the Sacred Hill to be content with the smallest possible concessions from their adversaries; but there was another cause for the alliance, no less natural, in the common danger which threatened both Rome and Latium from the growing power of their neighbours on the south, the Oscan, or Ausonian, nations of the Equians and the Volscians. 1 Cicero pro Balbo, 23. Livy, II. 33. SPURIUS CASSIUS-LEAGUE WITH THE LATINS, ETC. 153 CHAP. IX. A.U.C. 261. states of La ditions of The thirty cities which at this time formed the Latin state, and concluded the league with Rome, were these 2: Ardea, Aricia, Bovillæ, Bubentum, The thirty Corniculum, Carventum, Circeii, Corioli, Corbio, tium. ConCora, Fortuna or Foretii, Gabii, Laurentum, Lanu- the league. vium, Lavinium, Lavici, Nomentum, Norba, Præneste, Pedum, Querquetulum, Satricum, Scaptia, Setia, Tellena, Tibur, Tusculum, Toleria, Tricrinum, Velitræ. The situation of several of these places is unknown; still the list clearly shows to how short a distance from the Tiber the Roman territory at this time extended, and how little was retained of the great dominion enjoyed by the last kings of Rome. Between this Latin confederacy and the Romans there was concluded a perpetual league 3: "There shall be peace between them so long as the heaven shall keep its place above the earth, and the earth its place below the heaven; they shall neither bring nor cause to be brought any war against each other, nor give to each other's enemies a passage through their land; they shall aid each other when attacked with all their might, and all spoils and plunder won by their joint arms shall be shared equally between them. Private causes shall be decided within ten days, in the courts of that city where the business which gave occasion to the dispute may have taken place." Further it was agreed, that the command 2 Dionysius, V. 61. I have followed the readings of the Vatican MS. given in the various readings in Reiske's Edition, with Nie buhr's corrections, Vol. II. p. 19. 3 Dionysius, VI. 95. CHAP. of the Roman and Latin armies, on their joint expe IX. A.U.C. 268. 4 ditions, should one year be given to the Roman general, and another to the Latin: and to this league nothing was to be added, and nothing taken away, without the mutual consent of the Romans and the confederate cities of the Latins. II. Seven years afterwards the same Spurius Cassius, in his third consulship, concluded a similar league with the cities of the Hernicans. The Hernicans were a Sabine, not a Latin people, and their 4 Cincius de Consulum Potestate, quoted by Festus in "Prætor ad Portam." The whole passage is remarkable. "Cincius ait, Albanos rerum potitos usque ad Tullum regem: Albâ deinde dirutâ usque ad P. Decium Murem cos. populos Latinos ad caput Ferentinæ, quod est sub Monte Albano, consulere solitos, et imperium communi consilio administrare. Itaque quo anno Romanos imperatores ad exercitum mittere oporteret jussu nominis Latini, complures nostros in Capitolio a sole oriente auspiciis operam dare solitos. Ubi aves addixissent, militem illum qui a communi Latio missus esset, illum quem aves addixerant prætorem salutare solitum, qui eam provinciam obtineret prætoris nomine." Cincius lived in the time of the second Punic war, and his works on various points of Roman law and antiquities were of high value. His statement, which bears on the face of it a character of authenticity, is quite in agreement with what Dionysius reports of the treaty itself, and only gives an additional proof of the systematic falsehood of the Roman annals in their accounts of the relations of Rome with foreigners. It is true that the words of Cincius, “ quo anno," do not expressly assert that the command was held by a Roman every other year; and it may be that after the Hernicans joined the alliance, the Romans had the command only once in three years. But as the Latin states were considered as forming one people, and the Romans another, it is most likely that so long as the alliance subsisted between these two parties only, the command shifted from the one to the other year by year. 5 Dionysius, VIII. 69. Tàs πрòs Ερνικας ἐξήνεγκεν ὁμολογίας· αὗται δ ̓ ἦσαν ἀντίγραφοι τῶν πρὸς Λατίνους γενομένων. Amongst other clauses therefore of the treaty was one which secured to the Hernicans their equal share of all lands conquered by the confederates; namely one third part. This is disfigured by the annalist, whom Livy copied, in a most extraordinary manner; he represented the Hernicans as being deprived by the treaty of two thirds of their own land. "Cum Hernicis fœdus ictum, agri partes duæ ademtæ." Livy, II. 41. IX. country lay chiefly in that high valley which breaks CHAP. the line of the Apennines at Præneste, and running towards the south-east, falls at last into the valley of the Liris. The number of their cities was probably sixteen; but with the exception of Anagnia, Verulæ, Alatrium, and Ferentinum, the names of all are unknown to us. They, like the Latins, had been the dependent allies of Rome under the last Tarquinius, they too had broken off this connexion after the establishment of the Commonwealth, and now renewed it on more equal terms for mutual protection against the Equians and Volscians. The situation of their country indeed rendered their condition one of peculiar danger; it lay interposed in the very midst of the country of these enemies, having the Equians on the north, and the Volscians on the south, and communicating with the Latin cities and with Rome only by the opening in the Apennines already noticed under the citadel of Præneste. the other hand, the Romans were glad to obtain the willing aid of a brave and numerous people, whose position enabled them to threaten the rear of the Volscians, so soon as they should break out from their mountains upon the plain of Latium or the hills of Alba. On of these two Thus by these two treaties with the Latins and Importance Hernicans, Spurius Cassius had, so far as was pos- treaties. sible, repaired the losses occasioned to the Roman power by the expulsion of Tarquinius, and had reorganized that confederacy to which under her last kings Rome had been indebted for her greatness. |