XI. CHAP. the enemy lay; and he ordered his soldiers to throw down all their baggage into one place, but to keep each man his arms and his twelve stakes. Then they set out again in their order of march as they had come from Rome, and they spread themselves round the camp of the enemy on every side. When this was done, upon a signal given they raised a great shout, and directly every man began to dig a ditch just where he stood, and to set in his stakes. The shout rang through the camp of the enemy, and filled them with fear; and it sounded even to the camp of the Romans who were shut up in the valley, and the consul's men said one to another, "Rescue is surely at hand, for that is the shout of Romans." They themselves shouted in answer, and sallied to attack the camp of the enemy and they fought so fiercely that they hindered the enemy from interrupting the work of the Romans without their camp: and this went on all the night, till when it was morning, the Romans who were without had drawn a ditch all round the enemy, and had fenced it with their stakes; and now they left their work, and began to take part in the battle. Then the Equians saw that there was no hope, and they began to ask for mercy. Lucius answered, "Give me Gracchus and your other chiefs bound, and then I will set two spears upright in the as it had brought the Roman connoitre the enemy as soon as he arrived in their neighbourhood, without considering that on its own showing his arrival took place at midnight. XI. ground, and I will put a third spear across, and you CHAP. shall give up your arms, and your cloaks, and shall pass every man of you under the spear bound across, as under a yoke, and then you may go away free." This was done accordingly; Gracchus and the other chiefs were bound, and the Equians left their camp to the Romans, with all its spoil, and put off their cloaks, and passed each man under the yoke, and then went home full of shame. But Lucius would not suffer 40 the consul's army to have any share of the spoil, nor did he let the consul keep his power, but made him his own under-officer, and then marched back to Rome. Nor did the consul's soldiers complain, but they were rather full of thankfulness to Lucius for having rescued them from the enemy, and they agreed to give him a golden crown; as he returned to Rome, they shouted after him, and called him their protector and their father. marches Rome in Great was now the joy in Rome, and the senate Lucius decreed that Lucius should enter the city in triumph, back to in the order in which the army was returning from triumph. Algidus, and he rode in his chariot, while Gracchus and the chiefs of the Æquians were led bound before him; and the standards were borne before him, and all the soldiers laden with their spoil followed behind. And tables were set out at the door of every house with meat and drink for the soldiers, and they and the people feasted together, and followed the chariot of Lucius, with singing and great rejoicings. Thus the gods took vengeance upon Gracchus and 40 Livy, III. 29. XI. CHAP. the Equians; and thus Lucius delivered the consul and his army and all was done so quickly, that he went out on one evening, and came home the next day at evening victorious and triumphant. General state of the wars between the This famous story is placed by the annalists in the year of Rome 296, thirteen years after the passing Romans and of the Publilian law. In such a warfare as that of the Opican nations at the Romans with the Æquians and Volscians, there the end of the third are always sufficient alternations of success to furnish century of Rome. the annalists on either side with matter of triumph; and by exaggerating every victory, and omitting or slightly noticing every defeat, they form a picture such as national vanity most delights in. But we neither can, nor need we desire to correct and supply the omissions of the details of the Roman historians: it is enough to say, that at the close of the third century of Rome, the warfare which the Romans had to maintain against the Opican nations was generally defensive: that the Equians and Volscians had advanced from the line of the Apennines and established themselves on the Alban hills, in the heart of Latium: that of the thirty Latin states which had formed the league with Rome in the year 261, thirteen were now either destroyed or were in the 41 41 Carventum, Circeii, Corioli, Corbio, Cora, Fortona, (if it be the same with Ortona,) Lavici, Norba, Pedum, Satricum, Setia, Tolina, and Velitræ. Carventum seems to have been one of the towns of the Alban hills, and Niebuhr suggests that we should read Κορυεντανοί instead of Κοριολανοί in Dionysius, VIII. 19, as the people conquered by Coriolanus ; for they are placed in the neighbourhood of Corbia and Pedum; whereas the conquest of the real Coriolani is mentioned in another place, (VIII. 16,) and in their proper neighbourhood. Sir W. Gell supposes Carventum to have been at Roca Massimi, a high point on the Volscian highlands near Cora. XI. possession of the Opicans: that on the Alban hills CHAP. 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. Another supposition, as Mr. Bunsen informs me, places it on Monte Ariano: the highest eastern point of that volcanic range of moun tains of which Monte Cavo is the VOL. I. P CHAPTER XII. WARS WITH THE ETRUSCANS-VEII-LEGEND OF THE "Our hands alone 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, Beginning with Veii. CHAP. AFTER the great war of king Porsenna, the EtrusXII. cans for several years appear to have lived in peace of hostilities with 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 1 Livy, II. 34. |