CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH.
FROM THE FIRST WAR AGAINST THE SAMNITES TO THE PASSING OF
THE LAWS OF PUBLILIUS.
he Romans were now about to encounter a truly formidable foe, in the Samnites,—a warlike people, who had been extending their territory, by going to great lengths, and allowing themselves extraordinary latitude. Coming down upon Campania, they overlooked Capua, or rather they did not overlook it; for, having an eye to its wealth, they resolved to do their utmost to become possessed of it. Under these circumstances, the Campanians, being unable to find the means of a successful campaign, applied to Rome for assistance.
Two consular armies were equipped; one under M. Valerius Corvus, or the Crow, who was really ravenous for glory, and the other under A. Cornelius Cossus; this A. Cossus being in fact THE Cossus already spoken of.[28]
Corvus was an enormous favourite with the soldiers; less, however, on the strength of his moral qualities, than on the strength of his arms and legs; for he was an athlete of remarkable power. He could leap so high as to be able to jump over the heads of others of his own standing; and the rapidity of his promotion is therefore not astonishing. He was no less light with his tongue than with his legs; for he could run on almost as pleasantly with the former as he could with the latter. He was, in fact, an agreeable rattle, who could make and take a joke with equal ease,—a quality common in more modern times; for those who profess to make jokes of their own are very much in the habit of taking those of other people. He loved a glass of wine, and could drink it without professing his connoisseurship, after the manner of those learned wine-bibbers of the present day who are addicted to talking so much unmeaning buzz on the subject of bees-wing. His relish for the grape allured him to Mount Gaurus, then clad with vines, where he could take his observations among the raisins, and make in his mind's eye a sort of catalogue raisonnée of the enemy.
On this spot a battle ensued, which was fought with such fierceness on the side of the Romans, that the Samnites afterwards declared they had seen fire in their opponents' eyes; but the Samnites must have been light-headed themselves, to have made so absurd a statement. Valerius having been thus far successful, advanced into the Apennines, where, what are called the mountain fastnesses, are rendered dangerous by those occasional loosenesses of the earth that give rise to, or cause the fall of, an avalanche. Though nothing of this sort fell upon him, he was expecting the descent of the foe, which suddenly appeared on the topmost heights, and came down with such a run, that the escape of the Romans seemed impossible. In this difficult dilemma, a subordinate officer proved to be the safeguard of the whole Roman army; and as the noble lion, when netted to the profit of a bold hunter, was delivered by a mouse, so was the noble-hearted Valerius indebted to P. Decius Mus for the safety of himself and his followers. P. Decius laid, in fact, a snare for the Samnites, who were caught in this trap of Mus, or military mouse-trap. He climbed, with a little band, a height so narrow, that large numbers could not reach it to dislodge him, though it was necessary to keep an eye upon him; and, while the Mus attracted the cat-like vigilance of the whole Samnite army, Valerius and his followers were allowed to steal away unperceived to their own quarters.
When the enemy, tired with watching, had fallen asleep, Mus crept out, as quietly as his name would imply, and reached his camp in safety. He received immediately from the Consul an ox, with gilded horns, through which he might trumpet his fame; and the soldiers presented him with a corona obsidionalis—a crown made of blades of grass—in commemoration of their having been gallantly rescued from the blades of the enemy. The materials for a crown of this description were plucked on the spot, in memory of the pluck shown on the spot by the gallant recipient. Such a crown conveyed a finer lesson of morality than anything that the cold brilliance of gold or jewels could suggest; for the wreath of grass, converted, by the very sunshine in which it basked, into the dry and lifeless hayband, told, in a few hours, the perishable nature of glory.
Aided by the manœuvre of the Mus, the success of Valerius was complete: the Samnites fled in such consternation that they left behind them 40,000 shields and 170 standards; so that the Romans must have found the way literally paved with the flags of the vanquished. A triumph was decreed to both the Consuls, and foreign nations sent to congratulate the Romans on their success; the Carthaginians forwarding a crown of gold, twenty-five pounds in weight, the mere cartage of which from Carthage must have been costly and difficult. Compliments poured in upon the conquerors from every side; for good fortune increases the number of addresses to a state, just as the success of an individual causes a sensible, or rather a senseless, addition to the contents of his card-basket. Rome was inundated with calls upon her—many of which were for assistance from feeble countries, whose weak states seemed to be threatened with speedy dissolution.
A Scare-crow. A Scare-crow.
It was about this time (B.C. 342) that the garrison at Capua broke out into revolt, arising, it is said, from the fact that Capua was extremely rich, and the soldiers very poor; that the latter were hopeless debtors, and forgot what they owed their country in the vast sums they owed to their creditors. The story goes on to say, that a corps of heavy insolvents first originated the idea of sacking the city and bagging its wealth, by placing it among their own baggage. The Consul, C. Martius Rutilius, was sent to take the command, and he attempted the soothing system; but the soldiers were goaded with the fetters of debt, and refused to be smoothed over, or to submit to remain under irons. Being in want of a leader, they seized on T. Quinctius, an aged veteran, whose head was so completely bowed down, that he could not do otherwise than bow when asked if he would lead them as their general. The nod of palsy was interpreted into the nod of assent, and T. Quinctius was selected to oppose Corvus, or the Crow, though the only chance for the veteran was, that in the capacity of a scare-crow he might succeed in frightening his antagonist. The armies at length met, when the insurgents, led by a shivering veteran, began to follow their leader, and to shake with fear, which induced Valerius to offer them terms, and the quaking Quinctius was the first to recommend his troops to accept an amnesty. Thus ended an insurrection, of which the motive appears vague, and the management thoroughly contemptible. The best opinion of its origin seems to be, that the army abounded in debtors, who were afraid to go home, and who preferred the chances of a mutiny to the certainty of having to meet their creditors. The only concession they asked was the cancelling of all their debts; a proposition that savours rather of the swindler than the patriot. It is, however, an almost universal fact, that the insolvent classes of a community are to be found in opposition to the constituted authorities; and, indeed, the strength or weakness of such an opposition is no bad test, after all, of the merits of an administration; for if the majority of the people are well-to-do, the inference must be favourable to the government.
Peace was concluded with the Samnites, but Rome was now on the brink of a war with the Latins, who sent ambassadors, proposing that the two people should henceforth be considered as one, in order to establish their unity. The Senate was to be half Latin and half Roman; but the latter declared they would not recognise this sort of half and half in any of their measures. The Consul, T. Manlius, when he heard the terms, went off into a series of clap-traps, in which he knew he was perfectly safe; for the contingency in which he might have been called upon to keep his word, was not at all likely to happen. He exclaimed, that if the Senate should be half Latin, he would enter the assembly with his drawn sword, and cause vacancies in half the seats of the house by slaying all the Latin occupants. This species of paulo-post-future patriotism is equally common and convenient, for it pledges the professor to do nothing until after the doing of something else, which, in all probability, may never happen. T. Manlius was not put to the test, though he certainly proved himself, in some respects, ready for the Latins, had they come on in earnest; for poor Annius, their spokesman, having tumbled down stairs from top to bottom, the consul brutally chuckled over the weak legs of the unhappy legate. "Ha! ha!" roared Manlius, with savage mirth, "thus will I prostrate all the Latins;" and he proceeded to kick at the ambassador, who, being a man of several stone, was completely stunned by his too facile descent from the upper landing to the basement of the Temple of Jupiter.
Metius aggravating Titus Manlius. Metius aggravating Titus Manlius.
The two Consuls went forth to fight, and both commenced their campaign by going to sleep, which led naturally to the inquiry, what they could both have been dreaming about. So thoroughly sympathetic were they in their drowsiness, that they had dreamed precisely the same dream, in which each had seen a ghost, who had addressed both in the same spirit. The spectre, who was decidedly on the shady side of existence, professed through his lantern jaws to throw a light upon Rome's future destiny. He told the Consuls that the general on one side was doomed; but, as this was merely dealing with generalities, he went on to add, that the whole army on one side was to be buried in the earth; a suggestion neither side would be very anxious to fall in with. The spectre, who was rather more communicative than spectres usually are, and who was not so monosyllabic as a fair average ghost, proceeded to further explanations, in the course of which he remarked, that "the general who first devoted himself to the infernal gods, would, by that act of devotion, consign the whole of the opposing army to" a most unpleasant neighbourhood. Both agreed that the one whose army was the first to back out, should be the first to rush into danger. The hostile armies accordingly began to recede as far as they could, and the only contest was to ascertain who could be the cleverest and quickest in walking in one direction, whilst looking in another. It was an understood thing that nobody was to fight unless first attacked, and the general aim was to avoid aiming at anything. Foraging parties went out daily to try and provoke each other to an onslaught, and the prevailing sentiment on both sides was a hope, that "somebody would only just do so and so." Titus Manlius, the son of Torquatus, approached the Latin camp, when Metius, of Tusculum, attempted by all sorts of provoking signals to induce the raw youth to commence a combat; but the boy for some time combated nothing but his own inclination, which would have set him on to an onset. At length he became so irritated that he could restrain himself no longer, but hurling his javelin with all his might, it stuck in the mane of the horse of Metius. The poor brute, looking for sympathy to his master, fell back upon him for protection; but this act of affectionate confidence was fatal to Metius, who, being brought to the ground, was saddled with the whole weight of the unfortunate quadruped. Titus, taking advantage of the position of Metius, stabbed him with his sword, and the latter, feeling himself pierced, could only set up a piercing cry, by way of retaliation upon his antagonist. Having stripped off the armour of his victim, young Titus bore it in triumph to his father, Torquatus Manlius, who proceeded to imitate Brutus; but, like most imitations, the appearance of T. Manlius in the part of the "heavy father" was by no means successful.
Collecting the troops by the sound of trumpet, so that the audience might be sufficiently large, he threw himself into an imposing attitude; but the imposition was seen through, and the reception he met with was far from flattering. He next called forward his son, and denouncing him as an officer who had disobeyed his governor in a double sense—his father and his consul—the lictors were ordered to proceed, by the execution of the son, to the execution of their duty. Manlius, having witnessed the ceremony, buried his face in his toga, expecting at least three rounds of applause; but the performance fell as dead as his unhappy offspring. On his return to Rome he was universally cut by the young men, who were peculiarly alive to a penalty that might be the death of any one of them. The remains of young Manlius were collected into a dreary pile, and the trophies he had illegally won were added as the materials for a bonfire. His obsequies were the first of the same kind among the Romans that we have been able to meet with, after a truly industrious analysis of every hole in which the dust of ages might be found, and a careful sifting of the ashes of antiquity.
The two armies were still standing, when Decius Mus, who was most anxious to distinguish himself, and was watching intently to discover which way the cat would jump, observed a backward movement among his spearmen. His opportunity for glory had now arrived, and the gallant Mus, rushing recklessly to the scratch, behaved himself less like a mus than a lion in the conflict. He fell under a perfect shower of javelins, and lay on the field literally piqué with the pikes of his enemies. The latter were dismayed, and his own friends animated by what had taken place; but the rule of contraries must here have prevailed, for the death of an adverse general should not have disheartened the Latins, while the sacrifice of their own chief was, if looked at in a proper light, but poor encouragement for the Romans. They, however, grew bold; but it was scarcely necessary for them to strike a blow, as the Latins yielded under the stroke of a panic. They fell in such numbers, that three parts are said to have perished, and only a fourth of the army remained to tell of the little quarter allowed them by the enemy.
The Latins suffered so severely from the victory of Decius Mus, that like rats running from a tottering house, their allies, one by one, fell away from them. Numisius, the Latin commander, did his utmost to stir up the spirit of the nation; but the spirit was so thoroughly weakened by cold water, that it was the act of a spoon to endeavour to agitate so feeble a compound. He succeeded in raising a slight fermentation, but what little spirit remained, went off by speedy evaporation in the process of warming up, under the influence of patriotic fire. A small and disorderly band, which could not act in concert, was brought into play, but produced no effect, though it was conducted by Numisius with considerable energy. The Romans succeeded on every side, the Latin army was broken down, the confederacy broken up, and one town after another showed a preference for the better part of valour by surrendering at discretion. The land taken from the conquered was distributed among the Roman people; but the word "people" has frequently a very contracted meaning when profits are being shared, though the term is comprehensive enough to take in a whole nation when the services of the "people" are required. It is to be feared the people who went out for the fight were far more numerous than those who came in for the spoil that had been got by it.
The beaten Latins had the additional mortification of having to pay their successful assailants; an arrangement as provoking as it would be to the victim of an assault to be obliged to discharge the amount of the penalty, in addition to suffering the inconvenience of the outrage. Thus was Capua compelled to pension 1600 Campanian knights; and this pension the Capuans had to give to the knights, simply because the knights had, in a different sense, given it—severely—to the Capuans. It is doubtful whether the Samnites took anything by the general adjustment—if that can be called an adjustment in which justice had little share; but that they left much behind them is quite notorious.
Among their equipments for battle had been several gorgeous gold and silver-mounted shields, in the shape of a boy's kite, and as the Samnites ultimately protected themselves by flying, the kite-like form of their shields was thoroughly appropriate. Their breasts were covered with sponge, which gave them a soft-hearted air; and the sinking of their bosoms under nearly every blow, was clearly perceptible. They wore a shirt of mail, composed of brazen scales, and the display of so much metal in their shirts enabled them to present at times a bold front to the enemy. They had greaves upon their legs, which were a grievous impediment to their running away; and their helmets, adorned with lofty plumes, only served to render more conspicuous in defeat their crest-fallen condition. They wore tunics or coats of cotton next their skin, and put on their shirts outside; but between these, was a short garment of wool: so that the only idea we can give of the mode of making a Samnite toilette is by asking the reader to begin by putting on his coat; to place over that his flannel waistcoat, and to add his shirt by way of finish.
Among the other spoils of the war with the Latins, were the ships taken from the port of Antium; but the Romans, who were not a nautical people, had so little idea of the value of a fleet, that they carried the beaks or prows of the vessels to Rome, and fixed them in the Forum, as pulpits for their orators.[29] How the ships could have kept above water when subjected to mutilation, it is difficult to conceive; and indeed it would appear probable that having been deprived of their heads, they must have gone down, as a matter of stern necessity. We must, however, do the Roman people the justice to add, that two officers had been appointed to the superintendence of naval affairs; and some will declare they see in the mere existence of an Admiralty Board sufficient to account for much extravagance, and all sorts of blundering. Rome had hitherto been in the condition of a house divided against itself, or rather of the adjoining houses pulling against each other, and every widening of the breach must of course have been attended with danger to both of them. The cessation of war with the Latins enabled Rome to draw closer the neighbouring social fabric, and many of its inhabitants were invited to join, and make themselves part of the family of the Romans. The latter also began to see the impolicy of keeping up certain distinctions between class and class, which have the same effect upon a nation, as the bitter feuds between separate floors are likely to produce upon the happiness and comfort of a lodging-house. When an upstart one-pair-front sneers at its own back, or looks down upon an abased basement; when a crushed and crouching kitchen, waiting in vain for its turn at the only copper, revenges itself by cutting the only clothes-line—if the line is drawn only for the good of those in a higher station, instead of its being a line drawn, as every line should be, for the good of all;—when a household is in such a state, we may see in it the type of a badly ordered community. Such had been long the unhappy lot of Rome, until it began to strike on the minds of a few influential men, that no nation can be really great while the mass of its people are in a state of abject littleness. The majority of the patricians fortunately took an equally sensible view of their case, and arrived at the wise conclusion, that moderate privileges fairly held, and freely conceded, are preferable to any amount of exclusive advantage, improperly assumed on the one hand, and impatiently submitted to on the other. Happily for the patricians, they had among them a man bold enough to incorporate in a law the opinions of the main part of his own order, and strong enough to prevail over the weakness and prejudice of the meaner members of the body.
The name of this patrician reformer was Q. Publilius Philo, who introduced three laws calculated to extend the basis of political power. By the first, the curiæ, consisting of patricians only, were compelled to confirm the laws passed by the centuries in which the two orders were mixed; by the second, the plebiscita, or decrees of the plebs, were to be binding on all Roman citizens; and the third provided, that there should always be one plebeian censor. These laws, though, perhaps, well adapted to the wants of the age, were not exactly such as we should hail with enthusiasm if they were to be brought forward in our own day by the head of a government. Depriving the curiæ of a veto was a measure equivalent to a proposition that the measures of the House of Commons should not require the concurrence of the House of Lords; and giving the force of law to a plebiscitum was much the same thing as determining that every resolution of every public meeting should at once be embodied in the statute-book. Such an arrangement in the present day would render our laws a curiosity of legislative mosaic work, laid down without the advantage of uniformity or design. If the interpretation of an act of Parliament is sometimes difficult, we may conceive the utter hopelessness of the effort to understand the laws, if they were to consist of a body of resolutions pouring in constantly from Exeter Hall, or Freemasons' Tavern, and, occasionally, from a lamp-post in Trafalgar Square, or a cart on Kennington Common.
With every due respect for the plebiscita—or resolutions of public meetings—we doubt whether any party would be desirous of accepting them as a substitute for our present method of law-making. The only chance of safety would be in the fact, that the plebiscitum of to-morrow would be sure to repeal the plebiscitum of to-day, and the best security for the state would consist in keeping a public meeting always assembled to negative every new proposition.
It was many years, however, before Rome, though it had suffered so much from patrician insolence, was prepared to go to the length of allowing a plebiscitum the force of law without being subject to the veto of the senate.[30] Aristocratic pretension had, however, been carried to such an extent in Rome, that we could hardly be surprised at any amount of democratic license; for extremes are sure to meet, and it is unfortunate, indeed, for a country that is reduced to such extremities.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] From this circumstance, the word Rostrum, which means the prow of a ship, has been derived, and has got into such universal use as to describe the box from which an auctioneer launches his eloquence.
[30] The Hortensian Law, carried some years later by Q. Hortensius.
