And what kind of

they sprung from the Lernæan serpent." senate was there? when, on the address of Appius Cæcus, the ambassadors were sent away from the city with their presents, and assured their king, who asked them what they thought of the enemy's abode, that "the city appeared to them a temple, and the senate an assembly of kings." And what sort of generals were there? either in the camp, when Curius sent back the physician that offered the head of king Pyrrhus for sale, and Fabricius refused a share of the kingdom offered him by Pyrrhus; or in peace, when Curius preferred his earthen vessels to the gold of the Samnites, and Fabricius, with the gravity becoming a censor, condemned ten pounds of silver, in the possession of Rufinus, though a man of consular dignity, as a luxury.

Who then can wonder that the Romans, with such manners, and with a brave soldiery, were victorious? And that in this one war with the Tarentines, they brought under their power, within the space of four years, the greatest part of Italy, the stoutest nations, the most wealthy cities, and the most fruitful regions? Or what can more exceed credibility than a comparison of the beginning of the war with the end of it? Pyrrhus, victorious in the first battle, laid waste Campania, Liris1, and Fregellæ, whilst all Italy was in alarm, and took a view of Rome, which was well-nigh captured, from the heights of Præneste, filling the eyes of the trembling city, at the distance of twenty miles, with smoke and dust. The same prince being afterwards twice forced from his camp, twice wounded, and driven over sea and land into Greece, his own country, peace and quiet ensued; and so vast was the spoil from so many wealthy nations, that Rome could not contain her own victory. Hardly ever did a finer or more glorious triumph enter the city; when before this time you could have seen nothing but the cattle of the Volscians, the flocks of the Sabines, the chariots of the Gauls, or the broken arms of the Samnites; but now, if you looked on the captives, they were Molossians, Thessalians, Macedonians, Bruttians, Apulians, and Lucanians; if upon the pomp of the procession, there was gold, purple, statues, pictures, and all the ornaments of Tarentum. The people of Rome, however, be

1 Liris] This word is elsewhere found only as the name of a river. Freinshemius takes it here for that of a town. Minellius suggests that Florus may mean the banks of the Liris.

held nothing with greater pleasure than those beasts which they had dreaded, with their towers on their backs; which, not without a sense of their captivity, followed the victorious horses with their heads bowed to the earth.

CHAP. XIX. THE PICENIAN WAR.

Soon after all Italy enjoyed peace, (for who would venture on war after the subjugation of Tarentum ?) except that the Romans thought proper, of their own accord, to pursue those who had joined the enemy. The people of Picenum were in consequence subdued, with Asculum, their metropolis, under the conduct of Sempronius; who, as there was a tremor of the earth during the battle, appeased the goddess Earth by vowing a temple to her.

CHAP. XX. THE SALLENTINE WAR.

The Sallentines shared the fate of the people of Picenum; and Brundusium, the chief city of the country, with its famous harbour, was taken by Marcus Atilius. In this contest Pales, the goddess of shepherds, demanded, of her own accord, a temple as the price of the victory.

CHAP. XXI. THE WAR WITH THE VOLSINI.

The last of the Italians that fell under the government of the Romans were the Volsini, the richest of all the Etrurians, who sought aid against rebels that had formerly been their slaves, and that had turned their liberty, granted them by their masters, against their masters themselves, taking the government into their own hands, and making themselves tyrants. But these were chastised for their presumption under the leadership of Fabius Gurges.

CHAP. XXII. OF SEDITIONS.

This is the second age of the Roman people, and, as it were, its youth; in which it was extremely vigorous, and grew warm and fervid in the flower of its strength. Thus a certain rudeness, derived from the shepherds, their ancestors, which still remained in them, betrayed something of an untamed spirit. Hence it happened that the army, having mutinied in the camp, stoned their general, Posthumius, for withholding the spoil which he had promised them; that

under Appius Claudius they refused to conquer the enemy when they had the power; that on occasion of the soldiers, with Volero at their head, declining to serve, the fasces of the consul were broken; and that the people punished their most eminent leaders with exile, when they opposed their will: as Coriolanus, for desiring them to till their grounds, (nor would he have less severely revenged his wrongs in war, had not his mother Veturia, when he was leading on his forces, disarmed him with her tears,) and Camillus, because he seemed to have divided the plunder of Veii unfairly between the common people and the army. But the latter, with better fortune1 than Coriolanus, grew old in the city which he had taken, and afterwards avenged his countrymen, at their entreaty, on their enemies the Gauls.

Disputes were also carried on, more violently than was just and reasonable, with the senate; insomuch that the people, leaving their dwellings, threatened devastation and ruin to their country.

CHAP. XXIII. THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

The first disagreement was occasioned by the tyranny of the money-lenders, who vented their resentment even on the backs of their debtors, scourging them as if they were slaves; and the commons, in consequence, withdrew under arms to the Sacred Mount, from which they were with difficulty recalled by the authority of Menenius Agrippa, an eloquent and wise man; nor would they have returned at all if they had not obtained tribunes for themselves. The fable of his, in the old style, so powerfully persuasive to concord, is still extant, in which he said that "the members of the human body were once at variance among themselves, alleging, that while all the rest discharged their duties, the stomach alone continued without occupation; but that at length, when ready to die, they returned from their disagreement to a right understanding, as they found that they were nourished with the food that was by the stomach reduced to blood."

1 Ch. XXII. But the latter, with better fortune, &c.] Sed hic melior [obsessis], in captâ urbe consenuit. Obsessis occurs in some copies, but Duker and Grævius omit it. The city which he had taken was Veii. But it is not said in any other author that Camillus spent his old age at Veii. Salmasius understands consenuit of pining at the misfortunes of his country; but this interpretation is so forced that it seems less reasonable to accept it than to suppose Florus to have been mistaken.

CHAP. XXIV. THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

The licentiousness of the Decemvirate gave rise to the second disagreement, which occurred in the middle of the city. Ten eminent men of the city, chosen for the purpose, had, by order of the people, drawn up in a body certain laws which had been brought from Greece, and the whole course of the administration of justice had been arranged in twelve tables; but, though the object of their office was accomplished, they still retained the fasces that had been delivered to them, with a spirit like that of kings. Appius Claudius, above all the rest, advanced to such a degree of audacity, that he destined for dishonour a free-born virgin, forgetting both Lucretia, and the kings, and the laws which he himself had written. When her father Virginius, therefore, saw his daughter unjustly sentenced, and dragged away to slavery, he slew her, without any hesitation, in the midst of the forum, with his own hand; and, bringing up the troops of his fellow-soldiers, he dragged the whole band of tyrants, beset with an armed force, from the Aventine Mount to imprisonment and chains.

CHAP. XXV. THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

The question of the propriety of intermarriages raised a third sedition, it being demanded that plebeians should be allowed to intermarry with patricians. This tumult broke out on Mount Janiculum, Canuleius, a tribune of the people, being the leader in it.

CHAP. XXVI. THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

An ambition for public honours occasioned a fourth sedition, from a demand being made that plebeians should be admitted to magistracies. Fabius Ambustus, the father of two daughters, had married one to Sulpicius, a man of patrician family, and the other to Stolo, a plebeian. The latter, on some occasion, being rather scornfully laughed at by her sister, because she had been startled at the sound of the lictor's staff, (which was unknown in her family,) could not endure the affront. Her husband, in consequence, having gained the tribuneship, obtained from the senate, though much against their will, a share in public honours and offices for the plebeians.

But in these very seditions, you may not improperly ad

mire the conduct of this great people; for at one time they supported liberty, at another chastity, at another the respectability of their birth1, at another their right to marks and distinctions of honour; and among all these proceedings, they were vigilant guardians of nothing more than of liberty, and could by no bribery be corrupted to make sale of it; though there arose from time to time, as was natural among a people already great, and growing daily greater, citizens of very pernicious intentions. Spurius Cassius, suspected of aiming at kingly power by the aid of the agrarian law, and Mælius, suspected of a similar design from his excessive largesses to the people, they punished with instant death. On Spurius, indeed, his own father inflicted the punishment. Ahala, the master of the horse, killed Mælius in the middle of the forum, by order of Quinctius the dictator. Manlius, also, the defender of the Capitol, when he behaved himself too arrogantly, and unsuitably to the rank of a citizen, presuming on having liberated most of the debtors, they precipitated from that very citadel which he had preserved. In this manner, at home and abroad, in peace and war, did the Roman people pass the period of adolescence, that is to say, the second age of their empire, in which they subdued with their arms all Italy between the Alps and the sea.

BOOK II.

CHAP. I. INTRODUCTORY.

After Italy was conquered and subjugated, the Roman people, now approaching its five-hundredth year, and being fairly arrived at maturity, was then truly robust and manly, (if robustness and manhood may be attributed to a nation,) and had begun to be a match for the whole world. Accordingly (wonderful and scarcely credible to relate!) that people who had struggled with their neighbours at home for nearly five hundred years, (so difficult was it to give Italy a head,) overran, in the two hundred years that follow, Africa, Europe, Asia, and indeed the whole world, with their wars and victories.

1 Ch. XXVI. Respectability of their birth] Natalium dignitatem. They maintained that all citizens were of sufficiently respectable birth to intermarry with the patricians.