The history of Rome
Page 61
The fact that afterwards, when Norbanus was impeached, his impeachment proceeded on the very ground of the law which he had taken part in suggesting, was an ironical incident common in the Roman political procedure of this period (Cic. Brut. 89, 305) and should not mislead us into the belief that the Appuleian law was, like the later Cornelian, a general law of high treason.
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24. The view here presented rests in the main on the comparatively trustworthy account in the Epitome of Livy (where we should read reversi in Gallium in Vellocassis se Teutonis coniunxerunt) and in Obsequens; to the disregard of authorities of lesser weight, which make the Teutones appear by the side of the Cimbri at an earlier date, some of them, such as Appian, Celt. 13, even as early as the battle of Noreia. With these we connect the notices in Caesar (B. G. i. 33; ii. 4, 29); as the invasion of the Roman province and of Italy by the Cimbri can only mean the expedition of 652.
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25. It is injudicious to deviate from the traditional account and to transfer the field of battle to Verona: in so doing the fact is overlooked that a whole winter and various movements of troops intervened between the conflicts on the Adige and the decisive engagement, and that Catulus, according to express statement (Plut. Mar. 24), had retreated as far as the right bank of the Po. The statements that the Cimbri were defeated on the Po (Hier. Chron.), and that they were defeated where Stilicho afterwards defeated the Getae, i. e. at Cherasco on the Tanaro, although both inaccurate, point at least to Vercellae much rather than to Verona.
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Chapter VI
The Attempt of Marius at Revolution and the Attempt of Drusus at Reform
1. IV. IV. The Domain Question under the Restoration.
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2. I. VI. The Servian Constitution, II. III. Its Composition.
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3. III. XI. Reforms in the Military Service.
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4. III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries.
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5. IV. IV. Treaty between Rome and Numidia.
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6. IV. V. Warfare of Prosecutions.
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7. It is not possible to distinguish exactly what belongs to the first and what to the second tribunate of Saturninus; the more especially, as in both he evidently followed out the same Gracchan tendencies. The African agrarian law is definitely placed by the treatise De Viris Ill. 73, 1 in 651; and this date accords with the termination, which had taken place just shortly before, of the Jugurthine war. The second agrarian law belongs beyond doubt to 654. The treason-law and the corn-law have been only conjecturally placed, the former in 651 (p. 442 note), the latter in 654.
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8. All indications point to this conclusion. The elder Quintus Caepio was consul in 648, the younger quaestor in 651 or 654, the former consequently was born about or before 605, the latter about 624 or 627. The fact that the former died without leaving sons (Strabo, iv. 188) is not inconsistent with this view, for the younger Caepio fell in 664, and the elder, who ended his life in exile at Smyrna, may very well have survived him.
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9. IV. IV. Treaty between Rome and Numidia.
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10. IV. V. Warfare of Prosecutions.
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11. IV. IV. Rival Demagogism of the Senate. The Livian Laws.
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12. IV. V. And Reach the Danube.
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13. IV. IV. Administration under the Restoration.
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14. IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the Administration of the Provinces.
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Chapter VII
The Revolt of the Italian Subjects, and the Sulpician Revolution
1. IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law.
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2. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium, II. V. As to the Officering of the Army.
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3. II. VII. Furnishing of Contingents; III. XI. Latins.
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4. III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition.
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5. III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition.
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6. IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus, IV. III. Overthrow of Gracchus.
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7. These figures are taken from the numbers of the census of 639 and 684; there were in the former year 394, 336 burgesses capable of bearing arms, in the latter 910,000 (according to Phlegon Fr. 12 Mull., which statement Clinton and his copyists erroneously refer to the census of 668; according to Liv. Ep. 98 the number was - by the correct reading - 900,000 persons). The only figures known between these two - those of the census of 668, which according to Hieronymus gave 463,000 persons - probably turned out so low only because the census took place amidst the crisis of the revolution. As an increase of the population of Italy is not conceivable in the period from 639 to 684, and even the Sullan assignations of land can at the most have but filled the gaps which the war had made, the surplus of fully 500,000 men capable of bearing arms may be referred with certainty to the reception of the allies which had taken place in the interval. But it is possible, and even probable, that in these fateful years the total amount of the Italian population may have retrograded rather than advanced: if we reckon the total deficit at 100,000 men capable of bearing arms, which seems not excessive, there were at the time of the Social War in Italy three non-burgesses for two burgesses.
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8. The form of oath is preserved (in Diodor. Vat. p. 116); it runs thus: "I swear by the Capitoline Jupiter and by the Roman Vesta and by the hereditary Mars and by the generative Sun and by the nourishing Earth and by the divine founders and enlargers (the Penates) of the City of Rome, that he shall be my friend and he shall be my foe who is friend or foe to Drusus; also that I will spare neither mine own life nor the life of my children or of my parents, except in so far as it is for the good of Drusus and those who share this oath. But if I should become a burgess by the law of Drusus, I will esteem Rome as my home and Drusus as the greatest of my benefactors. I shall tender this oath to as many of my fellow-citizens as I can; and if I swear truly, may it fare with me well; if I swear falsely, may it fare with me ill." But we shall do well to employ this account with caution; it is derived either from the speeches delivered against Drusus by Philippus (which seems to be indicated by the absurd title "oath of Philippus" prefixed by the extractor of the formula) or at best from the documents of criminal procedure subsequently drawn up respecting this conspiracy in Rome; and even on the latter hypothesis it remains questionable, whether this form of oath was elicited from the accused or imputed to them in the inquiry.
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9. II. VII. Dissolution of National Leagues.
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10. IV. VI. Discussions on the Livian Laws.
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11. IV. IV. Dissatisfaction in the Capital, IV. V. Warfare of Prosecutions.
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12. Even from our scanty information, the best part of which is given by Diodorus, p. 538 and Strabo, v. 4, 2, this is very distinctly apparent; for example, the latter expressly says that the burgess-body chose the magistrates. That the senate of Italia was meant to be formed in another manner and to have different powers from that of Rome, has been asserted, but has not been proved. Of course in its first composition care would be taken to have a representation in some degree uniform of the insurgent cities; but that the senators were to be regularly deputed by the communities, is nowhere stated. As little does the commission given to the senate to draw up a constitution exclude its promulgation by the magistrates and ratification by the assembly of the people.
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13. The bullets found at Asculum show that the Gauls were very numerousalso in the army of Strabo.
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> 14. We still have a decree of the Roman senate of 22 May 676, which grants honours and advantages on their discharge to three Greek ship-captains of Carystus, Clazomenae, and Miletus for faithful services renderedsince the commencement of the Italian war (664). Of the same nature is the account of Memnon, that two triremes were summoned from Heraclea on the Black Sea for the Italian war, and that they returned in the eleventh year with rich honorary gifts.
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15. That this statement of Appian is not exaggerated, is shown by the bullets found at Asculum which name among others the fifteenth legion.
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16. The Julian law must have been passed in the last months of 664, for during the good season of the year Caesar was in the field; the Plautian was probably passed, as was ordinarily the rule with tribunician proposals, immediately after the tribunes entered on office, consequently in Dec. 664 or Jan. 665.
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17. Leaden bullets with the name of the legion which threw them, and sometimes with curses against the "runaway slaves" - and accordingly Roman - or with the inscription "hit the Picentes" or "hit Pompeius" - the former Roman, the latter Italian - are even now sometimes found, belonging to that period, in the region of Ascoli.
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18. The rare denarii with Safinim and G. Mutil in Oscan characters must belong to this period; for, as long as the designation Italia was retained by the insurgents, no single canton could, as a sovereign power, coin money with its own name.
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19. I. VII. Servian Wall.
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20. Licinianus (p. 15) under the year 667 says: dediticiis omnibus [ci]vita[s] data; qui polliciti mult[a] milia militum vix XV... cohortes miserunt; a statement in which Livy's account (Epit. 80): Italicis populis a senatu civitas data est reappears in a somewhat more precise shape. The dediticii were according to Roman state-law those peregrini liberi (Gaius i. 13-15, 25, Ulp. xx. 14, xxii. 2) who had become subject to the Romans and had not been admitted to alliance. They not merely retain life, liberty, and property, but may be formed into communities with a constitution of their own. Apolides, nullius certae civitatis cives (Ulp. xx. 14; comp. Dig. xlviii. 19, 17, i), were only the freedmen placed by legal fiction on the same footing with the dediticii qui dediticiorum numero sunt, only by erroneous usage and rarely by the better authors called directly dediticii; (Gai. i. 12, Ulp. i. 14, Paul. iv. 12, 6) as well as the kindred liberti Latini Iuniani. But the dediticii nevertheless were destitute of rights as respected the Roman state, in so far as by Roman state-law every deditio was necessarily unconditional (Polyb, xxi. 1; comp. xx. 9, 10, xxxvi. 2) and all the privileges expressly or tacitly conceded to them were conceded only precario and therefore revocable at pleasure (Appian, Hisp. 44); so that the Roman state, what ever it might immediately or afterwards decree regarding its dediticii, could never perpetrate as respected them a violation of rights. This destitution of rights only ceased on the conclusion of a treaty of alliance (Liv. xxxiv. 57). Accordingly deditio and foedus appear in constitutional law as contrasted terms excluding each other (Liv. iv. 30, xxviii. 34; Cod. Theod. vii. 13, 16 and Gothofr. thereon), and of precisely the same nature is the distinction current among the jurists between the quasi-dediticii and the quasi Latini, for the Latins are just the foederati in an eminent sense (Cic. pro Balb. 24, 54). According to the older constitutional law there were, with the exception of the not numerous communities that were declared to have forfeited their treaties in consequence of the Hannibalic war (p. 24), no Italian dediticii; in the Plautian law of 664-5 the description: qui foederatis civitatibus adscripti fuerunt (Cic. pro Arch. 4, 7) still included in substance all Italians. But as the dediticii who received the franchise supplementary in 667 cannot reasonably be understood as embracing merely the Bruttii and Picentes, we may assume that all the insurgents, so far as they had laid down their arms and had not acquired the franchise under the Plautio-Papirian law were treated as dediticii, or - which is the same thing - that their treaties cancelled as a matter of course by the insurrection (hence -qui foederati fuerunt- in the passage of Cicero cited) were not legally renewed to them on their surrender.
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21. II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes.
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22. IV. VI. The Equestrian Party.
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23. II. XI. Squandering of the Spoil.
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24. It is not clear, what the lex unciaria of the consuls Sulla and Rufus in the year 666 prescribed in this respect; but the simplest hypothesis is that which regards it as a renewal of the law of 397 (i. 364), so that the highest allowable rate of interest was again 1 1/12th of the capital for the year of ten months or 10 per cent for the year of twelve months.
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25. III. XI. Reform of the Centuries.
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26. II. III. Powers of the Senate.
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27. IV. II. Death of Gracchus, IV. III. Attack on The Transmarine Colonization. Downfall of Gracchus, IV. VI. Saturninus Assailed.
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28. II. III. The Tribunate of the People As an Instrument of Government.
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Chapter VIII
The East and King Mithradates
1. IV. VIII. Occupation of Cilicia.
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2. III. IX. Armenia.
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3. IV. I. Western Asia.
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4. The words quoted as Phrygian Bagaios = Zeus and the old royal name Manis have been beyond doubt correctly referred to the Zend bagha = God and the Germanic Mannus, Indian Manus (Lassen, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenland. Gesellschaft, vol. x. p. 329 f.)
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5. They are here grouped together, because, though they were in part doubtless not executed till between the first and the second war with Rome, they to some extent preceded even the first (Memn. 30; Justin, xxxviii. 7 ap. fin.; App. Mithr. 13; Eutrop. v. 5) and a narrative in chronological order is in this case absolutely impracticable. Even the recently found decree of Chersonesus (p. 17) has given no information in this respect According to it Diophantus was twice sent against the Taurian Scythians; but that the second insurrection of these is connected with the decree of the Roman senate in favour of the Scythian princes (p. 21) is not clear from the document, and is not even probable.
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6. It is very probable that the extraordinary drought, which is the chief obstacle now to agriculture in the Crimea and in these regions generally, has been greatly increased by the disappearance of the forests of central and southern Russia, which formerly to some extent protected the coast-provinces from the parching northeast wind.
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7. The recently discovered decree of the town of Chersonesus in honour of this Diophantus (Dittenberger, Syll. n. 252) thoroughly confirms the traditional account. It shows us the city in the immediate vicinity - the port of Balaclava must at that time have been in the power of the Tauri and Simferopol in that of the Scythians - hard pressed partly by the Tauri on the south coast of the Crimea, partly and especially by the Scythians who held in their power the whole interior of the peninsula and the mainland adjoining; it shows us further how the general of king Mithradates relieves on all sides the Greek city, defeats the Tauri, and erects in their territory a stronghold (probably Eupatorion), restores the connection between the western and the eastern Hellenes of the peninsula, overpowers in the west the dynasty of Scilurus, and in the east Saumacus prince of the Scythians, pursues the Scythians even to the mainland, and at length conquers them with the Reuxinales - such is the name given to the later Roxolani here, where they first appear - in the great pitched battle, which is mentioned also in the traditional account. There does not seem to have been any formal subordination of the Greek city under the king; Mithradates appears only as protecting ally, who fights the battles against the Scythians that passed as invincible (tous anupostatous dokountas e
imen), on behalf of the Greek city, which probably stood to him nearly in the relation of Massilia and Athens to Rome. The Scythians on the other band in the Crimea become subjects (upakooi) of Mithradates.