[16.1] After they had adopted this proposal, the ambassadors they had chosen came to the dictator, and being brought before the assembly, delivered their messages that were intended to deceive the Romans. And Postumius, after a short pause, said to them: “You have brought with you, Volscians, evil designs clothed in good words, and while you perform hostile acts, you want us to regard you as friends. [2] For you were sent by your nation to assist the Latins against us, but arriving after the battle and seeing them overcome, you wish to deceive us by saying the very opposite of what you intended to do. And neither the friendliness of your words, simulated for the present occasion, nor the pretence under which you are come hither, is sincere, but is full of fraud and deceit. For you were sent, not to congratulate us upon our good fortune, but to spy out the weakness or the strength of our condition; and while you are ambassadors in name, you are spies in reality.” [3] When the men denied everything, he said he would soon offer them the proof; and straightway he produced their letters which he had intercepted before the battle as they were being carried to the commanders of the Latins, in which they promised to send them reinforcements, and produced the persons who carried the letters. After these were read out and the prisoners had given an account of the orders they had received, the soldiers were eager to stone the Volscians as spies caught in the act; but Postumius thought that good men ought not to imitate the wicked, saying it would be better and more magnanimous to reserve their anger against the senders rather than against the sent, and to let the men go in consideration of their ostensible title of ambassadors rather than to put them to death because of their disguised task of spying, lest they should give either a specious ground for war to the Volscians, who would allege that their ambassadors had been put to death contrary to the law of nations, or an excuse to their other enemies for bringing a charge which, though false, would appear neither ill-grounded nor incredible.
[17.1] Having thus checked the rash impulse of the soldiers, he commanded the men to depart without looking back, and put them in charge of a guard of horse, who conducted them to the camp of the Volscians. After he had expelled the spies, he commanded the soldiers to get everything ready for battle, as if he were going to engage the next day. But he had no need of a battle, for the leaders of the Volscians broke camp before dawn and returned home. [2] All things having now gone according to his wish, he buried his own dead, and having purified his army, returned to the city with the pomp of a magnificent triumph, together with huge quantities of military stores, followed by 5,500 prisoners taken in the battle. And having set apart the tithes of the spoils, he spent forty talents in performing games and sacrifices to the gods, and let contracts for the building of temples to Ceres, Liber and Libera, in fulfilment of a vow he had made. [3] It seems that provisions for the army had been scarce in the beginning, and had caused the Romans great fear that they would fail entirely, as the land had borne no crops and food from outside was no longer being imported because of the war. Because of this fear he had ordered the guardians of the Sibylline books to consult them, and finding that the oracles commanded that these gods should be propitiated, he made vows to them, when he was on the point of leading out his army, that if there should be the same abundance in the city during the time of his magistracy as before, he would build temples to them and also appoint sacrifices to be performed every year. [4] These gods, hearing his prayer, caused the land to produce rich crops, not only of grain but also of fruits, and all imported provisions to be more plentiful than before; and when Postumius saw this, he himself caused a vote to be passed for the building of these temples. The Romans, therefore, having through the favour of the gods repelled the war brought upon them by the tyrant, were engaged in feasts and sacrifices.
[18] A few days later there came to them, as ambassadors from the Latin league, chosen out of all their cities. Those who had been opposed to the war, holding out the olive branches and the fillets of suppliants. These men, upon being introduced into the senate, declared that the powerful men in every city had been responsible for beginning the war, and said that the people had been guilty of this one fault only, that they had listened to corrupt demagogues who had schemed for private gain. [2] And for this delusion, in which necessity had had the greatest share, they said every city had already paid a penalty not to be despised, in the loss of its young men, so that it was not easy to find a single household free from mourning. They asked the Romans to receive them now that they willingly submitted and neither disputed any longer about the supremacy nor strove for equality, but were ready to be for all future time subjects as well as allies and to add the good fortune of the Romans all the prestige which Fortune had taken from the Latins. [3] At the end of their speech they made an appeal to kinship, reminded them of their unhesitating services as allies in the past, and bewailed the misfortunes that would fall on the innocent, who were far more numerous than the guilty, accompanying everything they said with lamentations, embracing the knees of all the senators, and laying the olive branches at the feet of Postumius, so that the whole senate was more or less moved by their tears and entreaties.
[19] When the ambassadors had left the senate and permission to speak was given to the members who were wont to deliver their opinions first, Titus Larcius, who had been appointed the first dictator the year before, advised them to use their good fortune with moderation, saying that the greatest praise that could be given a whole state as well as to an individual was not to be corrupted by prosperity, but to bear good fortune with decorum and moderation; [2] for all prosperity is envied, particularly that which is attended with arrogance and rigour toward those who had been humbled and subdued. And he advised them not to put any reliance on Fortune, since they had learned from their own experience in both adversity and prosperity how inconstant and quick to change she is. Nor ought they to reduce their adversaries to the necessity of running the supreme hazard, since such necessity renders some men daring beyond all expectation and warlike beyond their strength. [3] He said they had reason to be afraid of drawing upon themselves the common hatred of all those they proposed to rule, if they should exact harsh and relentless penalties from such as had erred; for they would seem to have abandoned their traditional principles, forgetting to what they owed their present splendour, and to have made their dominion a tyranny rather than a leadership and protectorship, as it had been aforetime. He said that the error is a moderate and venial one when states that cling to liberty and have once learned to rule are unwilling to give up their ancient prestige; and if men who aim at the noblest ends are to be punished beyond possibility of recovery when they fail of their hope, there will be nothing to prevent the whole race of mankind from being destroyed by one another, since all men have an innate craving for liberty. [4] He declared that a government is far better and more firmly established which seeks to rule its subjects by its benefits rather than by punishments; for the former course leads to goodwill and the latter to terror, and it is a fixed law of Nature that everything that causes terror should be particularly detested. And finally he asked them to take as examples the best actions of their ancestors for which they had won praise, recounting the many instances in which, after capturing cities by storm, they had not razed them nor put all the male population to the sword or enslaved them, but by making them Roman colonies and by giving citizenship to such of the conquered as desired to live at Rome, they had made their city great from a small beginning. The sum and substance of his opinion was this: to renew the treaty they had previously made with the Latin league and to retain no resentment against any of the cities for the errors they had been guilty of.
[20.1] Servius Sulpicius opposed nothing the other had said concerning peace and the renewal of the treaty; but, since the Latins had been the first to violate the treaty, and not now for the first time either — in which case they might deserve some forgiveness when they put forward necessity and their own deception as excuses — but often in the past too, so that they needed correction, he propose
d that impunity and their liberty should be granted to all of them because of their kinship, but that they should be deprived of one half of their land and that Roman colonists should be sent thither to enjoy its produce and see to it that the Latins created no further disturbances. [2] Spurius Cassius advised them to raze the Latin cities, saying he wondered at the simple-mindedness of those who urged letting their offences go unpunished, why they could not understand that, because of the inborn and ineradicable envy which the Latins felt towards the rising power of Rome, they were constantly fomenting one war after another against them and would never willingly give over their treacherous intent so long as this unfortunate passion dwelt in their hearts; indeed, they had finally endeavoured to bring a kindred people under the power of a tyrant more savage than any wild beast, thereby overturning all the covenants they had sworn by the gods to observe, induced by no other hopes than that, if the war did not succeed according to their expectation, they should incur either no punishment at all or a very slight one. [3] He too asked them to take as examples the actions of their ancestors, who, when they knew that the city of Alba, of which both they themselves and all the other Latin cities were colonies, was envious of their prosperity and had made use of the impunity it had obtained for its first transgressions as an opportunity for greater treachery, resolved to destroy it in a single day, believing that to punish none of those who had committed the greatest and the most irremediable crimes was no better than to show compassion to none of those who were guilty of moderate errors. [4] It would be an act of great folly and stupidity, surely not one of humanity and moderation, for those who would not endure the envy of their mother-city, when it appeared beyond measure grievous and intolerable, to submit now to that of their mere kinsman, and for those who had punished enemies convicted in milder attempts of being such, by depriving them of their city, to exact no punishment now from such as had often shown their hatred of them to be irreconcilable. [5] After he had spoken thus and had enumerated all the rebellions of the Latins and reminded the senators of the vast number of Romans who had lost their lives in the wars against them, he advised them to treat these also in the same manner as they had formerly treated the Albans, namely, to raze their cities and add their territory to that of the Romans; and as for the inhabitants, to make citizens of such as had shown any goodwill towards them, permitting them to retain their possessions, but to put to death as traitors the authors of the revolt by whom the treaty had been broken, and to make slaves of the poor, the lazy and the useless among the populace.
[21.1] These were the opinions expressed by the leading men of the senate, but the dictator gave the preference to that of Larcius; and, no further opposition being made to it, the ambassadors were called in to the senate to receive their answer. Postumius, after reproaching them with an evil disposition never to be reformed, said: “It would be right that you should suffer the utmost severity, which is just the way you yourselves were intending to treat us, if you had succeeded in the many attempts you made against us.” Nevertheless, he said, the Romans had not chosen mere rights in preference to clemency, bearing in mind that the Latins were their kinsmen and had had recourse to the mercy of those whom they had injured; but they were allowing these offences of theirs also to go unpunished, from a regard both to the gods of their race and to the uncertainty of Fortune, to whom they owed their victory. [2] “For the present, therefore, go your way,” he said, “relieved of all fear; and after you have released to us the prisoners, delivering the deserters, and expelled the exile, then send ambassadors to us to treat of friendship and of an alliance, in the assurance that they shall fail of naught that is reasonable.” The ambassadors, having received this answer, departed, and a few days later returned, having released the prisoners and expelled the exiles with Tarquinius from their cities, and bringing with them in chains all the deserters they had taken. In return for this they obtained of the senate their old treaty of friendship and alliance and renewed through the fetiales the oaths they had previously taken concerning it. Thus ended the war against the tyrants, after it had lasted fourteen years from their expulsion. [3] King Tarquinius — for he still survived of his family — being now about ninety years of age and having lost his children and the household of his relations by marriage, dragged out a miserable old age, and that too among his enemies. For when neither the Latins, the Tyrrhenians, the Sabines, nor any other free people near by would longer permit him to reside in their cities, he retired to Cumae in Campania and was received by Aristodemus, nicknamed the Effeminate, who was at that time tyrant of the Cumaeans; and after living a few days there, he died and was buried by him. Some of the exiles who had been with him remained at Cumae; and the rest, dispersing themselves to various other cities, ended their days on foreign soil.
[22.1] After the Romans had put an end to the foreign wars, the civil strife sprang up again. For the senate ordered the courts of justice to sit and that all suits which they had postponed on account of the war should be decided according to the laws. The controversies arising over contracts resulted in great storms and terrible instances of outrageous and shameless behaviour, the plebeians, on the one hand, pretending they were unable to pay their debts, since their land had been laid waste during the long war, their cattle destroyed, the number of their slaves reduced by desertion and raids, and their fortunes in the city exhausted by their expenditures for the campaign, and the money-lenders, on the other hand, alleging that these misfortunes had been common to all and not confined to the debtors only, and regarding it as intolerable that they should lose, not only what they had been stripped of by the enemy in the war, but also what they had lent in time of peace to some of the citizens who asked for their assistance. [2] And as neither the money-lenders were willing to accept anything that was reasonable nor the debtors to do anything that was just, but the former refused to abate even the interest, and the latter to pay even the principal itself, those who were in the same plight were already gathering in knots and opposing parties faced one another in the Forum and sometimes actually came to blows, and the whole established order of the state was thrown into confusion. [3] Postumius, observing this, while he still retained the respect of all alike for having brought a severe war to an honourable conclusion, resolved to avoid the civil storms, and before he had completed the whole term of his sovereign magistracy he abdicated the dictatorship, and having fixed a day for the election, he, together with his fellow-consul, restored the traditional magistrates.
[23.1] The consuls who next took over the annual and legal magistracy were Appius Claudius Sabinus and Publius Servilius Priscus. They saw, rightly, that to render the highest service to the state they must divert the uproar in the city to foreign wars; and they were arranging that one of them should lead an expedition against the Volscian nation, with the purpose both of taking revenge on them for the aid they had sent to the Latins against the Romans and of forestalling their preparations, which as yet were not far advanced. For they too were reported to be enrolling an army with the greatest diligence and sending ambassadors to the neighbouring nations to invite them to enter into alliance with them, since they had learned that the plebeians were standing aloof from the patricians and thought that it would not be difficult to captured a city suffering from civil war. [2] The consuls, therefore, having resolved to lead an expedition against this people, and their resolution being approved of by the whole senate, they ordered all the men of military age to present themselves on the day they had appointed for making the levies of troops. But when the plebeians, though repeatedly summoned to take the military oath, would not obey the consuls, these were no longer both of the same mind, but beginning from this point, they were divided and continued to oppose one another during the whole time of their magistracy. [3] For Servilius thought they ought to take the milder course, thereby adhering to the opinion of Manius Valerius, the most democratic of the senators, who advised them to cure the cause of the sedition, preferably by decreeing an abolition or diminution
of the debts, or, failing that, by forbidding for the time being the haling to prison of the debtors whose obligations were overdue, and advised them to encourage rather than compel the poor to take the military oath, and not to make the penalties against the disobedient severe and inexorable, but moderate and mild. For there was danger, he said, that men in want of the daily necessities of life, if compelled to serve at their own expense, might get together and adopt some desperate course.
[24.1] But the opinion of Appius, the chief man among the leaders of the aristocracy, was harsh and arrogant. He advised that they should show no leniency toward the people in anything, but should even allow the money-lenders to enforce payment of the obligations upon the terms agreed upon, and should cause the courts of justice to sit, and that the consul who remained in the city should, in accordance with ancestral custom and usage, exact the punishments ordained by law against those who declined military service, and that they ought to yield to the people in nothing that was not just nor aid them in establishing a pernicious power. [2] “Why, even now,” he said, “they are pampered beyond all measure in consequence of having been relieved of the taxes they formerly paid to the kings and freed from the corporal punishments they received from them when they did not yield prompt obedience to any of their commands. But if they go further and attempt any disturbance or uprising, let us restrain them with the aid of the sober and sound element among the citizens, who will be found more numerous than the disaffected. [3] We have on hand for the task no slight strength in the patrician youth who are ready to obey our commands; but the great weapon of all, and one difficult to be resisted, with which we shall subdue the plebeians, is the power of the senate; with this let us overawe them, taking our stand on the side of the laws. But if we yield to their demand, in the first place, we shall incur disgrace by entrusting the government to the people when we have it in our power to live under an aristocracy; and secondly, we shall run no little danger of being deprived of our liberty again, in case some man inclined toward tyranny should win them over and acquire a power superior to the laws.” The consuls disputing in this manner, both by themselves alone and whenever the senate was assembled, and many siding with each, that body, after listening to their altercations and clamour and the unseemly speeches with which they abused one another, would adjourn without coming to any salutary decision.
Delphi Complete Works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 79) Page 52