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753-509 B.C.

Messana), Naxos, Cantana, Leontini, and Himera. The Achaean group embraced Sybaris and most of the cities of Magna Graecia. The Dorian group comprehended Syracuse, Gela, Agrigentum, and most of the Sicilian colonies; but in Italy it possessed only Tarentum and Heraclea. As to the period at which these several settlements took place, we rely on the fact that, while in Homer's time Sicily and Italy were practically unknown, in Hesiod's poems the outlines of these two lands are more clearly defined; and in the literature subsequent to Hesiod a general and fairly accurate knowledge appears to have been possessed by the Greeks. That Cumae was the oldest Greek settlement in Italy is generally allowed; that between that settlement and the main Greek immigration into Sicily and lower Italy a considerable period elapsed is also probable; but the first two dates in Italian history which can be regarded as fairly accurate are the founding of Sybaris by the Achaeans in 721 B.C., and that of the Dorian Tarentum in 708 B.C.

It is important to remember that the Italian and Sicilian Greeks always retained the closest connection with their old homes, and that therefore their history is always a history of Greeks, never of true Italians or Sicilians. This is most clearly shown by the league of the Achaean cities, comprising Siris, Pandosia, Metapontum, Sybaris with its offshoots Posidonia and Laus, Croton, Caulonia, Temesa, Terina, and Pyxus; which, like the Achaean league in the Peloponnese, preserved its own nationality, distinct alike from the barbarians of Italy and the other Greek colonies. These Achaean Greeks attained a very rapid prosperity, especially in the case of Sybaris, Croton, and Metapontum; but they did so more from the fertility of their soil, which they compelled the natives to cultivate for them, than from their own efforts in commerce or agriculture. This rapid bloom bore no fruit. Demoralized by a life of luxury and indolence, these Italian Greeks produced no famous names in Greek art or literature, and their political constitution, sapped in the first place by the attempt of a few families under the guise of Pythagorean philosophy to seize absolute power, and later torn by party feuds, slave insurrections, and the grossest social abuses, completely broke down. Thus the Achaeans exercised but little influence on the civilization of Italy; and the bilingual mongrel people, that arose out of the remains of the native Italians and Achaeans and the more recent immigrants of Sabellian descent, never attained any real prosperity.

753-509 B.C.

The other Greeks settled in Italy had a very different effect on that country. Although, unlike the Achaeans, they founded their cities by the best harbors, and mainly for trading purposes, they did not despise agriculture and the acquisition of territory. The two cities of greatest influence on Italy were the Doric Tarentum and the Ionic Cumae. The first named, from its possession of the only good harbor on the southern coast, from the rich fisheries on its gulf, from the excellence of its wool, and the dyeing of it with the purple juice of the Tarentine murex, rapidly acquired an unrivaled commercial position in the south of Italy. The fact, moreover, that the Greeks planted no colony on the Italian shore of the Adriatic, and only two of importance on the Illyrian coast, viz., Epidamnus and Apollonia, caused Tarentum to have no small share in the Adriatic commerce, carried on by Corinth and Corcyra; and, as Ancona and Brundisium rose at a far later period, the ports at the mouths of the Po were the only rivals of Tarentum along the whole east coast. Her intercourse by land with Apulia sowed the seeds of civilization in the southeast of Italy; but it is noteworthy that, as a rule, the eastern provinces of Italy acquired the elements of civilization, not from the scanty Greek settlements on the Illyrian and Italian coasts of the Adriatic, but from the more numerous colonies on the west coast of Italy. The people of Cumae, and of the other Greek stations near Vesuvius, attained a more moderate prosperity than either the Achaeans or Tarentines. The district they occupied was small, and they contented themselves with spreading Greek civilization by peaceful commercial intercourse rather than by a policy of conquest and oppression. There is no doubt that in very early times the western coast north of Vesuvius was visited by Greek voyagers, but the Latins and Etruscans successfully resisted the intruders, and north of Vesuvius no independent Greek community existed in historical times. Nay, we may conclude that the danger from Greek depredations first turned the attention of the Italians in central Italy to navigation and the founding of towns; Spina and Hatria at the mouth of the Po, and Ariminum further south, were Italian, not Greek foundations. Although this firm resistance was offered to the Greeks, yet, as far as Latium and southern Etruria were concerned, commercial intercourse was welcomed and fostered. Caere, Rome, and the cities at the mouth of the Po, not only prospered commercially by this friendly connection, but, as their earliest traditions show, enjoyed religious intercourse with the Greek oracles of

753-509 B.C.

Delphi and Cumae. The Greek voyagers met with a different treatment from the Etruscans proper, who wrested from their grasp the iron trade of Elba, and the silver mines of Populonia, and did not even allow individual traders to enter their waters. The union of the Etruscans with the Phoenicians, and the sudden rise of Carthage itself, arrested that Greek colonization which had, up to the middle of the second century of Rome, threatened to sweep the Phoenicians out of the Mediterranean. The establishment of Massilia, in 600 B.C., on the Celtic coast marks the limit of Greek enterprise; an attempt in 579 B.C. to settle at Libybacum was frustrated by the natives and the Phoenicians, and a similar fate befell the Phocaeans at Alalia in Corsica, which they evacuated after a naval battle with the combined Etruscans and Carthaginians in 537 B.C., preferring to settle at Hyele (Velia) in Lucania. In this struggle between the Greeks and the combined Etruscans and Phoenicians, Latium observed a strict neutrality, being on friendly and commercial relations with Caere, and Carthage on the one hand, and Velia and Massilia on the other. Although the Greeks did not give up the struggle, and even founded fresh stations, they no longer gained ground; and, after the foundation of Agrigentum in 580 B.C., they gained no important additions of territory on the Adriatic or on the western sea, and remained excluded from the Spanish waters as well as from the Atlantic ocean.

Chapter V

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REPUBLIC

509-508 B.C.

HE close of the regal period, and the causes which led to the subsequent changes in the Roman constitution, render it necessary for us to revert to the internal state of Rome Three distinct movements agitated the community.

itself. The first proceeded from the body of full citizens, and was confined to it: its object was to limit and lessen the life-power of the single president or king; in all such movements at Rome, from the time of the Tarquins to that of the Gracchi, there was no attempt to assert the rights of the individual at the expense of the state, nor to limit the power of the state, but only that of its magistrates. The second was the demand for equality of political privileges, and was the cause of bitter struggles between the full burgesses and those, whether plebeians, freedmen, Latins, or Italians, who keenly resented their political inequality. The third movement was an equally prolific source of trouble in Roman history; it arose from the embittered relations between landholders and those who had either lost possession of their farms, or, as was the case with many small farmers, held possession at the mercy of the capitalist or landlord. These three movements must be clearly grasped, as upon them hinges the internal history of Rome. Although often intertwined and confused with one another, they were, nevertheless, essentially and fundamentally distinct. The natural outcome of the first was the abolition of the monarchy-a result which we find everywhere, alike in Greek and Italian states, and which seems to have been a certain evolution of the form of constitution peculiar to both peoples. What is remarkable in the change at Rome, is that violent measures had to be adopted, and that the Tarquins, both the king and all the members of his clan, had to be forcibly expelled. The romantic details coloring this event do not affect the fact itself, nor are the reasons assigned by tradition undeserving of belief. Tarquin "the proud" is said to have neglected to consult the senate,

509-508 B.C.

and fill up the vacancies in it; to have pronounced sentences of death and confiscation without consulting his counselors; to have stored his own granaries, and exacted undue military service and other duties from the citizens. The formal vow registered by each citizen that no king should even again be tolerated, the blind hatred felt at Rome ever afterwards for the name of king, the enactment that the "king of sacrifice" (rex sacrorum) should never hold any other office, all these sufficiently testify to the exasperation of the people. There is no proof that foreign nations took part in the struggle which ensued between the royal house and its expellers, nor can we regard the great war with Etruria in that light, since, although successful, the Etruscans neither restored the monarchy nor even brought back the family of the Tarquins. The change, violently accomplished as it was, did not abolish the royal power; the one life-king was simply replaced by two year-kings, called either generals (praetores) or judges (judices) or, more commonly, colleagues (consules). Although, probably from the first, the consuls divided their functions-the one, for instance, taking charge of the army, the other of the administration of justice-such a partition was not binding, and each possessed and exercised the supreme power as completely as the king had done. In consequence of this each consul could forbid what the other enjoined, and thus the consular commands, being both absolute, would, if they clashed, neutralize one another. It is hard to parallel this system of coordinate supreme authorities, which, if not peculiarly Roman, was a peculiarly Latin institution. The object clearly was to preserve the regal power undiminished, but, by doubling the holder of this power, to neutralize its effects. The limit of a year, fixed for the duration of the consular office, was reckoned from the day of entry upon office to the day of the solemn laying down of power by the consuls; and, as the consuls to a certain extent laid down their power of their own free will, and as, even if they overstepped the year's limit, their consular acts were still valid, they were not so much. restricted directly by the law, as induced by it to restrict themselves. Still, the effect of this tenure of office for a set term was to abolish the irresponsibility of the king, who, as supreme judge, had been accountable to no tribunal and liable to no punishment. The consul, on the other hand, when his term had expired, and the protection given by his office had been removed, was liable to be called to account just like any other burgess. Together with the

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