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Chapter VIII

FALL OF ETRUSCAN POWER AND THE COMING OF

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THE CELTS. 500-343 B.C.

HE last three chapters have been devoted to the internal struggles of Rome, and their political results; we can

now turn to the external history both of Rome and of Italy. Two notable events meet our eyes-firstly, the collapse of the Etruscan power: secondly, the incursions of the Celts. About 500 B.C. the Etruscans had reached their zenith of prosperity. Allied with the Carthaginians, who were absolute masters of Sardinia, and had a firm foothold in Sicily, they ruled the Etruscar and Adriatic seas. Although Massilia retained her independence, the seaports of Campania and of the Volscian land, and the island of Corsica, were in their hands. The possession of Latium, which interposed a firm barrier between Etruria proper and the Tuscan settlements in Campania, was naturally of the utmost importance; and, for a short time, the conquest of Rome by Lars Porsena in 507 B.C. seemed to open out a prospect of the realization of Tuscan supremacy in Italy. But the advance of the victorious Etruscans into Latium received a check beneath the walls of Aricia, from the timely succor of the people of Cumae in 506 B.C. The end of this war is unknown; possibly the disgraceful terms of the peace, which Rome had concluded with Lars Porsena the previous year, were somewhat modified; but, for a time at least, Latium was in imminent danger of being reduced to subjection by Etruscan arms. Fortunately, however, for Rome, the main strength of the Etruscan nation was diverted from Latium, and called to do battle elsewhere; while Veii and the neighboring towns grappled with Rome, the rest of the Etruscans were engaged in another cause.

The arrest of Greek colonization by the combined Etruscans and Carthaginians has been already described; a more deadly blow, on a far grander scale, if we may believe tradition, threatened the whole Greek world. The simultaneous defeat of the Persians at Salamis and the Carthaginians at Himera by the rulers of Syracuse

483-310 B.C.

and Agrigentum, Gelon, and Theron, in 480 B.C., utterly crushed the great combination of Persians, Carthaginians, and Etruscans against liberty and civilization. Six years later the Cumaeans and Hiero of Syracuse vanquished the Etruscan fleet off Cumae; and the rise of Syracuse to the chief power in Sicily, and of Tarentum to the leading position in the south of Italy, put an end to the maritime supremacy of both Etruscans and Carthaginians. Syracuse in 453 B.C. ravaged the island of Corsica and the Etrurian coast, and occupied Elba; and later, in 415 to 413 B.C., the Athenian expedition against Syracuse, which received support from Etruscan galleys, ended in ignominious failure, and left Syracuse free to turn on her old enemy with redoubled vigor. Dionysius, who reigned from 406 to 367 B.C., founded Syracusan colonies on the Illyrian coast at Lissus and the island of Issa, and on the eastern coast of Italy at the ports of Ancona, Numana, and Hatria; thus ousting the Etruscans from the Adriatic. In addition to this, he captured, in 358 B.C., Pyrgi, the rich seaport of Caere, a blow from which the Etruscans never recovered. Later, too, when the death of Dionysius and the ensuing political troubles of Syracuse opened the way to Carthaginian arms, we find that the revival of maritime. supremacy by Carthage brought no similar revival to their old allies the Etruscans. On the contrary, the relations between the two powers had become so strained, that in 310 B.C. Tuscan menof-war assisted Agathocles of Syracuse in his war against Carthage, and the old alliance was thus severed. This rapid collapse of the naval power of the Etruscans was due in great measure to the fact that, at the same time that they were struggling with the Sicilian Greeks by sea, they were assailed on all sides by foes on land. During the period of the combination of Persians, Carthaginians, and Etruscans, above alluded to, a bitter war raged between Rome and Veii from 483 to 474 B.C. Its result was so far favorable to Rome that the Etruscans gave up Fidenae, and the district they had won on the right bank of the Tiber. Moreover, the Samnites attacked the Etruscan settlements in Campania; Capua fell in 424 B.C., and the Etruscan population was extirpated or expelled. But in northern Italy a new nation was knocking at the gates of the Alps. It was the Celts; and the brunt of their inroad fell first upon the Etruscans.

The character of the Celtic nation, their origin, and the part they played in Italian history at this period now claim our attention.

426-406 B.C.

Nature, though she lavished upon the Celts her most brilliant gifts, had denied them those more solid and enduring qualities which lead to the highest human development, alike in morality and politics. They preferred a pastoral life to an agricultural, and had none. of that attachment to their native soil which characterized the Italians and the Germans. Their fondness for congregating in towns and villages did not lead them to develop political constitutions. As a nation they had little sense of unity; their individual communities were equally deficient in sincere patriotism, consistent purpose, and united effort. Ever ready to rove, they were the true soldiers-of-fortune in antiquity, and possessed all the qualities of good soldiers, but of bad citizens,-qualities which explain the historical fact that the Celts have shaken all states and founded none. These people at a very early period settled in modern France; from there they crossed over to Britain in the north, and in the south passed the Pyrenees, and contested the possession of Spain with the Iberian tribes. Our history is immediately concerned with their movements in the opposite direction, when, leaving their homes in the West, they retraced their steps and poured over the Alps in ceaseless streams. Their hordes, on passing the Graian Alps by the little St. Bernard, first formed the Celtic canton of the Insubres, with Milan as its capital. The canton of the Cenonmani, with the towns of Brescia and Verona, soon followed. The Ligurians were dislodged, and the possessions of the Etruscans on the left bank of the Po were soon wrested from their grasp; Melpum fell, and soon the invaders crossed the Po, and assailed the Etruscans and Umbrians in their original home. Isolated roving bands no doubt reached the borders of Etruria proper, and about the middle of the fourth century the Tuscan nation were practically restricted to that land which still bears their name. About the year 426 B.C. the Etruscans were thus engaged in war with three enemies: in the north with the encroaching Celts; in the south with the Samnites, who had invaded Campania; and with the Romans. A fresh outbreak of hostilities between Rome and Veii was due to the revolt of the people of Fidenae, who had murdered the Roman envoys and called in the help of Lars Tolumnius, king of Veii. This king was slain by the consul Aulus Cornelius Cossus, and the war ended favorably to the Romans. After a truce, during which the position of Etruria grew more and more critical, war broke out again in 406 B.C. between Rome and Veii: the latter received support from

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396-358 B.C.

Capena and Falerii, but, owing to their struggles with the Celts, and their dislike for the regal form of government in Veii, the Etruscan nation as a whole gave no aid to the hard-pressed Veientines. The city fell in 396 B.C., and was destroyed by the triumphant Romans, to whom the heroism of Marcus Furius Camillus had first opened up the brilliant and perilous career of foreign conquest. Tradition tells us that Melpum and Veii fell on the same day; whether this be so or not, the double assault from the north and the south, and the fall of the two frontier strongholds, were the beginning of the end of the great Etruscan nation. For a moment, however, it seemed as if the folly of Rome was destined to turn aside from the head of the Etruscans the sword of the foreign barbarian. In 391 B.C. Clusium, situated in the heart of Etruria, was hard pressed by the Celtic Senones; so low was Tuscan pride, that Clusium begged aid from the destroyers of Veii. Rome, however, in place of substantial help, dispatched envoys, who attempted to impose on the Celts by haughty language; when this failed, the envoys violated the law of nations by fighting in the ranks of the men of Clusium. To the demand of the barbarians for the surrender of these envoys the Romans refused to listen. Then the Brennus, or king of the Gallic host, abandoned the siege of Clusium, and turned against Rome. The battle of the Allia in 390 B.C., and the capture and destruction of Rome, taught the Romans a bitter lesson. The horrors of this catastrophe, the burning of the city, the saving of the Capitol by the sacred geese, and the brave Marcus Manlius, the scornful throwing down into the scale of the Gallic sword, have left a lasting impression on the imagination of posterity; but the victory of the Gauls had no permanent consequences -nay, it only served to knit more closely the ties of union between Latium and rebuilt Rome. The Gauls often returned to Rome during this century. Camillus, indeed, crowned his great career by defeating them at Alba in 367 B.C.; the dictator Gaius Sulpicius Peticus routed a Gallic host in 358 B.C., and eight years later Lucius Furius Camillus, the son of the celebrated general, dislodged the Gauls from the Alban mount, where they had encamped during the winter. But these plundering incursions only. served to make all Italy regard Rome as the bulwark against the barbarians, and thus to further her claim, not only to supremacy in Italy, but also to universal empire. The Etruscans had attempted to recover what they had lost in the Veientine war, while the Celts.

387-343 B.C.

were assailing Rome. When the barbarians had departed, Rome turned once more on her old enemy. The whole of southern Etruria, as far as the Ciminian range, passed into Roman hands, and the advanced frontier line was secured by the fortresses of Sutrium and Nepete, established respectively in 383 and 373 B.C. Moreover, four new tribes were formed in the territories of Veii, Capena,

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and Falerii, in 387 B.C., and the whole country became rapidly Romanized. A revolt of Tarquinii, Falerii, and Caere, about 358 B.C., against Roman aggression was soon crushed; and Caere had to cede half its territory, and withdraw from the Etruscan league. The relation of political subjection in which Caere stood to Rome was called "citizenship without the power of voting" (civitas sine suffragio); thus the state lost its freedom, but could still administer its own affairs. This occurred in 351 B.C.; and eight years later

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