Livy and Dion, the latter of whom is entirely independent of the opinions of the former, being much more careful in investigating the connexion of events, had expressly represented this war in the same connexion with those in southern Italy, as Gellius Egnatius had made war upon the Romans in the north. Zonaras mentions the Tarentines as those who had stirred up the Etruscans, Gauls, Samnites and others against Rome, although they themselves did not come forward. An extract from Dion himself relates, that the Tarentines and others by embassadors persuaded the Etruscans, Umbrians and Gauls to revolt from Rome: Orosius states, that the Lucanians, Bruttians and Samnites allied themselves with the Gauls and Etruscans. Better authority for a connexion which is highly probable, cannot be sought for a period like this; nevertheless, although the Lucanian war must have broken out earlier than the Senonian, I shall defer mention of the former, till I shall have treated of the last efforts of Etruria for its independence.

I have already remarkt that the Volsinians, sometimes supported by a part of the western towns, but abandoned by Tarquinii, Perusia, Cortona, and Arretium, seem to have laid down their arms only during short intervals throughout the whole of this period. The prospect of a general war in southern Italy must have given them new courage; it seemed at last, as if all that were still left would rise against the enemies of all: but the most important point was the participation of the Gauls.

The institutions, which manifestly point to the division of the earliest Roman people into three tribes, attest just as clearly, that these original tribes of the patrician houses were not equal among one another: nay the inequality of the third tribe (of the gentes minores) always continued to exist in some points, probably because there was no legal form of remedying it after the abolition of the kingly dignity.

Probably each tribe had one of the three higher flamens, who always remained patricians: the Quirinalis was added to the Dialis and Martialis, both of whom had existed previously and rankt higher: the relation which the six priestesses of Vesta bore to the tribes, is acknowledged, and has only been applied too artificially to their subdivisions also. Originally there were only two; to these two more were added by the union of the Sabines with the Ramnes, whereby the senate also was increast to two hundred, and two kings reigned: at a much later time the third pair was added from the lower houses. This completion is ascribed to Tarquinius Priscus, in the same way as the admission of the third hundred into the senate from the same gentes; with less consistency by others to Servius Tullius, because the legislation which bears his name, does not affect the patrician institutions.

The peace, which terminated the third Samnite war, seems to have placed the Lucanians in a more favorable position: the hostages, which Rome never took from her subjects except during transitory circumstances, must have been restored to them. Without the dissolution of this bond they would scarcely have ventured upon wars displeasing to Rome, although it does not prevent rebellion in case of direct oppression.

For upwards of forty years, since the death of Alexander of Epirus, the Lucaniaus had almost disappeared from history: according to their ancient custom they now availed themselves of the independence they had recovered, to make war against the Thurians, in the same way as after the second Samnite war they had immediately taken up arms against the Tarentines. A hundred years before, Thurii, after it had risen to an almost incredible degree of prosperity and population in scarcely sixty years from its foundation, had received a blow from the Lucanians in the battle of Laos, from which it never recovered. From that time Magna Græcia had been exhausted through the enterprises of the Sicilian tyrants, through the attacks of the Lucanians and Bruttians, and even through the wars which checkt these their hereditary foes: several Greek towns were entirely destroyed or had become barbarous: Thurii seems never to have been taken during the whole of this period, but it certainly endeavoured to save itself, like the other towns of this coast, by treaties sometimes with the tyrants of Sicily and sometimes with the Italican barbarians.

In several years of this period there appear symptoms of the patricians not having yet renounced the foolish dream, of winning back by stubbornness the privileges irrecoverably lost: their attempts, though tormenting and vexatious, did not endanger the peace, because, though they were inflexible enough to renew the contest continually, they were still not so rash as to venture upon extremes, when they encountered the resistance which they dreamt had ceast. Many were still alive in the vigour and maturity of their age, who retained the ineffaceable recollection of their old exclusive dominion and indignation at being conquered: it was necessary for another generation to step into their place, which knew of the olden time only as a matter of tradition, before there could be peace; and few of their grandchildren would have been so blind as to wish, even if it had been possible, to recover then what had been lost, and to take it in exchange for that which had arisen for them and for all: but the undertaking could not have succeeded, and the wiser descendants of both parties must have regarded it as the greatest good fortune, that irrational strife did not annihilate the equipoise in the republic by injuring the aristocracy.

The same feeling is manifested by a dictator being appointed for some time almost every year to hold the comitia for elections; but a plebeian raised to this dignity was compelled by absurd pretexts to lay it down; and after this fourteen interrexes followed, as on a former occasion five, before the election of the consuls was completed.

When all the troops and transport-vessels were assembled, which had come from Tarentum, the king hastened to embark, although the stormy season of the year was not yet over: and scarcely had the fleet set sail, when a storm broke out from the north, which cast most of the ships upon the wide sea, drove many upon the beach, and sunk several. Pyrrhus himself scarcely escaped alive from the shipwreck, and arrived at Tarentum with an insignificant force. Now the king allowed the Tarentines to act as they pleased, until the ships which the storm had spared, were collected near Tarentum: but when his troops were assembled, he laid claim to dictatorial power, without which the objects of those Greeks could be no more attained, than he himself could exist with his honour and his army. It was not the Tarentines alone who refused to engage in military service, but all the inhabitants of the Greek towns of that time did the same, since it had for more than a hundred years become the calling of the soldiery: and if, which rarely happened, a civic militia was employed, things went on lamentably: but in the phalanx every one was useful who had strong limbs; if Pyrrhus was to make any use of the population of Tarentum for the infantry, it was necessary to have them levied and enrolled among his foot-soldiers, and he had to fill up immediately the gaps which had arisen in consequence of the shipwreck.

The miraculous signs, which preceded the Gallic war, and their interpretation by the aruspex Manius, are equivalent to an historical testimony, that Rome was visited by famine and pestilence during very brilliant years of war. In accordance with the interpretation of those signs the famine rose to such a highth, that hunger was appeased by grass and the most loathsome food. According to the order in which they are mentioned, the pestilence must have preceded the famine, and then it could only have been spoken of in Livy's eleventh book: else the contrary succession is all the more probable, as the epidemic, which visited Rome this time, seems to have been nothing else but an ordinary typhus. Earlier ones, which I have pointed out as true pestilences, were contemporaneous with equally murderous epidemics on the other coasts of the Mediterranean: this one stands isolated, and no one is mentioned who was carried off by it. The war, from the manner in which it was carried on in those years, might have occasioned both calamities: famine, if there was a bad harvest during the repeated devastations of Campania, and typhus in the armies, which had to endure all imaginable privations in districts that had been laid waste far and wide, although they still continued to obtain booty in places taken by storm.

When this epidemic was raging in the third year of the war in 453 (459), the Sibylline books were consulted, and in accordance with their oracle, which prescribed that Æsculapius should be brought from Epidaurus to Rome, ten embassadors were sent thither with a trireme.

It was moreover owing to the awkwardness and inefficiency of the Samnite government, that the Samnites were not prepared when the war was declared, and that they conducted their preparations so slowly, that neither was any attempt made to relieve Neapolis, nor were the Romans stopt by an army in the taking of Allifæ and other places, when they entered Samnium across the Vulturnus from the Volscian frontier. This expedition belongs to the earlier months of the year 423 (428): the taking of Palæpolis to the first months of the year 424 (429).

That the army which blockaded the two Greek towns, might not be left without a commander, since the comitia had been protracted for two months without producing any result in consequence of the renewed obstinacy of the patricians, proconsular power was given to Q. Publilius Philo by an ordinance of the senate and a plebiscitum, in order to bring the war against the Greeks to a close. This power conferred the auspices and the full imperium of a consul, and not merely the supreme command of an army and the right as general to reward and punish, but jurisdiction also. But as the power of the tribunes only extended a mile beyond the city, so on the other hand the city and this its immediate vicinity were exempted from the proconsular power, which was conferred without the auspices by a mere decree of the two governing powers, and not by the lawful comitia for election.

Tacitus says, that the uncial rate of interest was introduced by the twelve tables: Livy represents it as establisht in 393 (398) in consequence of a rogation. Now it is clear, that the Licinian law cannot have found the interest limited, for the merciless usurers would without fail have extorted a far higher interest than the law allowed, and then nothing more would have been necessary, than to leave to the debtors the fourfold fine forfeited to the state. However, it does not seem credible, that Tacitus, who was by no means indifferent to the antiquities of Roman history, should not have read the twelve tables; and to say that he quoted them carelessly, violates the reverence due to his memory. The supposition, that an enactment of the twelve tables had fallen into disuse, and that therefore its renewal had become necessary, whereby a commentator worthy of all honour endeavoured to reconcile the two historians, seems inconceivable to me; the time down to the general prevalence of debts before the Licinian law is too short for that: but that law might perhaps have been expressly repealed. Its existence in the twelve tables is supported by the state of things before the Gallic time, when not the slightest complaint is heard of oppressive interest: moreover it is clear, that without an interest fixt by law there could not have been the punishment of the fourfold fine for usurers; and Cato, who unquestionably knew the twelve tables by heart, places this as a part of the legislation of his same ancestors by the side of the twofold fine for theft.