The restoration of the consulship, if no change had been made, would have legally renewed its rights to the same extent, as they had been exercised by those consuls, whose election was carried in violation of law after the institution of the consular tribunate. The pretor's office would thus have remained united with it; whether the deputy or warden of the city, in the absence of both collegues, would have been appointed by them, or elected by the people, cannot be conjectured, since traces of this magistracy, from the time of the decemvirate, only occur in those years which have consular tribunes.

In this manner the consular power, the division and limitation of which had been urgently demanded ninety years before, would have been restored in its full strength, with the exception of the censorship; and it is not surprising that parties now took quite a different view of the matter from what they did then. The patricians, whose forefathers had represented every diminution of the consulship as an attempt against the soverain power, now demanded the separation as vehemently as at one time their opponents, in order that the power taken away from it might remain a prerogative of their own: but if this were to be done, the plebeians now thought, that the accumulation of powers in one office was a disadvantage which might easily be borne.

In the same year, if Polybius's reckoning is correct, the Romans concluded the first peace with the Gauls; consequently for the same reasons which occasioned their peace with Alexander, and that they might be safe on this side during the war with the Samnites. Livy's account under the same year, that apprehensions of a Gallic invasion were spread abroad, and that a dictator was appointed: that the persons however sent out in order to collect information reported, that every thing was quiet among the Gauls, has an obscure reference to that statement: so far did the annals leave traces of an embassy despatcht to the Gauls; the mention of the peace was obliterated. To conclude such a peace with the Romans, who had no kind of connexion with them, unless they themselves marcht against Rome, the Gauls could have had no occasion, except it was solicited, and no reason to grant it, except presents, if not an annual tribute, which even the proudest have often considered to be no dishonour to pay to barbarians; for certainly this peace, which protected all nations dependent upon the Romans, however distant Rome herself was, almost put an end to their marauding expeditions. The northern boundary of Etruria was protected by the impassable nature of the Apennines: the road through the Abruzzi was easily defended by the brave inhabitants, and might have been dreaded by the barbarians on account of more than one defeat: there remained the middle road through Umbria which was certainly subdued, and down the lower Tiber.

In this period king Demetrius the Besieger reigned; who, when Roman privateers had been taken up in the Greek seas, sent the prisoners to the senate, but added the reproach, that a Greek people, which thought itself entitled to the dominion of Italy, and had erected a temple in its market-place to the Dioscuri, the tutelary deities of navigation, allowed pirates to sail out. The letter which exprest these complaints, was of course brought over by an embassy: an opportunity for forming connexions, from which sooner or later an alliance might possibly arise, must have been very welcome to a prince like Demetrius. The privateers belonged to some one of the subject maritime towns, which were infected by the piracy of the neighbouring Etruscans. The Tyrrhenian ships, which had served Agathocles a few years before, were probably privateers, and Tyrrhenian piracy rendered the Ægean sea unsafe, until the Rhodians put an end to it; from which time the power of this new maritime state began. This time falls a little later, and the Greeks may have owed their deliverance from this scourge to the measures, which the Romans were enabled to take after the subjugation of Etruria.

During this period Rome was embellisht with buildings, streets, and important works of art, partly from the booty taken in war, and partly from the fines accruing from the accusations of the ediles.

Until all Roman institutions acquired fixt stability, it was quite common for more than five years to elapse before new censors were chosen: but it is, so far as we can know, without example, that it ever happened in a shorter time, and that new censors were elected three times in eight years: for Q. Fabius and P. Decius were elected in 443 (449), eight years after Appius and Plautius, 436 (442). This rapid succession, the choice of two friends of congenial minds, who were the first in their respective orders, leads us to conclude without any doubt, that they were called upon to remedy the evil which by a longer delay it might not have been easy to cure by peaceful means. Now it is well known, that the consequences of Appius's innovation were got the better of by these censors, that peace and a legitimate order of things returned through their means, and that such scandals as the election of Flavius no longer occurred, that they confined the libertini to the four city tribes, that this is universally stated as the means by which that great result was brought about, and that Q. Fabius, who must be regarded as the soul of this decisive undertaking, received in consequence the surname of Maximus.

So long as the Etruscan calendar remained in use in civil life also, the nundines, on which the country people came to the city, were at the same time the days, on which the kings gave judges and administered justice, and on which business could be transacted before them according to the law. These nundines were thirty-eight in number, which always fell on the same day of the month every year. But when the twelve months' year was introduced, and it was at the same time found advisable to separate the nundines from the court-days, the number of the latter, the dies fasti, remained unaltered, thirty-eight: which is by the way a clear proof, that what I have said respecting the civil use of the ten months' year is not a mere fancy. But these thirty-eight days were now distributed among all the twelve months, without any perceptible rule being observed in the distribution: and as business increast, justice was administered on the comitial days also, when no comitia were held, and the pontiffs granted for the transaction of business even some hours of many dies nefasti, before the religious obstacle commenced or when it was over. It was therefore now a matter of importance to know, in order that time might not be lost by coming for no purpose, nor the proper times be neglected, which days were entirely nefasti and which only half and during what hours: and this every one was obliged to learn from the pontiffs as often as he wanted to know it.

When fire-arms in the seventeenth century were made more usable and handy, it was soon perceived, that troops provided with them in greater proportion, and drawn up with a larger front, had such decided advantages over the deep masses arranged in the old fashion, and armed for the most part with pikes, that it was thought wiser, if the soldier could have the necessary individual training, to submit to the disadvantages which sometimes could not be avoided in an engagement with deep masses. In the same way Iphicrates, about the hundredth Olympiad, had considered, that the phalanx could only be overcome either by an overwhelming increase of the masses and of physical power, that is, by increasing the depth of the ranks and the strength of the spears, or by picking out and training the individual for a service, which held a middle place between that of the phalangite and the arquebusier. It must have appeared that with the former system both parties would again be on an equality after a short time, as those who suffered would, with the most ordinary degree of common sense, adopt the innovation, the only difficulty of which consisted in the management of the spears: the second could not be applied in the case of a militia, but afforded decided advantages to mercenary troops when permanently assembled.

Of C. Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius, to whom Rome owed her regeneration, we know scarcely any thing more than their names, and, very imperfectly, the substance of their laws. But the greatness and boldness of the plan of their legislation, their unwearied perseverance, the calmness, with which they allowed their work to proceed to its completion, while they confined themselves strictly to the paths permitted by the law, so that neither they nor the commonalty are charged with the slightest act of violence, although the annals continued for a long time afterwards to be written exclusively by the hostile party:—all this gives us the means of judging of their spirit and of their character. A revolution, which in the Greek republics or at Florence would have commenced with violence, have succeeded or failed within a few months, and been sealed with banishment and blood, was developt at Rome during five years of incessant and manly struggle, without disturbing the peace of a single citizen.

It is a piece of malice, as common as it is hateful, in the enemies of the memory of great men and of great deeds, to trace such deeds to low motives, as opposite as possible to the loftiness of their real aims; as indeed down to this day, in spite of the most convincing arguments to the contrary, it is asserted that Luther was urged to the reformation by the envy of his brother monks, by the Dominicans, and by the desire of marrying his nun.

The state of peace with the Etruscans ever since the taking of the city by the Gauls is the more surprising, since the two nations up to that time had struggled against each other with a vehemence and an exertion, such as never had been manifested in the conduct of the Latin wars. During the first half century after the expulsion of the kings it was the Etruscan wars, which brought Rome down more than any others; and the destruction of one of the great Etruscan towns and the possession of its whole territory, as well as the alienation of another allied city, Capua, were occasions which might have induced even a peaceful nation, which the Etruscans in former times by no means appear to have been, to seize every opportunity for recovering what was lost: and those wounds were still quite fresh, when Rome's fall and weakness gave the greatest hopes. Yet all their attempts are confined to the attack upon Sutrium and Nepete, four years after the taking of Rome; and this war is carried on so feebly, that it is clear, that it can only have been the enterprise of a single town, the neighbouring Volsinii. Just as little do the Romans repeat those campaigns against Volsinii, which previous to the Gallic calamity had to overcome such few difficulties; and it is only in the last years of the fourth century that a war arises with any of the Etruscan people and then with the Tarquinians alone; for the Faliscans were Æquians.

The three campaigns which still followed, before the war in southern Italy was brought to a close, seem, with the exception of the fate of Tarentum, to have past away without such occurrences as stand forth in a manner to attract the attention of hasty and unlearned epitomisers, amid the repetition of monotonous narratives of the ravages of war and the taking of unimportant places. This however is evident, that Rome availed herself of the entire removal of all danger, in order to recover breath after the continued exertions of the last nine years, which had been increast since the landing of Pyrrhus beyond all previous example: otherwise the first two years would have been adorned not merely by a single triumph over the Tarentines and Samnites. In order to have rest themselves, they allowed the Lucanians and Bruttians to rest.

Tarentum meantime was already doing penance for the outrage she had committed. A phrurarchus regarded himself as tyrant of the city entrusted to his power, and it was only in consequence of a mild disposition, which but few among those usurpers possest and Milo not at all, that this power was not exercised in the most revolting manner. Many citizens conspired against him; as their undertaking failed, those who succeeded in making their escape, took possession of a castle where they obtained peace from the Romans.