The whole country opposite Corcyra and the Cephallenian islands, from the Acroceraunian rocks as far as the Rhion, bore the name of Epirus, or the continent, in contradistinction to those islands, in ancient times and even during the Peloponnesian war. It was not till later, when Ætolia and Acarnania had come forth from their obscurity, and most tribes north of the Ambracian gulph had been united into one kingdom, that the narrower geographical signification of the name arose, which supplanted the former one, and it now became customary to call Epirots the inhabitants of that country, who were not Greeks, especially those who formed that state.

These Epirots were no more Greeks than the Sicelians: Thucydides expressly calls them barbarians, and even Polybius, without using the harsh expression which had become more unusual in his time, says distinctly, that the Epirot tribes which were united with the Ætolians, were not Greeks. They were however by no means, like the Thracians or Illyrians, quite forein to the Greeks, but rather a kindred people: so that he who paid most regard to affinity, might in certain respects consider them as Greeks; and that they were reckoned among Greeks in later times, must surprise us all the less, inasmuch as this honour was confered upon the people in western Asia, among whom the Greek language had become predominant in business and society, since Carians and Lydians past at Rome as Greeks, and were admitted to the Olympian contests.

As Capua was a part of the Roman state, it may be comprised in the internal history. Wardens (praefecti) had been sent thither from the year 431 (436), and the pretor L. Furius composed laws for the city. Livy, who relates this, adds, that the Campanians had requested both, as a remedy for the internal disturbances, which had worn out their state. But the commentators have been justly surprised, how a magistrate under the Oscan name of Meddix tuticus could have afterwards been at the head of the Campanian republic: and we may remark in addition, that the dignity and estimation, which Capua enjoyed down to the war with Hannibal, exclude every thought of this city having been degraded to the most complete state of subjection. But since brief statements of this kind can least of all be rejected as fictitious, it remains for us to endeavour to understand them. That a magistrate of a city which was most friendly to it, should have been called to legislate, would have been something quite common: when confusion prevailed in their domestic affairs, the nations of antiquity thought least of all of expecting relief from the collective deliberation of legislative assemblies, nay the idea would have appeared to them senseless: and that Capua was suffering from unfortunate dissensions, is rendered probable by the division between the nobility and commonalty in the Latin war.

It is an essential part of the vocation I have chosen,—in clearing up the history of Rome, so far as my powers and the existing resources allow, in such a manner, that it may become no less familiar and perceptible than that of modern times, in which we have not lived ourselves,—to give such a representation of the nations and states, with which Rome came into contact in the extension of her empire either in relations of friendship or in war, that the reader instead of a mere name, such as that of Epirots or Ætolians, may know in general outlines, what was then the extent of their state, what their power, and what their constitution and mode of living. These representations are in general the fruits of an attention directed from early life to all notices respecting nations and periods that have been despised and overlookt; and in some cases of enquiries not less laborious than those, by which I have brought into order the chaos of the early times of Rome, but with which I shall avoid increasing the size of a work, whose unavoidable expansion leaves me on the borders of old age little hope of completing it.

The expedition of king Alexander of Epirus to Italy gives occasion to such a digression; an event, which had, it is true, no immediate connexion with Roman history, with the exception of a treaty that produced no results, and respecting the indirect effects of which little can be ascertained with certainty in consequence of the confusion in the relations of Magna Græcia, but which nevertheless had an influence that affected the relations of the Romans to the people of those countries.

As if it were an hereditary obligation to protect the freedom of the citizen, the consul M. Valerius renewed in more careful terms in the year 446 (452) the law of his ancestor, which secured an appeal to the people in cases where the highest magistrates had sentenced a person to corporal punishment, but still without affixing a definite punishment for the offender. The different degrees of the crime and of the excuses that might be made for it, were of too various a kind, not to leave it entirely to the discretion of the tribunes in those times, which feared to endanger the power of those who were called to the government, whether they should bring forward an accusation for a heavier or a lighter punishment when the time came, in case they should not be able, which can seldom have happened, to prevent the outrage.

I assign to about this period the Lex Furia respecting wills, which is evidently very much older than the Voconian law, and the author of which may probably be supposed to be the same L. Furius, who wrote laws for the conventus at Capua in 430 (436). This law, which, as is well known, forbade with a few exceptions, of which the particulars are not stated, any single person to bequeath by will more than a thousand ases, and which condemned him who received more in violation of the law, to a fourfold punishment like a usurer, is of importance on acocunt of the causes which gave rise to it.

The tenth book of Livy is in reality the only source for the first six years of the third Samnite war with the exception of a few insignificant accounts; and we miss with the lost annals of Diodorus those brief statements, which borrowed, though hastily and with ignorance, from original annals, nevertheless served so often as a check upon Livy's narrative during the greater half of the second war. Concerning the last three campaigns, as well as concerning the whole period down to the war against Pyrrhus, only scattered statements are preserved, and though these are in truth but scanty, yet however much they may be so, we must not at all suppose, that we possess very much less of the real history than would remain after an unprejudiced consideration of a detailed account. For it must be acknowledged, that the history of this war in Livy is evidently much more precise than that of the preceding one: and if every trace of most of the places in Samnium had not been obliterated, one could have followed the description of the occurrences in more than one campaign from place to place: several parts are already of quite an historical nature, as the statements respecting the booty and especially the history of Fabius's campaign in 449 (455), in which everything sounds credible and fair.

The Samnites were then in the fulness of their strength: in extent of territory, and of population too, they were certainly far superior to Rome and her allies. Their tribes extended from the Lower sea, where they separated Campania from Lucania, right up to the Upper: towards the Liris, in the mountains of Lucania, and down upon the plains of Apulia, their territories embraced far more than the space, which bears the name of Samnium upon the maps: but the Campanians and Lucanians had become estranged from the mother people. Samnium itself however was not a single state, but a confederacy of different and independent countries, which were consequently jealous of their allies in maintaining their own independence. One of them, the Pentrians, took no part in one campaign in the midst of the war against the Romans: a part of the Samnites received the Roman municipium: namely, the Caudines, of whom Sp. Postumius was a municeps. According to all appearance there were four of these Samnite tribes, in accordance with the regulative number of the Sabellians, like that of the Marsian confederacy: the Caudines, Hirpinians, Pentrians, and Frentanians: the latter of whom had certainly not become separated from them yet, as they are at that time expressly reckoned among the Samnites by foreiners. The southern country from Surrentum to the Silarus may have contained none but allied or subject places, and not have formed a part of the confederacy.

The wars of this period prove, that the Licinian legislation freed the republic from pernicious fetters, which had kept her in deplorable and wretched weakness. Hitherto it has been only the internal struggles of life to break through this deadening restraint, which were worthy of attention; from this time begins the development of Rome in her call to rule over the nations. Complaints concerning the oppression of the taxes die away; the impossibility of paying them has vanisht, because the republic has returned to the full enjoyment of her rich possessions: no opposition to the levying of troops is heard of, but on the contrary dissatisfaction, when the soldiers are dismist from the colours against their will; so quickly had the nation become fond of war, so rich was it in warlike virtues and soldiers, from the time that every one had acquired the power of gaining the place due to him and a free farm.

We must not be misled, when the historians speak, as if the Gauls had come down for the purpose of making war against Rome: the chronicles had confined themselves to the still very limited circle of domestic occurrences, and the carelessness of later writers overlookt the general fate of Italy. The Gauls however did not seek Rome, distant many days' journey from their own home, and divided from it by other nations, but they laid waste also the Roman territory and Latium in the course of those desolating wanderings, by which they penetrated into the most distant districts.

Though a firm hand had secured the promist benefits, yet nothing but time and the gentle force of habit could establish a sincere peace between two orders, which had now past over to a state of equality from one of longstanding oppression and insult. The blindness of the patricians prevented them from perceiving, how vain their attempts were, to recover their lost privileges: it was necessary that such attempts should become dangerous to them, before the republic could enjoy internal peace with freedom. Before this object was attained, five and twenty years past by in supprest but violent agitations.

After the revolution, which had become possible through external peace, there followed an unusual calm, while the government was wholly engaged in carrying the laws into effect. It may also be true, that the senate did not wish for any war, in order to keep the plebeian consul in inglorious inactivity. Natural events of a destructive kind prevented this tranquillity from restoring the republic to health: a pestilence raged: and the river overflowed the low districts. But so changed was the general feeling in little more than one generation, that now the comitia could not be disturbed by the pretended indignation of the gods at the election from unworthy houses. The fourth year was already passing away without war: and now there ripened in the patricians the scheme for putting a stop to the operations of the Licinian law by the old terrours of the dictatorship, and by a forced levy of troops.

The fate of the Hernicans was upon the whole decided in the same way as that of the Latins had been thirty years before. The three towns which had not revolted, retained their laws, and mutual connubium: without doubt the commercium too: but scarcely the right of holding diets. Anagnia and the other Hernicans became municipia without the suffragium and were governed by prefects, who exercised jurisdiction among them, and whom the Roman pretor appointed annually: for their ordinary magistrates who remained nominally, in order that the worship of the gods might not be disturbed, were exclusively confined to the performance of the priestly functions of their office. They were deprived of the connubium with the other Hernicans and undoubtedly of the commercium also, and this too with the same intentions as the Latins had been. Frusino lost according to Diodorus as early as 441 (447), according to Livy as a punishment for an attempt to excite the nation to revolt in 444 (450), a third part of its territory: which land, as Diodorus states, was sold. Rome had now got rid of the obligations incumbent upon it by the treaty, though these perhaps latterly had no longer consisted in giving up a third part of the spoil, but in the Roman treasury giving pay to the contingent of the Hernicans, and only assigning a part of the spoil to them: which was considered so important a gain, that an equestrian statue was erected to C. Marcius in front of the temple of Castor.

There are only two kinds of tactic, between which various modifications occur; that which calculates upon the individual warrior, and that which builds upon masses; so that in the former the mass with its dead weight does not appear at all and is taken no account of, and in the latter the individual vanishes as insignificant. The extremes of these two kinds are represented by the Homeric heroes, and those swarms of Cimbrians who were held together by chains. The remarks however which will be made upon this subject, refer properly to the infantry; respecting the cavalry, for which many things are different, I shall say a little afterwards.

The tactic of barbarians begins with masses: many people have never gone beyond them; others have returned to them again: that the Romans had no other system in the infancy of their military art, is clear from the celebrated passage in Livy, and even from the arms of the hoplites of Servius Tullius. This system was entirely Greek, and in the time of Pisistratus there was unquestionably not the slightest difference between the Roman and Greek tactics. It remained among the Greeks to very late times; the Romans broke up their arrangement very early, long before this time, and changed their arms. It is said that they borrowed them from the Italicans; whether this be so, cannot be ascertained in any way; but so much is certain, that the Italicans were at this time armed and drawn up like the Romans.

The consular year began at that time in summer, about the same time as the Olympic year; it must be supposed that the campaigns generally fell in the autumn; and during the cessation of war, which winter brought, changes and revolutions were prepared. In the year 409 (414), before the Samnite peace was concluded, the consul C. Plautius marcht, still in accordance with the league, into the field against the Volscians of Privernum and Antium. The former purchast peace with two thirds of their domain land: Latium evidently received one third as well as Rome. The war was renewed with the Antiatians for the possession of Satricum; a hard won victory led to the devastation of their territory as far as the sea coast.

But when Rome had abandoned the war against Samnium in consequence of a peace, which was without any doubt contrary to the league, new connexions were of necessity soon formed. The Sidicinians were given over to the Samnites: the Campanians, after the Roman garrisons had been withdrawn, saw no safety for themselves except in the continuance of their alliance with the Latins; they were indeed, when united, strong enough to invade Samnium in the spring of the same consular year with a great army.

Latium and the Volscians of Antium, and all of the Volscian name that may have remained on the sea coast, had now given up the war and become allied to one another, like Rome and Samnium: in the same manner also the Auruncians,—the Volscians on the Liris.

In what way the treaty of the year 261 granted to the Latin state independence and equality; how the greater part of it fell, afterwards, into the power of its enemies, and the remainder lost the form of a confederacy, and separately took shelter under the supremacy of Rome; how they became separated from one another after their star had set; and at the same time how, from the dissolution of the Æquian state, Latin towns which formerly had only been equal to those contained in the number of the thirty townships, again come to light as states:—all these things have been described in their proper places in the course of the second volume.

After the consulship was shared with the plebeians, Latium still contained the same isolated states, as appear after the devastations of the Gauls. Tibur and Præneste stood apart from the others, each soverain of a district; those places, which had remained as Latins after the extension of the Volscians, must again have formed a league with one another, but still without preventing separate places, such as Tusculum, from forming an equally close connection with Rome: Antium was an entirely forein state, and so were Velitræ and Privernum also. One would seek in vain for compact territories: for Roman districts, either assigned or occupied, lay mixt among the Latin ones.