and Pyrrhus, unable any longer to face his opponents in the
field, and disappointed of all assistance from his allies, retreated toin disgust to Tarentum and thence crossed into Greece.[1]
A few years later (272) Tarentum was surrendered to Rome by its Epirot garrison; it was granted a treaty of alliance, but its walls were razed and its fleet handed over to Rome. In 270 Rhegium also entered the ranks of Roman allies, and finally in 269 a single 482. 484. 485. 481, 491. 481, 486, 491. 486. 486. 490. campaign crushed the last efforts at resistance in Samnium. Rome was now at leisure to consolidate the position she had won. Between 273 and 263 three new colonies were founded in Samnium and Lucania—Paestum in 273, Beneventum in 268, Aesernia in 263. In central Italy the area of Roman territory was increased by the full enfranchisement (268) of the Sabines,[2] and of their neighbours to the east, the people of Picenum. To guard the Adriatic coast colonies were established at Ariminum (268), at Firmum and at Castrum Novum (264), while to the already numerous maritime colonies was added that of Cosa in Etruria.[3]
Rome was now the undisputed mistress of Italy. The limits of her supremacy to the north were represented roughly by a line drawn across the peninsula from the mouth of Rome the mistress of Italy. the Arno on the west to that of the Aesis on the east.[4] Beyond this line lay the Ligurians and the Celts; all south of it was now united as “Italy” under the rule of Rome.
But the rule of Rome over Italy, like her wider rule over the Mediterranean coasts, was not an absolute dominion over conquered subjects. It was in form at least a confederacy under Roman protection and guidance; and the Italians, like the provincials, were not the subjects, but the “allies and friends” of the Roman people.[5] In the treatment of these allies Rome consistently followed the maxim, divide et impera. In every possible way she strove to isolate them from each other, while binding them closely to herself. The old federal groups were in most cases broken up, and each of the members united with Rome by a special treaty of alliance. In Etruria, Latium, Campania and Magna Graecia the city state was taken as the unit; in central Italy where urban life was non-existent, the unit was the tribe. The northern Sabellian peoples, for instance—the Marsi, Paeligni, Yestini, Marrucini, Frentani—were now constituted as separate communities in alliance with Rome. In many cases, too, no freedom of trade or intermarriage was allowed between the allies themselves, a policy afterwards systematically pursued in the provinces. Nor were all these numerous allied communities placed on the same footing as regarded their relations with Rome herself. To begin with, a sharp distinction was drawn between The Latins. the “Latini” and the general mass of Italian allies. The “Latins” of this period had little more than the name in common with the old thirty Latin peoples of the days of Spurius Cassius. With a few exceptions, such as Tibur and Praeneste, the latter had either disappeared or had been incorporated with the Roman state, and the Latins of 268 B.C. were almost exclusively the “Latin colonies,” that is to say, communities founded by Rome, composed of men of Roman blood, and whose only claim to the title “Latin” lay in the fact that Rome granted to them some portion of the rights and privileges formerly enjoyed by the old Latin cities under the Cassian treaty.[6] Though nominally allies, they were in fact offshoots of Rome herself, bound to her by community of race, language and interest, and planted as Roman garrisons among alien and conquered peoples. The Roman citizen who joined a Latin colony lost his citizenship—to have allowed him to retain it would no doubt have been regarded as enlarging too rapidly the limits of the citizen body; but he received in exchange the status of a favoured ally. The member of a Latin 486. colony had the right of commercium and down to 268[7] of conubium also with Roman citizens. Provided they left sons and property to represent them at home, they were free to migrate to Rome and acquire the Roman franchise. In war-time they not only shared in the booty, but claimed a portion of any land confiscated by Rome and declared “public.” These privileges, coupled with their close natural affinities with Rome, successfully secured the fidelity of the Latin colonies, which became not only the most efficient props of Roman supremacy, but powerful agents in the work of Romanizing The Italian allies. Italy. Below the privileged Latins stood the Italian allies; and here again we know generally that there were considerable differences of status, determined in each case by the terms of their respective treaties with Rome. We are told that the Greek cities of Neapolis and Heraclea were among the most favoured;[8] the Bruttii, on the other hand, seem, even before the Hannibalic War, to have been less generously treated. But beyond this we have no detailed information.
Rome, however, did not rely only on this policy of isolation. Her allies were attached as closely to herself as they were clearly separated from each other, and from the first she took every security for the maintenance of her own paramount authority. Within its own borders, each ally was left to manage its own affairs as an independent state.[9] The badges which marked subjection to Rome in the provinces—the resident magistrate and the tribute—were unknown in Italy. But in all points affecting the relations of one ally with another, in all questions of the general interests of Italy and of foreign policy, the decision rested solely with Rome. The place of a federal constitution, of a federal council, of federal officers, was filled by the Roman senate, assembly and magistrates. The maintenance of peace and order in Italy, the defence of the coasts and frontiers, the making of war or peace with foreign powers, were matters the settlement of which Rome kept entirely in her own hands. Each allied state, in time of war, was called upon for a certain contingent of men, but, though its contingent usually formed a distinct corps under officers of its own, its numerical strength was fixed by Rome, it was brigaded with the Roman legions, and was under the orders of the Roman consul.[10]
This paramount authority of Rome throughout the peninsula was confirmed and justified by the fact that Rome herself was now infinitely more powerful than any one of her numerous allies. Her territory, as distinct from that of the allied states, covered something like one-third The Roman state. of the peninsula south of the Aesis. Along the west coast it stretched from Caere to the southern borders of Campania. Inland, it included the former territories of the Acqui and Hernici, the Sabine country, and even extended eastward into Picenum, While beyond these limits were outlying districts, such as the lands of the Senonian Celts, with the Roman colony of Sena, and others elsewhere in Italy, which had been confiscated by Rome and given over to Roman settlers. Since the 388. first important annexation of territory after the capture of Veii (396), twelve new tribes had been formed,[11] and the number of male citizens registered at the census had risen from 152,000 to 290,000.[12] Within this enlarged Roman
- ↑ Livy, Epit. xiv.; Plut. Pyrrh. 26.
- ↑ Vell. Pat. i. 14, “suffragii ferendi jus Sabinis datum.”
- ↑ Ibid.; Livy, Epit. xv.
- ↑ Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, ii. 60, note 1; Nissen, Ital. Landeskunde, i. p. 71.
- ↑ Beloch, Ital. Bund, 203; Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, ii. 60, note 2.
- ↑ For the coloniae Latinae founded before the First Punic War, see Beloch, 136 seq.
- ↑ The year of the foundation of Ariminum, the first Latin colony with the restricted rights; Cic. Pro Caec. 35, 202; Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, ii. 52 n.; Staatsr. iii. 624; Marquardt, Staatverw. i. 54; Beloch, 155-58, takes a different view.
- ↑ Beloch, Camp. 39; Cic. Pro Balbo, 8, 21, 22, 50.
- ↑ For the relation of the socii Italici to Rome, see Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, ii. 53 ff.; Beloch, Ital. Bund, cap. x.
- ↑ Beloch, 203. The importance of this duty of the allies is expressed in the phrase, “socii nominisve Latini quibus ex formula togatorum milites in terra Italia imperare solent.”
- ↑ Four in South Etruria (387), two in the Pomptine territory (358), two in Latium (332), two in the territory of the southern Volsci and the Ager Falernus (313), two in the Aequian and Hernican territory (299). The total of thirty-five was completed in 241 by formation of the Velina and Quirina, probably in the Sabine and Picentine districts, enfranchised in 268. See Beloch, 32.
- ↑ Livy, Epit. xvi.; Eutrop. ii. 18; Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, ii. 55 n.; Beloch, cap. iv. pp. 77 seq.
