hearing the cries of her young one, which had been wounded in this way, rushed furiously into the ranks of her own men. Curius now brought up the main body of his foot and attacked the disordered phalanxes: they were broken, and became helpless. The defeat was complete: Pyrrhus fell back at once upon Tarentum, and resolved to leave the shores of Italy. However, he left Milo still in the citadel, as if he intended to return.

§ 16. But the glory of his life was ended; the two or three years that remained of it were passed in hopeless enterprises. One day he was proclaimed King of Macedon, and the next he lost his kingdom. Then he attacked Sparta, and nearly took

that famous city. Lastly, he assaulted Argos, and was killed by a tile thrown by a woman from the roof of a house.

Such was the end of this remarkable man. Like Richard I. of England or Charles XII. of Sweden, he passed his life in winning battles without securing any fruits of victory; and, like them, a life passed in the thick of danger was ended in a petty war and by an unknown hand. His chivalric disposition won him the admiration even of his enemies; his impetuous temper and impatience of misfortune prevented him from securing the confidence of his friends. Yet he left a name worthy of his great ancestry; and we part with regret from the history of his Italian. wars, for it is the most frank and generous conflict in which Rome was ever engaged.

CHAPTER XXVII.

FINAL REDUCTION AND SETTLEMENT OF ITALY. (274-264 B.C.)

§ 1. Milo left by Pyrrhus in Tarentum. § 2. Final reduction of Samnites and Italians of South. § 3. Surrender of Tarentum: embassy of Ptolemy Philadelphus to Rome. § 4. Campanian soldiers in Rhegium compelled to surrender: their fate. § 5. Submission of Sallentines and Messapians: Colony of Brundusium. § 6. Reduction of Picenians and Umbrians. § 7. Of Etruscans. § 8. Account of Settlement of Italy: present extent of Roman Territory: none but its inhabitants admitted to a share in government. § 9. Principles adopted in regulating Italy: Isolation and Selfgovernment. § 10. How Isolation was produced: different conditions of Italian Towns. § 11. Prefectures. § 12. Municipal Towns. § 13. Colonies. § 14. Colonies of Roman Citizens. § 15. Latin Colonies. § 16. Jus Latii. § 17. Free and Confederate States. § 18. Constitutions of Italian Towns. § 19. Admirable results of the system.

§ 1. THE departure of Pyrrhus left Italy at the mercy of Rome. Yet Milo, the king's lieutenant, still held the citadel of Tarentum, and none of the nations who had lately joined the Epirote standard submitted without a final struggle. Of this struggle, what few particulars have survived shall be related, the affairs of the south being taken first, and then those of the north.

§ 2. AFFAIRS OF THE SOUTH.-The Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttians, and other tribes continued a kind of guerilla warfare for which their mountains afforded great facilities. To put an end to this, in the year 272 B.C., L. Papirius Cursor the younger, and Sp. Carvilius, who had been the instruments of crushing the Samnites at the close of the third war, were again elected Consuls together and sent southward with all their legions. Papirius invested Tarentum; and while the lines were being formed, he received the submission of the Lucanians and Bruttians.

Meanwhile Carvilius attacked the Samnites in their mountains, and the scattered remnants of that brave people, deserted by all, saw themselves compelled to submit finally to Rome, after a

struggle of about seventy years. Thus ended what is sometimes called the Fourth Samnite war.

§ 3. The same summer witnessed the reduction of Tarentum. Papirius, jealous of the appearance of a Carthaginian fleet in the gulf, entered into a secret treaty with Milo, by which the Epirote governor agreed to evacuate the city and leave it to the will of the Romans. This man had ruled the Tarentines like a tyrant, and it is probable that they on their part would have gladly purchased reasonable terms from the consul by surrendering their Epirote governor. But they were not allowed the choice. Milo sailed for Epirus with all his men and stores, and Tarentum was left to itself. The aristocratical party instantly seized the government, and made submission to Rome. They were allowed to continue independent, on condition of paying an annual tribute to the conqueror: but their fortifications were rased, their arsenal dismantled, the fleet surrendered to Rome, and a Roman garrison placed in their citadel.

The attention generally excited in the east of the Mediterranean by the failure of Pyrrhus is attested by the fact that in the year 273 B.C. Ptolemy Philadelphus, the king's brotherin-law, now sovereign of Egypt, sent ambassadors to Rome, and entered into alliance with Rome. Thus began a friendly connexion with Egypt which continued unbroken to the time of Cæsar.

§ 4. In 271 B.C. the Plebeian Consul, C. Genucius, was sent to reduce Decius Jubellius and the Campanian soldiers, who had made themselves lords of Rhegium. This able captain had added a number of adventurers to his original legion, and was in fact head of a military oligarchy in that city. But the Senate formed a treaty with the Mamertine soldiery, who had occupied Messana in precisely the same manner, and thus detached them from alliance with their compatriots: they also secured supplies of corn from Hiero, who had been raised to the sovereignty of Syracuse on the departure of Pyrrhus from Sicily. The Campanians of Rhegium were thus left to themselves; the city was taken by assault and all the soldiery put to the sword, except the original legionaries of Jubellius, who as burgesses of Capua possessed some of the rights of Roman citizens, and were therefore reserved for trial before the people of Rome. Not more than

three hundred still survived out of several thousands; but they met with no mercy. Every tribe voted that they should be first scourged and then beheaded as traitors to the Republic. Rhegium was restored to the condition of a Greek community.

§ 5. A few years later, the Sallentines and Messapians in the heel of Italy submitted to the joint forces of both Consuls. Brundusium and its lands were ceded to Rome; and about twenty years afterwards (244 B.C.) a colony was planted there. Brundusium became the Dover of Italy, as Dyrrhachium, on the opposite Epirote coast, became the Calais of Greece.

§ 6. AFFAIRS OF THE NORTH.-In the year 268 в.c. both Consuls undertook the reduction of the Picenians, who occupied the coast land between Umbria and the Marrucinians. Their chief city, Asculum, was taken by storm. A portion of the people was transferred to that beautiful coast which lies between the bay of Naples and the Silarus, where they took the name of Picentines.

Soon after (266 B.C.) Sarsina, the chief city of the Umbrians, was taken, and all Umbria submitted to Rome.

§ 7. It remains to speak of Etruria. No community here was strong enough, so far as we hear, to maintain active war against Rome; and the haughty Vulsinii, which had so long resisted her single-handed, was now compelled to sue for succour. The ruling aristocracy had ventured to arm their serfs, probably for the purpose of a Roman war: but these men had turned upon their late masters, and were now exercising a still direr oppression than they had suffered. The Senate readily gave ear to a call for assistance from the Volsinian lords; and (in the year 265 B.C.) Q. Fabius Gurges, son of old Fabius Maximus, invested the city. He was slain in a sally made by the Etruscan serfs, who were, however, obliged to surrender soon after. The Romans treated the city as lawfully-gotten booty. The old Etruscan town on the hill-top, with its polygonal walls, was destroyed; its 2000 statues and other works of art were transferred to Rome; a new town was founded on the low ground, which in the modernised name of Bolsena still preserves the memory of its ancient fame. After the fall of Vulsinii, all the Etruscan communities, which (like Arretium) were not already in alliance with Rome, made formal submission; and Etruria,

like every other district of Roman Italy, awaited the will of the conquering City of the Tiber.

§ 8. We must now give a brief account of the manner in which the Roman government so ordered the noble dominions of which they were now masters, that for many years at least absolute tranquillity prevailed. We have no definite account of the organisation by which these results were obtained; but by putting together incidental facts which are handed down with respect to various Communities, a tolerably exact knowledge of their system may be obtained.

To conceive of Ancient Rome as the capital of Italy in the same sense that London is the capital of England or Paris of France would be a great mistake. London and Paris are the chief cities of their respective countries only because they are the seat of government. The people of these cities and their surrounding districts have no privileges superior to those of other English or French citizens. But the City of Ancient Rome, with her surrounding territory, was a great Corporate Body or Community holding sovereignty over the whole of Italy, which had now obtained that signification which we have above noticed,a and comprehended the whole Peninsula from the Macra and Rubicon downwards, except that the territory lately taken from the Senonian Gauls was for some years later termed the Province of Ariminum. The Roman territory itself, in the first days of the Republic, consisted (as we have seen) of twenty-one Tribes or Wards. Before the point at which we have arrived, these Tribes had been successively increased to three-andthirty. These Tribes included a district beyond the Tiber stretching somewhat further than Veii; a portion of the Sabine and Equian territory beyond the Anio; with part of Latium, part of the Volscian country, and the coast-land as far as the Liris, southward. None but persons enrolled on the lists of these Tribes had a vote in the Popular Assemblies or any share in the government and legislation of the City. The Latin Cities not included in the Tribes, and all the Italian Communities, were subject to Rome, but had no share in her political franchise. § 9. The principles on which the Italian nations were so Chapt. i. § 3.

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