The Historians' History of the World 05

The allies flew desperately to arms. The death of Drusus and the prostration of his adherents within the city reduced them to their own national resources; but their last scruples vanished with the loss of their Roman associates. The Marsians were summoned to take the lead, and their chief Pompædius Silo was the soul of the confederacy. Eight or more nations, the Picentines, the Vestines, the Marrucines, the Pelignians, the Samnites, the Lucanians and the Apulians, together with the Marsians, gave mutual hostages and concerted a simultaneous rising. Now for the first time they vowed to unite together in a permanent association. They proposed to constitute a great federal republic, organised on the model of Rome herself, with a senate of five hundred, two consuls, twelve prætors, and for their capital the central stronghold of Corfinium in the Apennines, to which they gave the name of Italia. They struck medals bearing the impress of the Sabellian bull trampling under foot the Roman she-wolf. This alliance indeed was confined for the most part to the nations of Sabellian origin, and its decrees were issued in the Oscan language, the common root of the idioms then in use among the central tribes of the peninsula. The Etruscans, the Latins, and the Umbrians held aloof from it, and together with Campania, which was already thoroughly Romanised, adhered to the fortunes of Rome. The Bruttians no longer existed as a nation, and the cities of Magna Græcia had ceased to have any political importance. The Gauls beyond the Rubicon, who had joined Hannibal against the Romans, long since exhausted by their struggles, made no effort now to recover their independence.

What was the relative strength of the combatants now arrayed against each other? Three centuries earlier, at the date of the great Gaulish invasion, the nations of Sabellia, together with the Apulians, could arm, it is said, 200,000 men, while the Etruscans, Latins, and Umbrians vaunted 120,000 warriors. Supposing, therefore, the proportions to remain the same at the later period, the allies alone who still remained to the republic may have balanced in numbers three-fifths of the whole force opposed to her. At the same time the census of Rome herself gave a total of at least four hundred thousand warriors; and she could draw vast numbers of auxiliaries from her provinces and dependencies beyond the limits of Italy. The forces, therefore, of Rome trebled or quadrupled those of her adversaries. She occupied, moreover, the chief places of strength throughout their territories, securely fortified against sudden attacks, and communicating with one another and the capital by the great military roads. But from this formidable enumeration of her resources great deductions have on the other hand to be made. It was necessary to maintain powerful garrisons at every point of her vast empire. Greece and Spain, Asia and Africa, drew off her life-blood from the heart to the extremities. The disposition of her allies was doubtful and precarious; her own citizens were capricious, and might easily be seduced by the arts of the demagogues, while her internal dissensions had made her suspicious of many of her ablest statesmen. The mass of the commons of Rome took no vital interest in the political question for which the Italians contended, and served in the legions with no other feeling than that of mercenaries.

THE SOCIAL WAR

[90 B.C.]